HOMEBREW Digest #5090 Fri 10 November 2006


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Promash settings for Oregon Fruit Products puree, or should I use (Robert Marshall)
  Ft. Collins Water ("A.J deLange")
  Burton Union (Chris Tweney)
  re: Refrigerator vs. Freezer (Bob Tower)
  buffalo bill's orange blossom cream ale (lindera)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:58:09 -0800 From: Robert Marshall <robertjm at hockeyhockeyhockey.com> Subject: Promash settings for Oregon Fruit Products puree, or should I use Hi all, I'm planning some beers with fruit flavors and have been looking at the Oregon Fruit Products purees. I'm playing around with Promash to figure out my recipes, however, I've hit a roadblock. What settings do I need to plug into Promash software to calculate fermentables and OG for my beer? As a side note there seems to be "fruit essence" extracts for sale at most of the homebrew shops. Some shops claim their extracts are used for GABF winners!! Should I give up on using the purees and go with the extract instead? From the descriptions I've seen of it there are no fermentables so I'd have to add some additional DME as well, which is no big thing. Thoughts? Robert Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 13:18:01 +0000 From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net> Subject: Ft. Collins Water Todd asked for comments on this water profile Alkalinity mg/L as CaCO3 37 Calcium mg/L as CaCO3 42.4 Chlorate mg/L <0.1 Chloride mg/L 2.5 Chlorite mg/L 0.1 Hardness mg/L as CaCO3 48.8 pH 7.91 Sulfate mg/L 12.0 Iron ug/L 18.0 That's really nice water! The low level of alkalinity and modest hardness give a residual alkalinity of about 24 which is low enough that you should be able to brew almost anything. I'm not surprised that "pH seems to self adjust..." For Bohemian Pilsners you might want to dilute 1:1 or 2:1 (your water:distilled water) with distilled water to get the sulfate level down. Conversely for Burton syle ales you will probably want to add gypsum to get sulfate levels up but you should be able to brew good ales and lagers without any additions. To improve mouthfeel for ales you might want to try the addition of some calcium chloride but a slightly higher conversion temperature will also do this. I note with interest that your water is disinfected with chlorine dioxide. This means you don't have to worry about chlorine or chloramine which plague lots of brewers. While this is apparently fairly common I don't think I've ever seen it indicated in a water report before. A.J. Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 06:57:11 -0800 From: Chris Tweney <cat at pobox.com> Subject: Burton Union I just bought a "Phil's Burton Union" system from Listermann and thought some might be interested in my experience. If you're not familiar, it's a gallon glass jug with two holes in the side (one up high, one low) and a pair of tubes. Beer blows out the fermenter through the top hose and returns via the lower. In years past I've seen much ado about Burton Unions and alleged removal of hop resins. I don't give that much credence -- it could only remove a small percentage of resins at best. The real reason to use this, in my mind, is that I can fill my 7.1 gallon conical essentially full. Figuring on losing half a gallon or so, that means I can get a case of 12-oz bottles for competition and layovers and a nearly-full Corny keg from the single batch. I've also been pondering the benefits of top-cropped yeast for reuse (since reading Brew Like a Monk, which recommends the practice). The union makes for a sanitary and non-fussy way to harvest yeast by top-cropping, since quite a lot of yeast comes out with the blowoff and settles in the jug below the lower hole. In my first batch, a dubbel made with WLP-500, I harvested about 100ml of good white yeast slurry from the jug without needing to open up the conical. I wish I'd taken pictures of the active fermentation... it's quite a sight. The glass and tubing lets you see what's going on much better than even a glass carboy. Next brew, maybe. Is anyone else using one of these? -chris Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:47:26 -0800 From: Bob Tower <roberttower at sbcglobal.net> Subject: re: Refrigerator vs. Freezer Todd in Fort Collins, CO is contemplating the purchase of an upright refrigerator vs. an upright freezer to act as a kegerator and possibly as a temperature controlled environment for fermenting. The main problem with upright freezers is that many of them have refrigerant/coils in the shelves thus rendering them useless for your proposed purpose. Most people use the chest (horizontal) type freezers with an external thermostat. I used to run a homebrew shop and the most common problem that people had with using freezers is that they tend to rust out in the inside. I assume that this is because they are operating above the freezing point which allows moisture and spilled beer to build up in the joints between the walls and the bottom. A couple of customers reported that carefully sealing these joints with caulk added a few years to the life of their chest freezers. From what people told me they were getting about 5 years out of them before either the compressor failed or they simply rusted out. I myself much prefer upright refrigerators. The footprint is smaller than a chest freezer and rusting is not a problem. I use an external thermostat to control temperature and my refrigerator easily takes the temperature down to freezing and keeps it there for times when I'm lagering. It's also nice to have a top/down refrigerator as you can store your hops in the freezer section. I generally keep it set between 38-40 F. and thus my freezer section rarely gets above 20 F. Another nice thing about refrigerators is that used models are cheap and plentiful. My old brew fridge failed at the beginning of this past summer. I was able to find a late model (2-3 year old) 19 cubic foot top/down refrigerator for $100. I simply rolled the old one to the curb and rolled the new one into the brew area, installed my hardware and it's been cool running ever since. Cheap and easy! The only problem with using your fridge for serving and fermenting is that the temperature ranges don't overlap much unless you're brewing a lager. If you're fermenting an ale, you'll have to keep it too warm for serving. Even with a lager (in primary) the temperature is on the high side for stable draught dispense. And when you are lagering, it's too cold for serving (although you could live with this temporarily) unless you've got a keg of Pabst in there that you are serving while you are lagering one of your own creations! :-) Ideally, you'd want two refrigerators: one exclusively for serving and one exclusively for fermenting. That way you'll have no interruption in your beer supply, you can be serving past brews while you ferment your current one(s). But, we can't always live in an ideal world so you do what you can. Bob Tower / Los Angeles, CA Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 22:02:28 -0500 From: lindera at umich.edu Subject: buffalo bill's orange blossom cream ale does anyone have any idea how to create "buffalo bill's orange blossom cream ale"? a friend of mine is dying to get some of this but can't buy it? how can i make it? aaron A^2, MI Return to table of contents
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