HOMEBREW Digest #4692 Fri 07 January 2005


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Hot To Trot On Apricot ("Phil Yates")
  RE: Leaf Hops (Steven Parfitt)
  Sulfur Smell ("A.J deLange")
  Gap Settings ("Dan Listermann")
  Re: gap settings (Jeff Renner)
  Re: Stuffing What In My Pants? (Jeff Renner)
  Tuscarora Mills - ouch! (Calvin Perilloux)
  Re: gap settings ("Jason Henning")
  whole hop brewing ("Steve B")
  Re: answer about WLP005, question about yeast (chris)
  Yeast aeration and growth (was: question about yeast) ("Fredrik")

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 20:18:01 +1100 From: "Phil Yates" <phil.yates at bigpond.com> Subject: Hot To Trot On Apricot D.Clark writes: >I regularly make a clonebrew of Magic Hat # 9, >which is an apricot ale, and I have used both Nottingham and Safale S->04 >with very good results. Both ferment very quickly and floc out very >well. The S-04 leaves the beer especially clean tasting. Hmm, Mr Clark seems to be going down a similar track to me. I wonder what Skotrat will say if I abandon my peach wheat for an apricot ale? Might be more in keeping with my macho image. Whilst I too have been very impressed with the DCL dried yeasts, they haven't yet been able to offer a genuine Hefeweizen W68 in dried form. I believe they are still working on the project. Until it becomes available, I'll be sticking with White Labs WLP 300 for my Hefeweizen wheat beers. In the mean time, I can't wait to see Scotty's face when I next see him at the bar, and pull a hot apricot ale out of my shorts. He won't be calling me a girl any more! Phil aka Phillis Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 05:20:34 -0800 (PST) From: Steven Parfitt <thegimp98 at yahoo.com> Subject: RE: Leaf Hops Antony Hayes is experiencng problems with leaf hops >I used leaf hops for the first time since 1998. After > clogging my counterflow chiller and bursting a pipe, > I was reminded as to why I moved to pellets in the > first place. The infernal things get in everywhere > and clog up everything. ... snip... I have the opposite problem. I suspect you are not using any kind of strainer on your pick up tube. I use a Bazooka Screen on my pick up tube in my kettle. It keeps the hops out, but allows them to form a filter bed for the wort. The only problem I have experienced with this is with pellet hops plugging it. Whole hops are no problem. Strange world isn't it. The only other problem I have experienced with the Bazooka screen was when I was not cleaning it properly. I was just spraying it off with the hose to clean it between brew sessions. I thought a high pressure blast from the hose (Hose on line side of pressure regualtor for the house) would be enough to clean it. It eventually became clogged with residue and needed a really good cleaning. Now I remove it from the kettle and clean it by hand every batch. ===== Steven, -75 XLCH- Ironhead Nano-Brewery http://thegimp.8k.com Johnson City, TN [422.7, 169.2] Rennerian "There is no such thing as gravity, the earth sucks." Wings Whiplash - 1968 Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 13:21:46 +0000 From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net> Subject: Sulfur Smell Sulfur smells are quite normal in the production of Czech Pils... up to a point. I'm reasonably convinced that the lager brewers of yore selected sulfur producing yeast strains not because of the way they smelled but because the sulfite they produce keeps the beer in a reduced state and thus "freseher" at the end of lagering. That said the smells of sulfite and even sulfide assocaited with lager strains are part of what the Germans call "Jungbuket" which is usually translated as "beer stench". This should pass away eventually. It was always my experience that the beer would stink for several weeks and then overnight lose the bouquet and become drinkable. While I never tried it I always figured one could accelerate the removal of Jungbuket by scrubbing with CO2 which is, theoretically, what is going on during lagering but at a slower rate. Now if the smell is definitely sulfidic rather than sulfitic and is not evanescing then the problem may be infection rather that Jungbuket. This hypothesis is strengthened by the comment that the starter was not up to snuff when pitched. Examination of a sample under a microscope if that's possible should be revealing. Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 08:30:53 -0500 From: "Dan Listermann" <dan at listermann.com> Subject: Gap Settings "From: "D. Clark" <clark at capital.net> I have a question for the collective regarding gap settings for crushing malted barley and wheat. I received a Barley Crusher for Christmas (another fun toy for dads' brewing days) and I was wondering if the preset gap (.039) is the best setting to use." I am no believer in a magical "best" or "optimum" gap setting for mills. There might be good "compromise settings" but no "best." You are making grist, not gaps. Learn to recognize a good grist. The old advice to " just barely crush it" or the "break it into six pieces" might have been good for Corona mills, but is very wasteful for a modern roller mill. The grist should be crushed until it is difficult to find corns that appear intact and those that you do find, appear undersized. Someone said,"Crush it until you get scared." " Should the wheat be crushed at a narrower setting?" Very definitely. Dan Listermann Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 08:51:45 -0500 From: Jeff Renner <jeffrenner at comcast.net> Subject: Re: gap settings "Dave Clark" <clark at capital.net> writes from Eagle Bridge, New York >I have a question for the collective regarding gap settings for crushing >malted barley and wheat. ... I was wondering if the preset >gap (.039) is the best setting to use. I double mill my grains in my adjustable MaltMill using the thickness of a dime for the first pass. That's about 1 mm, which is about 0.039". Often I will slightly tighten the gap for the second pass. Lately, I've been tempering my malt first with about 75-100 ml warm water per 5 kg (that's ~1/3 cup per 11 pounds), and letting it sit about 30 minutes. This toughens the husks so they stay more intact, making a better filter bed. Only trouble is, sometimes the crushed grain doesn't feed on the second pass because of their "fluffiness." It bridges over the opening. What you want in a mash, intact husks, isn't good for feeding a mill. Since tempering the malt and milling a little tighter, I've increased my efficiency a bit. Last brew was 80% using ProMash calculation, vs. about 70-73% earlier. >And what about wheat malt? The store mill can barely pass any wheat >through the rollers The trick with wheat malt is to mix it with the barley malt before milling. That way the barley pulls the wheat thru. You can mill wheat malt alone, but you need to open the mill a bit. This will give a poor crush, of course, so you then tighten the gap and mill a second time. Jeff - -- Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA, JeffRenner at comcast.net "One never knows, do one?" Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943 Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 09:02:50 -0500 From: Jeff Renner <jeffrenner at comcast.net> Subject: Re: Stuffing What In My Pants? Good to hear from Phil Yates down under, who writes >How do you think I'd look Brian, wandering around the bars with peach wheat >beers stuffed down my pants? Reminds me of a favorite story. It seems there were two college roommates. One was a suave, studly guy - a kind of babe magnet. The other was rather a nerdy, insecure, bookish type. They decided to go to the beach, but the nerd was concerned. He could never pick up any girls. So the stud suggested, "Just drop a potato down your swimsuit - the girls will think you really have something and they'll all be interested." So they went and it was even worse than usual for the guy. Girls were actively avoiding him. When they got back, he complained to his roommate, who replied, "It's OK, you did good for a first try. But next time, drop the potato down the *front* of your shorts." Jeff - -- Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA, JeffRenner at comcast.net "One never knows, do one?" Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943 Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 06:45:50 -0800 (PST) From: Calvin Perilloux <calvinperilloux at yahoo.com> Subject: Tuscarora Mills - ouch! I dunno why Sid was posting what really looks like an ad for Tuscarora Mill in Virginia on a national board where everyone's probably got their own local (good) restaurant doing beer dinners, but here's my comments. If you can't make it to Tuskies' beer dinner to try out whatever they are serving, under no circumstances should you venture in later hoping to try any of the Stone Brewing beers. Here's why: They had a Troegs beer dinner one evening. Later in the week, after it was over, I happened to see the table tent ad and mentioned to the waiter it would have been good to try some of those. "No problem, monsieur, we still have them." Problem was, instead of the usual $3 to $5 for a 12 ounce bottle of 6% abv beer like all the rest they serve, they charged bloody $14 when the bill came. Holy bejesus! Sure, I should have not assumed the price (which was not listed anywhere), but that was completely out of line for such an average -- and locally available -- beer. Despite their good food, Tuscarora Mills will never, ever see me in there again for any reason. They got their $14 but lost out on probably hundreds of my beer dollars over the course of time. Calvin Perilloux Middletown, Maryland, USA Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 09:55:07 -0500 From: "Jason Henning" <jason at thehennings.com> Subject: Re: gap settings >From Renner's post: >>And what about wheat malt? The store mill can barely pass any wheat >>through the rollers > > The trick with wheat malt is to mix it with the barley malt before > milling. That way the barley pulls the wheat thru. You can mill > wheat malt alone, but you need to open the mill a bit. This will > give a poor crush, of course, so you then tighten the gap and mill a > second time. For me the trick is to mill the wheat with a wide gap, just enough to crack it. Then set the gap back to normal and mill it again, either alone or with the barley. Cheers, Jason Henning Whitmore Lake, MI Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:45:02 -0500 From: "Steve B" <habenero92 at hotmail.com> Subject: whole hop brewing Now I have just the opposite opinion with regards to whole hops. I love brewing with them. I just pop them in a grain bag I have from my extract days and ta-da no mess. Much easier to contain. I am loathe to use pellets as result. The grain bag even works for dry hopping. S Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 12:06:34 -0600 From: chris at mikk.net Subject: Re: answer about WLP005, question about yeast On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 09:51:38 -0500 , Jeff Renner writes: > I no doubt have a proprietary interest in this yeast since I brought > it back from Ridley's Brewery in Essex, UK, several years ago, and > provided it to WhiteLabs. Then I owe you a couple if we ever meet -- this is my favorite yeast. > It is somewhat fruity, though not strongly. It also has a woody > character - almost like oak aging. Nicely dry, too. I find that > many homebrewed bitters are not dry enough. > > I also love the fact that it produces a huge head of easily > harvestable, very clean yeast for repitching.. Of course, it I > didn't like its flavor profile, that wouldn't mean anything. I get a little nuttiness, too, and find it brings out the soft bready malt flavors quite well. It shines in a brown ale, goes very well with fuggle hops, and I found my bitters magically got better when I started using this yeast for them. I also love its top-cropping ability, and was converted top this re-use technique by this strain, along with my second-favorite (see below). Many thanks for bringing this one over! > I suppose I really should try some of the other British ale yeasts > again - it's been a while. Maybe I'd like them better. My close second favorite is one white labs number over, WLP023 Burton ale. It's on the opposite end of the British ale flavor spectrum, assertively fruity and mildly tart. It shares the dryness and great top-cropping ability. It gives me good results in stouts and it pairs beautifully with the aroma of Kent Goldings in one of my favorite IPAs. - -- Chris Mikkelson St. Paul, MN Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 19:05:27 +0100 From: "Fredrik" <carlsbergerensis at hotmail.com> Subject: Yeast aeration and growth (was: question about yeast) Here are some speculations on Chad Stevens ideas(#4690) on yeast aeration. First I'm sorry if I misunderstand(?) the questions but I sense the questions posed partly contains some underlying IMO confusing assumptions about growth. FWIW, here are some comments that maybe(?) can clarify some of this. 1) Unlike some other organisms, yeast growth does not stop when the molecular oxygen is exhausted. Yeast can grow for several generations without oxygen (enough to promptly consume a batch of wort if the pitching rate is appropriate). Though the biomass yield as well as performance and alcohol tolerance etc does drops (which means the growth slows, but not stops, if it really *stopped* there would be a stuck ferment). Though I am still looking to understand the exact shape of the biomass graph from pitching to EOF (if anyone has some data on this I am very interested!), but it's clear though that the population grows all the way until the last sugar, though in the very end most of the energy possible goes into cell maintenance and similar expenses and I suspect the biomass yield is probably really low. 2) As I understand the reason for the pitching rate recommendations is the depletion of *cellular* levels of oxygen derived compounds(UFA's and sterols) during anaerobic growth. These compounds are split and shared in the population when it grows, and if the pitching rate is low, or if the aeration or in general the initial UFA and sterol levels is insufficient, the population will even more deplete the *cellular* levels of these compounds (though I figure the total amount in the population is fairly conserved?), leading to performance problems. With a 1 million/ml/P pitching rate, as per my crude estimates yeast will in a typical wort grow for an average of 3 generations (factor x8 = 2*2*2) and average cellular levels of these compounds will drop to about 12.5% (1/8) of whatever the inital value was. The lower the initial value, the worse performance will you have in the end. Therefore, pitching a given (normally sufficient) amount of yeast - but that is depleted on sterols and UFA's and not giving it initial aeration, is I suppose possibly about as bad (or at least not much better) as pitching a too small amount of yeast but with good aeration and inital levels of these oxygen derived compounds? That said, at least mathematically one can compensate the pitching rate for lower initial cellular levels and poor aeration. I would suspect the best way is probably the right amount of yeast, with the right level of initial (or pre) aeration. Then one doesn't have to "overpitch" to cover up for poor aeration, or even the other way around. Unless you do it for the reason of controlled tweaking of flavours... About the flavour difference(?) in chad's example I think this is a really interesting question that I would also like to have answered in the general case! I think the general basis for some potential flavour difference is there but I am curious to learn what the exact differences may be at times, and how big they are (detectable at all?) Until I know better I assume that the implications depends on a range of other factors too in the sense that it might be hard to reach a general consencus. But related functions are probably(?) related to a drop in biomass yield, cell membrane function and cross membrane leakage of various stuff and what that typically may imply in terms of flavour compounds in each specific case. I think one may have to consider various stages in fermentation and see how each stage is affected. It seems to me there are at least the acceleration phase, the peak and then the deacceleration phase that all have different functions. If something affects both the acceleration phase and the deaccelerations phase in different way, predicting the outcome might not be a piece of cake? At this point I personally doubt that qualitative estimates will do to resolve all these matters. Perhaps one has to try the best possible way and nail numbers to each component and then sum it up. It would be interesting to hear from those who has for any particular situations reached some fairly consistent conclusions on this? (flavour impacts) Like for particular receips, or strains? /Fredrik Return to table of contents
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