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From: lambic-request at lance.colostate.edu (subscription requests only - do not post here)
To: lambic at lance.colostate.edu
Subject: Lambic Digest #489 (November 19, 1994)
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 00:30:12 -0700
Lambic Digest #489 Sat 19 November 1994
Forum on Lambic Beers (and other Belgian beer styles)
Mike Sharp, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Wit yeasts (Ed Hitchcock)
Water Baths (John Ackerman)
Marriage in D.C. (Chris Lovelace)
Some SoB comments (Jim Busch)
A Ghost in the Machine (Todd Gierman)
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Phil Seitz' series on Brewing Belgian Beer is available; the index
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Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 12:57:45 -0400 (AST)
From: Ed Hitchcock <ehitchcock at sparc.uccb.ns.ca>
Subject: Wit yeasts
Jay Hersh talks about the Gouden Boum yeast and Unibroue yeast.
I have had excellent results using Unibroue yeast for wits, doubles and
triples. Get it fresh, you pay $1.50 (CAN) per bottle, you can drink the
bottle and get a healthy dose of fresh yeast. I have had bad luck with
the Blanche de Bruges yeast on the other hand. The yeast was not only
seriously contaminated, but also behaved very much like a lager yeast, I
assumed a bottling strain but now apparantly a mutation. I am pleased to
hear the the Wyeast Belgian White is in fact the Gouden Boum yeast, since
this is one of my personal favourite wits.
----------------
Ed Hitchcock, now on the right side of the student/staff division
ehitchcock at sparc.uccb.ns.ca
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 12:12:06 -0500
From: ackerman at skyler.mavd.honeywell.com (John Ackerman)
Subject: Water Baths
In #487 Andy wrote:
> The key to all this rambling is the convection
> properties of the water. I believe that I am keeping a
> narrower band of temperature fluctuation than even someone
> using a refrigerator. A high-alcohol beer is a very
> exothermic reaction. I've seen temperatures 9 deg F higher
> in a carboy than in the air temperature surrounding it in
> the refrigerator. Water strips away the extra heat
> immediately, thus keeping the beer at a more constant
> temperature. For all you people using refrigerators for
> fermentation, I'd suggest putting your carboy in a water
> bath inside your refrigerator and then putting the
> refrigerator's temperature probe into the water bath.
The water bath sounds like a good idea, but I'm not so sure about putting
the temperature probe in the water. There will be a time lag between the
fridge and bath temperatures that could cause the fridge temp to swing
well above and below the set point as it cycles on and off.
Would it work better to use a sizeable bath and leave the leave the probe
in the fridge air? Maybe keep an eye on the bath and occasionally adjust
the temp setting? OTOH it sounds like his system works fine for him, and
I'm just speculating.
John Ackerman
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 15:12:43 -0500
From: lovelace at pop.nih.gov (Chris Lovelace)
Subject: Marriage in D.C.
I've not been following the digest lately, so I'm not sure if this has been
mentioned (all my time has been sucked into the great black hole that is
graduate school!).
For all you D.C.-ites out there, Chevy Chase Wine & Liquor has just gotten
in some Boon Marriage Parfait Guezue and Kriek ($14.95 a bottle).
Apparently, they (or, more likely, the distributor) got screwed out of
getting any of the Framboise. Well, after all I've heard about these
beers, I'll take what I can get!
Chris LOVELACE at POP.NIH.GOV
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 17:35:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Jim Busch <busch at daacdev1.stx.com>
Subject: Some SoB comments
Well, its been one week from the SoB sessions and if I dont write
something down, I may forget most of it! (Just kidding).
Friday's technical sessions were well worth the price of admission
alone. Pierre started off with a entertaining discussion that was
of good practical interest to homebrewers. He made several points
about yeast growth and metabolism, and still prefers to "culture"
yeast from fresh bottles of Belgian beers. He did emphasize some
practical points about growth and testing/tasting of new cultures.
Much of this is well known to members of this digest, but Ill
summarize a few things. Smell & taste the starter wort & yeast
to get a rough idea of its character. Be sure to test it, by
fully fermenting some samples to determine its degree of attenuation
and its ester profile. He provided some tips concerning having
canned wort around for whenever he wants to grow a new culture,
and doing this in a small enough jar filled part way (1/3rd) with
wort so you can aeriate the sample and then grow it in the same
container. He provided some ideas about brewing beers, and what
I found a bit interesting is his techniques to move along a stuck
or slow ferment. Obviously, raise the temp. Pierre even noted
some stuck ferments he put on top of his frige as a method of
warming them up. Another trick is to introduce freshly aeriated
wort to the stuck ferment in the hopes that some extra oxygen will
aid the ferment. Im sure he said a lot more, but this what comes
to mind now.
Next up was Dan McConnell, the yeast doctor. Dan will no doubt
grace our forum with details of his presentation much better
than I can ever do. I will say I thought Dan did an excellent
job of forcing the technical subject matter. What I mean by this
is that I felt he challenged the audience to come up to the
subject matter as opposed to a simpler coverage of the topic. I
know Im not very good at chemistry and I found the coverage to
be challenging and informative. Metabolic pathways and factors
that influence Belgian brewing was covered very well, including
esters and higher alcohols. And if judges get comments about
"Goat" esters, blaim Dan!
Next was Phillipe Perpette of the Univ. of Louvain-a-Neuve. I
felt Phillipe had a well thought out coverage of refermentation
in Belgian ales but he suffered somewhat from a combination of
language (he is a rather soft spoken gentleman) and the tendancy
to speak very fast in a nonnative tounge. Some of his graphics
were interesting and if the transcripts are published, it would
be good to have some of the technical matter translated into
English. Im sure I could learn much from reading Phillipe's
seminar at a pace where I could ponder some of the implicatiions.
After this, Eric Toft spoke for quite awhile. Eric holds a
Diplom Braumeister from Weihenstpehan in Freising. I first met
Eric during my first trip to the continent in 91, when he was
just completing his studies/exams. Eric is a big american, born
in Wyoming, but he looks a lot like a German. Eric is one of the
all around nicest people Ive met and can drink anyone under the
table (Ive seen it!). He was out at my brewery for happy hours
the night before the talk and we sampled several of my beers,
and I then sent him on to the Baltimore Brewing Co with a 22oz
wheat glass full of 7.5% Belgian ale that I brewed last spring.
His girlfriend, Effie, is also a Diplom Braumeister candidate
who can drink almost as much as Eric. She too left with a
large glass of Belgian ale. Eric went on to enjoy Baltimore,
where he contracted the "Doppelbock flu". Baltimores Doppel
can do that. So this brought us back to the sessions, where
with the aid of Tim Artz's excellent Pils, he was able to give
a personal account of Belgian brewing at La Mot (Mott?), in
Mechelin (I probably butchered both of these, sue me). Eric
covered many aspects of brewing in general and of ingredients.
He began with raw grains, the normal assortment and adjuncts
corn and rice. Typical mash bills were presented for a
Pils and other beers, Ill get my sheet and type some in over
the next week or so. The use of maize in some form was
emphasized as crucial to the proper body in Pils and other
beers, including stronger ones. A lot was made of the
industrial sugar E-150, which comes in several colors.
This is a sugar product that is composed of wort similar sugars,
in roughly similar percentages as can be found in wort. The
idea being to allow large quantities of sugar to be used but
not adversly affecting fermentation. Apparently E-150 is
a key ingrediant to many Belgian ales. Often very dark ales
contain little to no caramel malts and obtain the coloring
from E-150. Some tips I learned, store the bitter and sweet
orange peels in the freezer, and pulverize them before use.
He suggested the amount of up to .5 g/L to get a feel for a
recipe. Maybe I was the only one who didnt pulverize his orange
peels, but now I think I can cut back my sweet orange amount
from 1g/L to closer to .5. Eric provided many useful mash
programs, and I will try to cover more on this in the future.
(One program is a Wit multistep process that I have used quite
successfully and we all basically know the secret to this one
by now). One of the more amusing anecdotes came from this section
of his talk where he lambasted the German barley growers for
producing barley that results in overmodified malt! He even
said that German brewers have to dough in mush warmer than
before or they get beers with zero head retention. Ah, progress!
Ill stop here, because Im beginning to ramble and its Friday at
5PM and some strong ales are calling me. Ill try to sit down
with some of Erics notes and present a more concise coverage
of his talk. Since the notes do not contain a lot of text, other
SoBers should be sure to correct me if I botch something.
Thanks again to all involved, Tim Artz who was a hell of a sport
at 2;30 AM when we were *still* drinking in his room, Charlie
Gow, who should have gone lighter on the Brugge Tripple the
first nite so he would have made it past 9PM, and of course
Phil Seitz, who has really expanded and furthured my appreciation
of the Belgian brewing art and who has been kind enough to let
me tag along in his Belgian quests. Im ready to go back!
Jim Busch
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 22:08:42 -0500 (EST)
From: tmg at galactose.mc.duke.edu (Todd Gierman)
Subject: A Ghost in the Machine
First off, thanks to Jay Hersch for the insights into fermentations at
Gouden Boom. I can't remember what it was that Spencer had said, but it
must have set off bells in my head too, because last night I opened the
CAMRA Belgium guide and looked at Gouden Boom products wondering which ones
might use the witbier yeast. I did the same for Huyghe products figuring
that the Blanche de Neiges yeast might be used for other ferments (La
Guillotine? Delerium Tremens?). Large scale yeast culture/production is
not without its complexities and one would think that breweries might
want to limit the number of strains that they use. So, a very useful
question the next time you find yourself on a brewery tour in Belgium
might be "How many different yeasts do you use?"
My header "Ghost in the Machine" refers to the discussions concerning
Brettanomyces in non-lambic brews. Maybe I should have called it
"Maxwell's Demon" - a sort of fudge factor to which all bizarre and
unidentifiable characteristics can be attributed. Anyway, thanks to
Spencer Thomas I have received LDs #481-482 (my own copies must still be
bouncing around cyberspace). I figured that I had missed out on the end
of that discussion and would like to make a few comments concerning some
of the very good information that was brought up in those issues.
Quoting Jim Busch by way of Rick Garvin:
>> I think it is safe to say that Brett. plays some roll in the Orval
>> character, but I feel it is a misnomer to characterize this as a
>> primary fermentation strain (which Al probably did not mean). If I had
>> to bet on it, I would surmise that the actual fermentation is completed
>> using the complex blend of Saac. yeasts, and the Brett is only introduced
>> into the still beer at a very late stage.
>>
I guess that we don't really know where it comes in, but if we pick
through some of the information that is out there, I think that it
probably comes in at the secondary stage (and/or bottling as was alluded to).
What Jackson says is probably a little off (maybe he received some
disinformation from those trying to maintain a trade secret):
its characterful acidity comes from its own single cell yeast
in its primary and secondary fermentations and a blend of four
or five bottom cultures in a slow bottle conditioning.
Here are my points of contention:
1) an "acid yeast" is not S. cerevisiae. I know that this might
generate some argument, but go to the taxonomy; acid production is
characteristic of very few yeasts. Two of them found in the brewing
environment are Brettanomyces sp. and Kloeckera sp. I think that we can
eliminate Kloeckera here.
2) I agree with Jim, Brett probably comes later, following an S.
cerevisiae primary.
Jackson goes on to say:
Its secondary fermentation lasts for five to seven weeks,
at a relatively warm temperature around 15C (60F). Its bottle
conditioning, regarded by the brewery as a third fermentation,
lasts for two months, again at warm temperatures.
3) The time frame and temperatures would appear to favor Brett.
4) Rajotte also cites a similar time frame, but is more explicit:
Some brewers (such as the brewers of Trappist Orval) use
two distinctive yeast strains in their process. The main
fermentation is accomplished in a climate-controlled room.
When primary fermentation is over, the beer is transferred
to large aging tanks. There, a second yeast of wild ancestory
is added. The beer stays in the aging cellar for one month with
this new yeast, which gives it a particular taste and aroma. (etc.)
Rajotte clearly knows that it is Brettanomyces but probably doesn't want
to step on toes.
5) Concerning top- and bottom-fermenting strains: I think that the
bottom strain thing is all part of the myth. Although I have not picked
every colony on the plate and tested them, I think that they are pretty
much of one strain (in addition to the Brett). Basically, you have an
average (smelling) Belgian strain. I suspect that it is a top-fermenter.
Rob Thomas, in the course of giving some excellent background info, says:
>Anyway, back to Brett. Guinness uses a couple of strains of Brett. in their
>product.
Hmm... Jackson always suspected a lactic ferment. However, Custers
isolated Brett for his thesis work from a bottle of "Dublin Stout."
>The mild to
>nonexistent CO2 production I also take to be a sign of Brett.
Probably, perceived as mild to non-existant because of the slow
fermentation. Certanily Brett will produce CO2 as well as any
fermentative species. Grow some Brett in yeast extract and glucose and
you'll get some vigorous bubbling when disturbed.
>Finally, the typical mash procedures of the 1820's called for very high
>temperatures (often initially ca. 70 deg C) which Harrison seems to ignore
>completely in his formulations. In defence of this I'd have to suggest that
>without Brett. (which Harrison doesn't mention using) these beers brewed
>authentically would have been very starchy and unclear.
Can you say "lambic". I've frequently wondered about this relationship
vis a vis lambic production. That is, it was probably Brettanomyces that
made lambics drinkable considering the mashing procedure. Ironically,
the procedure is maintained, or so we are led to believe, specifically to
encourage Brett character.
Rick Garvin relates an SOB experience:
>Conversations with a certain SoB speaker and brewing scientist confirm
>that Orval is bottled with S cerevesiae, Brett and dosage. He said that
>this was a big trade secret. We tasted the Orval together and talked
>about its complexity. He mentioned that in Belgium you had to be careful
>to get a good "packet" of Orval and that it was very variable. So, we
>cannot blame that on travel.
It's funny because I have two bottle cultures from Orval. The first one
was purchased locally by a colleague who handed me the dregs in a test
tube (I'll come back to this). The second was sent to me by Dan
McConnell in a beer swap and this one was brought back from Belgium. Dan
suggested that I might be able to culture the primary fermenter from it
(being "fresh" as it was). Ironically, the only thing that grew out of
it was Brett. Anyway, back to the first culture, which yielded
everything. When the guy handed me the dregs and I asked him how it
tasted, he screwed up his face and said, "I didn't like it. It tasted
like band-aids."
Well, apparently some Brettanomyces/Dekkera species are capable of
producing the volatile phenols 4-ethyl guaicol (clove or spice-like) and
4-ethyl phenol (smokey, medicinal). However, some people just think that
it tastes "greasy." :-)
Okay, this was long enough. Thanks for the continued discussion on this
subject. Oh, yes, and since Chris who brews the De Dolle products is so
approachable (my understanding anyway), somebody should ask him at the
next opportunity what it is that he thinks that Brettanomyces does for
his Stille Nacht and Oerbier ;-)
Todd
------------------------------
End of Lambic Digest
************************
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