HOMEBREW Digest #5498 Sun 08 February 2009


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Re: Leftovers beer (Alan Semok)
  Thermometer calibration ("A. J. deLange")
  RE: Vittles Vault Size ("Michael Beck")
   (slaycock)
  Diatomacious Earth for spider mite control (slaycock)
  RE: Leftovers beer (Stephen Jorgensen)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:46:41 -0500 From: Alan Semok <asemok at mac.com> Subject: Re: Leftovers beer Fri, 6 Feb 2009 07:13:05, <beaverplt at yahoo.com> wrote: > Has anyone ever cleaned out their beer cupboard by just using all > your > leftovers to make a brew? I...This seems like a fun thing to try. Go for it. I've done just that many times and the result is always interesting. And usually pretty damned good. This year, I took the concept a step further by saving the bottoms of every finished brew I made this past year (the dregs or botttom couple of quarts of each corny, if you will) into a clean corny. I manage to brew quite a bit, so I had a pretty good quantity, maybe ending up with 2 or 2 1/2 gallons. It had to settle out for a while, and was a blend of probably 4 different types of ale...but man...the end result of this mish-mash is pretty remarkable. This will without a doubt become a yearly tradition now, for as long as I'm alive and able to brew. For more than 20 years my holiday/winter brew has contained at least 10% volume of the previous year's batch (a kind of solera, if you will) but this new amalgam of every brew of the precious year (except for the saved winter brew, reserved for the coming year's batch) is pretty interesting, especially since it is comprised completely of well aged beer (anywhere from 3 to 12 months old). If you brew a good volume of beer in a year, I can heartily recommend trying this! cheers, AL Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 08:29:06 +0000 From: "A. J. deLange" <ajdel at mac.com> Subject: Thermometer calibration Jason has found his "reference" thermometer to be 8 degrees low at boiling. The first question to Jason is, of course, "Where do you live?". If the answer is "Denver" or some other place at similar altitude then nothing is wrong, Water does boil at about 202 F at a mile high. If, OTOH, you live near sea level first check that the mercury or alcohol column in the thermometer hasn't some how become separated and if it hasn't then pitch that thermometer and get a new one. Having a new thermometer won't solve all calibration problems but your calibration can never be better than the standard you are calibrating against. Best would be an RTD based instrument traceable to NIST shipped with a calibration certificate. Naturally, this will be somewhat expensive. Second best would be laboratory thermometers traceable to NIST. These are, relative to the electronic thermometers, difficult to read because you must immerse them exactly to the marked immersion point if they are partial immersion or completely if they are full immersion for best accuracy. In my own setup there is no way I can read a properly immersed partial immersion thermometer down in my mash tun so I must remove the temperature probes (RTD's) to a separate container before comparing to the thermometer. Conceivably, I could put RTD probe, and lab thermometer into a beaker with a stir bar on a heater/stir plate and raise the temperature recording thermometer and RTD readings from near freezing (by adding ice) up to boiling, then fit a curve to the error and apply corrections calculated from the fit to the RTD readings when the RTD is back in the mash tun as the temperature display is done by the computer but this hardly seems necessary as I simply note the recorded boiling temperature and if it is within a degree of 212 (I'm near sea level and the molar strength of wort constituents isn't enough to shift the boiling point appreciably) I call it good enough. Even if I am off a bit it is the same bit each time I brew (a shift in "calibration" would be detectable as a shift in boiling point). If I think I am saccharrifying at 145 but it's really 144.5 and I find the beer too dry I'll just go to 147 in the next brew and see what happens. Even though it may be 146.5 in fact I have effected a 2 degree increase in temperature. IOW, as long as the calibration doesn't shift (detectable by the BP check) I'm OK with relative moves. A.J. Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 09:04:00 -0600 From: "Michael Beck" <michaelr.beck at cox.net> Subject: RE: Vittles Vault Size Hello A.J., here's my 2 cents. I use Vittles Vaults to store my grain. They are very convenient for storage both because they are air tight and because certain models are stackable. I have a 40 pounder stackable that was the largest I could buy locally at the time. It holds a bit over 45 lbs of grain, so if you end up getting stackable bins choose the 60 pound containers. I would guess the 50 pound regular vault would have a proportional amount of overhead. Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 09:43:16 -0600 (CST) From: slaycock at discoverynet.com Subject: "Greg Brewer <gbrewer1 at gmail.com> Subject: Diatomaceous Earth Any thoughts about using diatomaceous earth for controlling spider mites on hops?" DE is what my mother has used exclusively on her garden for the past 40 years or so. She sprinkles it on early in the morning while things are still wet with dew & reapplies after a hard enough rain to wash it off the plants. She has excellent insect control with this method and a healthy feed out of the garden as a result of this non-poison approach. Her broccoli, brusselsprouts, caulflower, potato's are all virtually bug free. She tells me that the egg laying moths will just hover above the plants checking them out, but never landing. I'd expect spider mites would suffer the same fate. I've used preditory aphids in the past to attempt to control the spider mites with no success. The DE will also kill beneficial insects on your hop bines...just so ya know. Make sure your using "food grade" DE and like said here earlier, make sure you dont breathe the dust while your applying the DE to your plants as it will damage your lungs. DE also has many trace minerals and loads of silica to enrich your garden soil and produce a healthier plant/fruit. Steve in KC Highwater Brewhaus - -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 10:36:29 -0600 (CST) From: slaycock at discoverynet.com Subject: Diatomacious Earth for spider mite control "Greg Brewer <gbrewer1 at gmail.com> Subject: Diatomaceous Earth Any thoughts about using diatomaceous earth for controlling spider mites on hops?" Greg, DE is what my mother has used exclusively on her garden for the past 40 years or so. She has excellent insect control with this method and a healthy feed out of the garden as a result of this non-poison approach (i think the modern day p.c. term is organic gardening`). Her broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, potato's are all virtually bug free. She tells me that the egg laying moths will just hover above the plants checking them out, but never landing. I read that it controls "mites" and "spiders",I'd expect spider mites would suffer the same fate. I've used predatory aphids in the past to attempt to control spider mites with no success. The DE will also kill beneficial insects on your hop bines...just so ya know. It wont harm earth worms, it will kill honey bees & lady bugs...so keep it off flowers! Make sure your using "food grade" DE and like said here earlier, make sure you dont breathe the dust while your applying the DE to your plants as it will damage your lungs. DE also has many trace minerals and loads of silica to enrich your garden soil and produce a healthier plant/fruit for you to consume. Simply do an internet search on DE and plan on spending a week reading on all the uses,and mind blowing results folks get from it...enjoy! Steve in KC Highwater Brewhaus - -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:42:02 -0600 From: Stephen Jorgensen <stephen at ultraemail.net> Subject: RE: Leftovers beer I make an Anything Lying Around brew once or twice a year, incorporating several sources of fermentables. In addition to spare small quantities of specialty malts I also have used many other leftovers such as: cooked breakfast cereals, rice from Chinese take-out, cooked Quinoa, that lonely potato in the back of the crisper drawer, stale dried fruits, the last inch of crystallized honey in the Bear, failed attempts at rustic home-baked bread (yeast + flour + water + salt recipes only. No oils or fats), the acorn squash I intended to roast for Thanksgiving dinner but forgot, essentially everything in the kitchen which is likely to contain lots of starch or sugar and very little else. I have not yet had one I would consider undrinkable and often things turn out quite good. I follow a few general rules: No added fats of any kind are allowed (oatmeal left in the pan, GO. oatmeal left in a bowl with cream or butter, NO GO.) And starchy adjuncts are kept to a maximum of around 15% of the mash by dry weight. In the case of cooked starches or raw fruits/vegetables I guesstimate that there is a rough equivalency to malt by volume. In the end I always get beer. The use of several kinds of hops and specialty grains makes for good fun trying to pick out distinct flavors from each ingredient. Occasionally I discover a subtle note from the adjuncts I really enjoy. Dried figs complimented a porter-esque effort nicely. Basmati rice added a pleasant aroma to a pale-aley brew. Anyway, go for it! There's not much to lose. Take notes and let us know how it turns out. Return to table of contents
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