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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Mash bags ("john michaud")
  Re:  bisulfite and fruit  beer (stencil)
  Russian Imperial Stout finished? ("Brian Schar")
  RE: Pitching rates for high gravities (Matt)
  Shaerbeek Cherries (Joe Katchever)


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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 02:45:20 -0400
From: "john michaud" <guatelupe at hotmail.com>
Subject: Mash bags 

what kind of luck has everyone had with thoes nylon mesh bags in a mash tun? 
i've used for hops in the boil and noticed less bittering effects.. any 
suggestions on keeping clean up easy, thats what i'm getting at.. thanks and 
happy brewing!



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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:10:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: Michael Hartsock <xd_haze at yahoo.com>

David in the UK knows that pitching 64 packets of
yeast into a barleywine is excessive. 

Surely those cited brewing scientists DON'T mean:
1048 - 2 packets
1056 - 4 packets
1064 - 8 packets
1072 - 16 packets
1080 - 32 packets
1088 - 64 packets

But instead mean (where the original value is doubled
for each 0008 increment above 1048):
1048 - 2 packets
1056 - 4 packets
1064 - 6 packets
1072 - 8 packets
1080 - 10 packets
1088 - 12 packets

But even this, I think, is way too high.  Here's my
rough and ready rule.  If the beer is basically a
single, 1 packet.  If it is basically a double, two
packets, if it is basically a triple, three packets. 
If you make a half-gallon starter, you ought to have
plenty of yeast.

Mike
Columbia, MO



Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 12:11:47 +0100
From: Signalbox Brewery <signalbox.brewery at
ntlworld.com>
Subject: Pitching rates for high gravities

I know it's worth pitching a little more than the
1M/ml.P rule 
suggests for strong ales. Recently, two correspondents
have quoted a 
rule "Double the pitching rate for every 0.008 above
SG 1.048.", one 
attributing it to Yom, a Korean professor at Heriot
Watt and the 
other to Wyeast. Pitching 64 packs of yeast into a
barley wine seems 
just a shade extravagant.

Does anyone have a more practicable heuristic please?

David Edge, Derby, UK







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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 11:07:37 -0400
From: stencil <etcs.ret at verizon.net>
Subject: Re:  bisulfite and fruit  beer

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 23:46:29 -0400, 
in Homebrew Digest #5020 (June 11, 2006)
Alon Philosof  wrote:

>------------------------------
>[ ... ]
> I'm quite concerned with pitching the 
>fruit in the secondary/primary.
>also, I understand that boiling fruit is not highly recommended.
>this is why I thought about using bisulfite the way winers do with 
>grapes.
>has any one tried that?
>I'd like to use apricots. those are wonderful now in Israel.

It's do-able, but don't expect too strong or identifiable a flavor.
What I did is:
In August, procured about fifty pounds of mixed stonefruit (peaches, plums,
nectarines, pluots, and, yes, apricots.  Price: four pints of Porter to the
produce manager of the local supermarket;  all the fruit were blemished and
nominally unsellable.  These were blanched, peeled, pitted, diced, then frozen
in 5- and 10-lb plastic bags.  A freeze-thaw cycle or two helps to break down
the connective matter.  
For a 5.5gal (to fermenter) batch of Stonefruit Ale I used 5lb of fruit. The
frozen block of fruit went into a sanitized nylon-mesh paint strainer along
with a couple of pints of sanitized glass marbles, in a clean bucket.  Once it
had thawed I added bisulfite - two Campden tablets pulverized in a cupful of
water - and let it sit two days, well covered.
Brew day, I prepared a 1052 wort:
7#   Weyermann Pilsener
1# 3oz Munton's Wheat Malt
1/2# Weyermann CaraHell
6oz Dingeman's Special B
1oz Northern Brewer, FWH
1/2oz Perle, Finishing
Overnight soak at 50F, mash-in 95F, 30 min 120F, 15 min 145F, 30 min 158F
Pitched Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale, ca 2 pint starter, fermented 62F

48 hours later the SG was 1044 and the kraeusen was subsiding;  I chucked the
bag of fruit (the syrup was ca 12.5degP) into the Vittles Vault fermenter.  On
Day 16 the fruit bag was removed after a good squeeze-down and the beer left
to sit in the fermenter.  Day 34 (which was 11 Jan - the holidays were very
distracting) SG was 1004;  I primed w/ 5oz corn sugar and bottled 45 pints.   

The beer is wonderful, tart, light,  and very refreshing, and has a very
white, abundant, and persistent head.  It paints the glass with viscous
wine-like "legs." There is a hint of clove in the aftertaste, and a floral,
rather than fruit-like, overall impression.   It sings of Summer.

There is one major fault:  it is grossly over-carbonated.  Twice I've had to
chill the batch down to 33F and pop the swingtops.  That, together with the
clove note, says " infection;"   it may simply be the the yeast responding
slowly to the fruit sugars, but bisulfite only inhibits yeast and molds, it is
not a bactericide.  In any event, the effect on flavor, color, clarity, and
aroma is very good. The next time - and assuredly there will be one - I'll
rack to a transparent secondary and look to see  that fermentation really has
ended.

stencil sends


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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:16:49 -0700
From: "Brian Schar" <schar at cardica.com>
Subject: Russian Imperial Stout finished?

Two weeks ago, I made 10 gallons of Russian
Imperial Stout, and split the wort between two
five-gallon fermenters.  My OG was 1.090, and
I did a "partial mash" with 20+ pounds of
grain and 6 pounds of DME.  In one fermenter,
I used Wyeast 1056 and in the other I used 
Wyeast 1332; both were yeast cakes left
over from an IPA.  I pitched my wort on the 
cake, so to speak.

My gravity on the WY1056 wort is now 1.014,
which I think is about as low as I'm going to
get.  I'm astonished it got so low in 2 weeks.  My
gravity on the WY1332 wort is 1.020, a little
higher, but still in range for the style.

I would like to go ahead and bottle both.  However,
I'm concerned about bottle bombs in the
WY1332 wort, because I know there's .08 more
good stuff in there that yeast could eat.  Should
I stop worrying and just bottle, or should I
toss in some dry yeast to eat up a little more sugar?

Brian Schar
Menlo Park, CA



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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:21:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: Pitching rates for high gravities

David Edge says "I know it's worth pitching a little more than the
1M/ml.P rule suggests for strong ales."  I am less sure.  According to
"Brew Like a Monk," Duvel and Rochefort pitch strong ales at rates
between 0.5 and 1 M/ml/P.  Granted these are Belgian yeasts, and
probably given enough oxygen to get "fully stocked" at some point in
the process.

That's more of a point of curiosity though--without Duvel's yeast
propagators and labs, I shoot for 1M/ml/P.

As to the question "Does anyone have a more practicable heuristic
please?", one way to go is to just make absolutely certain that you get
1 M/ml/P, and give that a shot.  If you are using dry yeast, you could
use the specified minimum number of viable cells for that brand
(typically 6-7 B/gram) and calculate what you need to get to 1 M/ml/P. 
Likely, you will really be pitching more (or maybe many more) viable
cells than that.  I have seen numbers like 20-30 B/gram for dry yeast.

Of course if you're asking for 11+ percent alcohol, maybe you'd want to
try doubling your rate.  And then there is the nutrient question.  I
still believe that off-the-shelf "nutrients" added to all-grain wort
are likely to increase final fusel levels.  However it may be worth it
if amino acids would otherwise be growth-limiting, which would likely
lead to problems with solventy esters.  In cases like that, perhaps the
problem can be solved without adding nutrient blend, instead further
increasing the pitch rate (less growth required, and perhaps the
pitched yeast bring some nutrients along with them).

Matt



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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 10:41:48 -0500
From: Joe Katchever <joe at pearlstreetbrewery.com>
Subject: Shaerbeek Cherries

Hi all.
I am interested in acquiring some of the schaerbeek cherry trees. I am 
willing to plant up to an acre of them. I cannot find a source but am 
requesting your help. If you speak french, you have an advantage here. I 
tried to email some related websites, but in English. In return for 
helping my secure a line on these trees, cuttings, saplings or seeds, 
you will get lots of cherries for your beers to come.
Cheers. Please email me directly: joe at pearlstreetbrewery dot com.
Cheers,
Egor the Orange




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