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HOMEBREW Digest #0066
HOMEBREW Digest #66 Fri 03 February 1989
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Re: Filtering my Brew (Michael Bergman)
filtering (Jay Hersh)
Re: PLEASE READ THIS (MARK)
Filtering my Brew (John F Stoffel)
A New Brew.... (Jim Haselmaier)
Bitland Brewers ("Lance "Gray Goo" Smith")
National Competition Rules (outline) (hplabs!amdahl!uunet!ingr!tesla!steve)
Send submissions to homebrew%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
Send requests to homebrew-request%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 10:32:24 est
From: Michael Bergman <bergman%odin.m2c.org@RELAY.CS.NET>
Subject: Re: Filtering my Brew
The method recently mentioned for clearing your brew without filters,
siphoning from the primary fermentation vessel to a secondary vessel,
and later repeating the process, is used with mead as well (and I
think also for wines, but am not sure). It's called (in my circles,
anyway) racking, and I have seen recipes that recomend doing it 4-5
times. You lose a fair bit of product but the remainder can be very
clear. If the strain of yeast you're using works either in suspension
or on the surface, you won't lose any live yeast, just the dead stuff.
--mike bergman@m2c.org
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 11:13:43 EST
From: jhersh@rdrc.rpi.edu (Jay Hersh)
Subject: filtering
Someone said something about not being able to naturally condition your beer
if you filter. Nonsense. For commercial brewers who filter they naturally
condition their beer first, then filter on the way into the bottle or keg.
This allows them to "cold filter" the cold conditioned beer. After all the
filter won't remove the CO2 which is dissolved into the beer. I don't
know how common it is to do this but it is done.
Did someone recently ask a question regarding esters in hops???
Do hops have esters??? It was my belief that esters are the chemical
substances responsible for fruit flavors and aromas. These are certainly
present in flowers of fruit plants, but are they also present in hops??
I had believed that any esters in beer were derived via yeast metabolism.
Mike Fertsch had recently asked about Big Brewer Blowoff and I'm not sure if
my theory as to how they handle this ever got onto the digest so here it goes
again.
1) Think about the ratio of krauesen to wort volume. For big brewers,
depending upon the type of fermenting vessel and yeast (conical has less
ooops vertical cylindrical has less surface area than sideways cylindrical,
lager yeast produces less foam up than ale yeast)
the quantity of krausen to beer volume will be different than for homebrewers.
2) Big brewers add a much larger quantity of yeast per volume of beer
(what I refer to as a critical quantity) than do homebrewers. Homebrewers
rely upon the aerobic fermentation cycle which produces much more energy
for the yeast since it uses a different chemical process to acheive
feremntation. This extra energy is plowed back into reproduction.
I believe it is this different fermentation pathway that is responsible for
the different blowoff by products. I don't thin k that commercial
brewers aerate their wort to the extent that homebrewers do or rely upon
the wort to serve as a media for yeast reproduction to the extent that
homebrewers do.
Anaerobic fermentation is a different process and will also result in yeast
reproduction but to a lesser degree. I believe that the different fermentation
pathway yields fewer of the nasty alcohol by products that aerobic
fermentation generates.
As a last note I also believe that many of these by products are only partial
fermentation products and as such can still be metabolised later on to
be converted from "higher" alcohols to ethyl alcohol in order to release
energy.
Much of this information has been garnered from collections of papers by
European breweries such as BASS and Carlsberg which are present here in
our library. Many of these papers are intended for microbiologists and
since my biology and chemistry background is limited, I only derived
limited knowledge. I would suggest a visit to your local college library
to check various books on yeast. This is a move for the ambitious as much
of what you find may be way over your head, but as they say you can't
learn to swim in a puddle. I will attempt to relocate the books that I
had previously read in order to provide a bibliography. It may take me some
time to get to this since the world has beaten a path to my door lately
and I have yet to finish the better mousetrap.
- jay h
yeast make great pets. I keep them in a five gallon carbouy shaped aquarium
and all I have to do is feed them some malt extract from time to time.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 12:24 EST
From: MARK <GRYSKA@cs.umass.EDU>
Subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS
hplabs!harvard!ima!wang7!klm writes:
>I would like to add a bit of Dextrin (non-fermentable sugar) to my
>priming mix at bottling time in an attempt to sweeten the beer, add
>a bit more 'body' and balance out the roasted flavor.
I've used malto-dextrine powder in a couple of batches, each time I
added it to the kettle. In one case I used ~2 ounces (1/4c.) in a 5
gallon batch and ended up with a fairly sweet beer. My advice would be
to go easy.
Perhaps the best way to judge the correct amount would be to remove a
sample from the secondary and measure it out into small containers. Add
a small amount to each container, increasing the amount added to each
sample. Taste the samples and find the one suits your tastebuds. Scale
up the amount of malto-dextrine based on the quantity in that sample.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1) Malto-dextrine is some combination of fermentable and
unfermentable sugars, adjust the amount based on this
percentage.
2) You should be able to figure out a reasonable range based
on recipes that use malto-dextrine and advice from fellow
homebrewers/homebrewsters.
3) The quantities involved are fairly small, figure out
the best way to ACCURATELY measure these quantities
given your equipment and be precise.
4) Relax, Don't Worry! Brewing is fun.
On the technical side of things a couple of questions pop to my
mind. Do some sugars taste sweeter than other sugars? Is there some
way to account for this in this type of procedure?
By all means, let us know what you ended up doing with the beer and
the results. Good Luck!
- mg
Mark Gryska gryska@cs.umass.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 13:44:29 est
From: John F Stoffel <john%wpi.wpi.edu@RELAY.CS.NET>
Subject: Filtering my Brew
Dr. T,
When you siphon the beer back and forth, do you use any sort
of filter on your siphon? If so, what exactly is it? THanks for your
help.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Boy... what we have here is a failure to communicate!
- Warden of "Cool Hand Luke"
John Stoffel
BITNET John@wpi.bitnet
INTERNET john@wpi.wpi.edu
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 12:20:44 mst
From: Jim Haselmaier <jimh@hpfcspm>
Subject: A New Brew....
Full-Name: Jim Haselmaier
[Oh....I'm stepping into some unchartered waters. We'll see if I get
laughed off the net...]
I've decided to try a batch of pop ('soda' for you Easterners...).
Yesterday I bought some Ginger Ale extract. The standard recipe calls
for cane sugar, extract, water and champagne yeast. A fellow brewser
told me that only a small portion of cane sugar is fermentable. So it
seems that the yeast would gobble up the (small) number of fermentables
to give a little carbonation. But leave a bunch left over for the
traditional sweet taste of pop.
One of the recipe variations that came with the extract is to substitute
honey in place of cane sugar. They say that honey is sweeter than
regular sugar; so use less. But from my beer experiences I recall that
honey is EXTREMELY fermentable. Is there a possibility that fermentable
honey in the brew could lead to breaking bottles? It seems that those
yeasties would gobble all that sweet stuff up and burst the bottles.
Or is it that, since there aren't many nutrients for the yeast to
survive in, the yeasties will die off quickly?
Any comments?
Jim Haselmaier
jimh@hpfcspm.HP.COM
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 13:34:23 CDT
From: "Lance "Gray Goo" Smith" <lsmith@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Subject: Bitland Brewers
I was thinking that since we have our own "news letter" we should at least
have an organization to go with it. Therefore I propose the formation of
the Bitland Brewers, the first homebrew society that will never meet (we
can include it in our constitution.)
"Well, what's the purpose?" you ask. As I see it there really is no purpose
to it. It's one of those nebulous societies that exists for its own sake.
You join when you request the newsletter and you remain a member for life
(unless another member sees you swilling Corona/Bud/Your Least Favorite
Beer). Of course, if some misguided individuals were to enter the AHA
homebrew competition and take best of show...
At some point I would be willing to design a T-shirt and have some
printed up. I also might be talked into having cheesey membership
cards made up and everyone can have their own high sounding title
(Primary Fermentor, First Wrangler, Lord High Executioner...). Let
me know what you think. Please don't bother Rob!
E-mail interests and suggestions to lsmith@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu.
Lance "It's 10 below outside and I don't wanna go home" Smith
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 16:21:05 -0800
From: sco!arthure@ucscc.UCSC.EDU
>
> Date: Mon, 30 Jan 89 15:00:08 EST
> From: jhersh@rdrc.rpi.edu (Jay Hersh)
> Subject: blowoff
>
>
> Mike Fertsch was wondering why big brewers don't use blowoff. I think he
> or someone else indicated that at least one of them does. I was pondering
> this question with the people at catamount a few months ago they didn't know
> eihter but I think I have now realized the answer.
Many commercial brewers ferment in open containers.
Since the environment of the brewery can be controlled
more easily than that of the kitchen cabinet or closet
in which homebrewers may ferment their beer, they can
use open fermentation vessels, meaning they can skim
the scum off the top.
> What do homebrewers typically do that commercial brewers typically don't.
> Aerate the wort!
> When wort is aerated there is lots of free oxygen in solution in it.
> For those of you who have been studying yeast metabolism, something I
> have been looking into a lot lately.
> Aerobic fermentation, where free oxygen is utilized, occurs via a
> different chemical reduction process than anaerobic fermentation.
> It yields far more energy than anaerobic fermentation does, allowing
> the yeast to reporduce more rapidly. Since it uses a different reduction
> mechanism it produces different fermentation by-products, many of these
> the "higher alcohols" like fusel alcohol.
I don't know about not aerating the wort; the local
brew pub seems to do so, and I'd been lead to believe
it was important to the growth of the yeast.
As far as the gunk goes, Charlie Papazian talks about
"fusel oils" and hop resins and seems to believe that
the undesireable elements are from the hops, not from
fermentation. He may be mistaken about some of these
ideas, but it seems unlikely he would call something
an oil if it were an alcohol.
not a biologist,
-arthur
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 89 8:09:45 CST
From: hpfcla!hplabs!amdahl!uunet!ingr!tesla!steve
Subject: National Competition Rules (outline)
Full-Name:
Mike writes:
> From: Mike Fertsch <hplabs!uiucdcs!meccad.RAY.COM!FERTSCH>
> Subject: AHA National Competition Rumors
>
> This year's AHA Conference and Competition will be held in Fort Mitchell,
> KY during the week of June 7-10. I've been told that the logistics for the
> competition will be different from previous years. Here's what I heard:
> [ text deleted ]
> Please note that the AHA has not announced dates or confirmed these rumors
I got a full set of rules, entry forms etc. mailed to our club address over
a month ago. Here are the highlights. Entry fee is $6.50 for AHA members,
$8.50 for non-members (per entry). Preliminary round judging will be done
in Boulder, CO, and entries must be recieved by 5 PM April 25. Entries for
the first round will consist of ONE 12-14 oz brown or green bottle, no grolsch
type bottles. Judging will take place in two rounds. In the first
round, each judge will score 5 to 10 entries in one class or subcategory,
selecting the best three. The second round consists of all beers selected in
the first round. In this round a group of judges scores each beer in one
class. The winner in each class is then judged by a group of the most
experienced judges for the best of show. Some entries eliminated in the first
round may be judged by only one judge. First round judging will be conducted
April 25 to May 15 in Boulder, CO. All entrants qualifying for second round
judging will be notified by first classs mail during the week of May 15 and
will be requested and instructed on how, what, when, and where to send two
additional bottles for judging. Final (second round) judging and Best of Show
will be conducted June 7 and 8 during the Conference at the Oldenberg brewery
in Ft. Mitchell, Ky. There is a note the two bottles will be required for
final judging for all categories except pale ales, which will require three.
I am sure you can get a copy of this for asking. At the bottom it says:
"Any questions about the competition regulations, procedures, awards, etc.
should be directed to:"
David Welker, Director
AHA 1989 National Competition
American Homebrewers Association
Box 287
Boulder, CO 80306-0287
(303)447-0816
Steve Conklin uunet!ingr!tesla!steve
Intergraph Corp. tesla!steve@ingr.com
Huntsville, AL 35807 (205) 772-4013
Relax! Don't worry. Have a homebrew.
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End of HOMEBREW Digest
