HOMEBREW Digest #790 Fri 27 December 1991

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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator


Contents:
  Auto Reply from Watch_Mail for 24-DEC-1991 05:33 to 29-DEC-1991 12:00 (GARY MASON - I/V/V PCU - 603-884[DTN264]1503  25-Dec-1991 0333)
  Wyeast? ("N. Zentena")
  Beer Hunter / pitching starters. ("DRCV06::GRAHAM")
  Keep this crap to yourself (Donald Oconnor)
  source for yeast culturing equipment (Tony Babinec)
  Homebrew subscription (Bart Lipkens)
  Hi! Krausen (Jeff Frane)
  pitching starters (Jay Hersh)
  Bottle fillers, grain mills (Bill Crick)
  Precise Bottling/Automated Bottle Fillers ("Tom Childers")

Send submissions to homebrew at hpfcmi.fc.hp.com Send requests to homebrew-request@ hpfcmi.fc.hp.com [Please do not send me requests for back issues!] Archives are available from netlib at mthvax.cs.miami.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Dec 91 00:33:24 PST From: GARY MASON - I/V/V PCU - 603-884[DTN264]1503 25-Dec-1991 0333 <mason at habs11.ENET.dec.com> Subject: Auto Reply from Watch_Mail for 24-DEC-1991 05:33 to 29-DEC-1991 12:00 Hi - I will be on Christmas holidays through December 28, 1991. If your mail is related to the Image Partners Program, please send it to VISUAL::PARTNERS_IMG [Note: ALL mail for the Image Partners Program should ALWAYS be sent there.] If your mail is work related in some other way, and requires action before I return, please send it to Bob Milling at VISUAL::MILLING If you are a listserver or mailing list, and I have not added you to my exclusion file, please continue sending me things as usual I'll get you next time. Thanks...Gary Return to table of contents
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1991 20:11:57 -0500 From: "N. Zentena" <zen at utcs.utoronto.ca> Subject: Wyeast? Hi, Well with the local supplier finally getting Wyeast in to replace MeV I bought some yeast. Bavarian lager to be exact. Got it home and broke the inner bag. So far so good. Well tonight when I cut open the pouch to pitch the starter I notice that the inner bag is actually divide into two parts. One of which failed to burst. Is it normal to have the bag divided? I'm not worried because the whole package puffed up nice and quickly. But I'd still like to know. Nick Return to table of contents
Date: 26 Dec 91 09:30:00 EDT From: "DRCV06::GRAHAM" <graham%drcv06.decnet at drcvax.af.mil> Subject: Beer Hunter / pitching starters. Second thing first: I, also, have tried several different methods of pitching as to when and what to pitch. I've seen, rather, tasted, no detectable difference. I suppose this issue will be religious with some, but I think it really doesn't make much difference. I usually can't brew exactly when I wanted to, so the starter more often than not ferments out. Always seems to work just fine. Actually, I now usually do the yeast caking thing a la Fr. Barleywine. Beer Hunter: Wow! I am so underwhelmed I cannot believe it! I didn't see this series the first time it was on Discovery, so I tuned in Monday evening with great anticipation. What a pile of spent grain! Talk about bad signal to noise ratios, I think it was 100:1. Now, realize that I'm blind, so I'm reviewing this from a "talking" perspective, only. There was so little actual information that I thought I was watching [listening to] Wings. Tuesday's episode on British brewing was a total disaster to me. Sure, the real ale information was interesting, but so much about British brewing was not even mentioned. I thought that most of the half hour was completely wasted. Oh well, I'll stick to Jackson's books, they are far, far better. Dan Graham Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 91 06:58:10 PST From: Donald Oconnor <oconnor at chemistry.UCSC.EDU> Subject: Keep this crap to yourself Earlier this week I posted the info about a new brewers supply in Austin. I mentioned the owners name is Lynne O'Connor and at the end stated "She's a very nice lady and promised to sleep with me if I posted this." On Christmas Eve I received an email from Dr. John in New York who took "extreme umbrage" at this comment, suggested that I "keep this crap to myself" and that he/she would "prefer 50 Jack Schmidling Video ads to this kind of crap." I'm sorry if I offended anyone else in a similar manner but let me just offer in my defense that out here in the wild west, men generally do sleep with their wives on a regular basis. Perhaps this seems radical or anachronistic to high falutin' city slickers from the land of THE Donald, but it goes on without much comment out here in the wilds. Happy New Year, don o'connor Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 91 11:24:16 CST From: tony at spss.com (Tony Babinec) Subject: source for yeast culturing equipment Custom Lab Supply, Inc., is mentioned in the Zymurgy Special Yeast issue as a source of supplies. I inquired, and received the following price list from them. I do not work for them, and this is not an endorsement, but instead is merely information for you, the reader. Custom Lab Supply, Inc. 2127 Research Drive Livermore, CA 94550 415-449-4371 415-449-3459 fax culture tube 16 x 150 mm w/cap $1.30 petri dish plastic 15 x 100 mm each .55 petri dish plastic 15 x 100 mm pkg/20 13.50 petri dish glass 12 x 100 mm 4.15 ph test strips 0 - 14 pkg of 100 13.50 ph test strips 4 - 7 pkg of 100 13.50 ph test strips 0 - 6 pkg of 100 13.50 inoculating loop, plastic .20 bottle, gal amber glass w/cap 4.35 flask, erlenmeyer 250 ml 3.40 flask, erlenmeyer 1000 ml 6.85 flask, erl w/screw cap 250 ml 10.60 stopper, #6 to fit 250 ml flask .55 stopper, #9 to fit 1000 ml flask 1.90 test tubes, glass 10 x 75 mm .12 test tubes, glass 13 x 100 mm .15 test tubes, glass 16 x 100 mm .18 test tubes, glass 20 x 150 mm .30 isopropyl alcohol, pt 5.10 phosphoric acid, pt 20.95 lactic acid, pt 34.00 Not listed in their price sheet, but useful to know, is: agar, 1 oz 6.85 agar, 8 oz 19.00 I've had a hard time finding agar, and as I understand, you shouldn't just use any agar, so it's useful to know a source. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 91 11:38:56 -0600 From: lipkens at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Bart Lipkens) Subject: Homebrew subscription Hi, I would like to be on the subscription list of homebrew. My address is lipkens at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu Thanks Bart Return to table of contents
Date: 26 Dec 91 13:59:04 EST From: Jeff Frane <70670.2067 at compuserve.com> Subject: Hi! Krausen Frank Tutzauer asks about pitching yeast: Herewith the "Official" Wyeast stance on when to pitch! Fresh from the as-yet-not-quite-written pages of The Yeast Book. This also happens to coincide with my anecdotal evidence. You will get much more vigorous and rapid fermentation if you pitch at "high krausen", which is as Paul Farnsworth apparently described it in Zymurgy: "opaque". Sometime around 18 hours (give or take a few) after the last pitching, the yeast will be in their most useful phase. Think of it as your own biorhythm. Personally, I'm at my peak at about 9 a.m., and am the most willing then to begin projects, think, write, etc. At about 3 p.m., on the other hand, all I want to do is take a nap. Yeast cells are just like me, vigorous at some times and lazy as hell at others. The idea is to catch them at their figurative 9 a.m. I used to use the Dave Miller approach, assuming I was increasing my pitching volume, until Dave Logsdon cautioned me about pitching at high krausen. I listen to people once in a while, and tried it several days later. The difference in lag time was astonishing, and I strongly recommend it. In reference to Frank's second question: actually, even when the yeast is at high krausen there is a slurry. At least, that's been my personal experience. I bung in the entire thing, starter wort and all. I'm with Frank: there's no way that wort is going to affect the flavor the beer negatively, and there's no way I'm going to waste those little yeasties! Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 91 14:19:14 EST From: Jay Hersh <hersh at expo.lcs.mit.edu> Subject: pitching starters My approach is to try to pitch the yeast while still actively fermenting, either at high krausen, or just past. Of course this means I pitch the whole starter, not just the slurry. My thinking behind this is as follows. Since the starter was aerated, when the yeast in it is at high krausen, or just past, then it has finished consuming the dissolved oxygen and therefore is no longer reproducing. This means that the yeast population is at it's maximum (in the starter) and that the yeast are actively fermenting. Tossing this into the wort means that it will hit the wort in a ferment phase, so it will initially start to ferment the wort, thus laying down a blanket of CO2 over the wort. Upon discovering dissolved oxygen in the wort it will go back into a reproduction phase and reproduce until the supply of dissolved oxygen is used up, then they will switch back over to fermentation again. I think (and seem to observe) that this has a few benefits. I seem to get CO2 acticity from the airlock right away in the fermenter, indicating that the yeast are indeed laying down a CO2 blanket over the beer. I have very short times to high krausen (and associated blowoff) in the fermenter, usually less than 24 hours, often as little as 2-6 dependent upon yeast strain and pitching rate. I have sometimes pitched the starter before high krausen. The only difference I note here is that the time to krausen in the fermenter is usually longer. I assume this is because there was fewer yeast cells in the starter since it hadn't reached it's reproduction peak yet. So in summary I always pitch when active unless something happens to prevent my brewing at the planned time (pitching the slurry if it's not too long since vigorous fermentation ceased still works well), and I have always had good results. I don't think the timing of when to pitch is that incredibly critical, I think the critical factor is adding a large supply of healthy active yeast. JaH (learning to think like yeast :-) Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1991 14:56:59 -0500 From: hpfcmr.fc.hp.com!hplabs!uunet!bnr-vpa!bnr-rsc!crick (Bill Crick) Subject: Bottle fillers, grain mills Bottle fillers: I found them way too slow. They doubled bottling time. We just use a siphon, and a pinch clamp. After a few thousand bottles, you get real good a clamping suddenly just when the beer starts to race up the bottle neck. At least my wife has She has run the siphon on the bottling line for the last few thousand. She has also learned to transfer the tube from one bottle to the next without breaking the liquid in the tube, so she moves a full tube from one bottle to the next. Less air in the beer. Grain mills: I think the commercial mills use three sets of rollers to mimimize production of fine grist. The first rollers are spaced rather far apart, and anyhthing small enough after the first set, is screened out, and hence isn't recrushed. Only the stuff above spec goes to the second rollers which are closer together. Ditto for the third rollers. I also think they screen the real fine stuff out and don't use it for mashing? Bill Crick Brewius, Ergo Sum! Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 91 16:29:53 PST From: "Tom Childers" <TCHILDER at us.oracle.com> Subject: Precise Bottling/Automated Bottle Fillers (Let's see if I can get this post out THIS time]) In HBD 787, Dan Graham asks about an automatic bottle-filling device. What a great opportunity for some creative design/engineering work] Here are some thoughts. One approach would be to add some kind of sensor near the top of a bottling wand, right at the height that you want the beer level to reach in the bottle. The sensor would need to fit inside the mouth of the bottle, and have an adjustable height to work in a variety of bottle types. The sensor would either shut a valve in the wand, or turn off a pump that transfers the beer from the priming container to the wand. You might be able to construct a wand with an automatic cut-off valve. A small cylindrical float around the wand, connected to a valve in the upper part of the wand, should do the trick. Of course, the float height would have to be adjustable, to accomodate different sized bottles. Unfortunately, the float could stick while transferring some of the "meatier" brews, like the 1.148 leviathan mentioned a few issues ago... The second solution requires a friend with some electrical engineering background. Build a bottling wand driven by a small electric pump, then add two copper contacts to the wand at the desired fluid level. Connect these two contacts to a transistor/IC circuit that will switch off the pump when fluid comes in contact with the two pieces of copper. Circuits to sense a fluid contact are not hard to design, and are based on the principle that water-based solutions (like beer) are slightly conductive to electricity. The circuit would need to switch off the pump when the beer rises to the right level and causes a small electric current flow between the copper contacts. I'm pretty sure that there are circuit diagrams for this kind of thing in at least one of the electrical hobbyist books available from Howard W. Sams Publications. Radio Shack may have even had a kit for building one about 20 years ago. And someone with more electrical engineering background than I have should be able to design one without too much trouble. You ought to be able to build an "automatic electric bottling wand" for under $100. -tdc Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #790, 12/27/91 ************************************* -------
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