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HOMEBREW Digest #0206
HOMEBREW Digest #206 Fri 21 July 1989
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Champagne Bottles (Steve Anthony)
2 liter soda bottles (Ihor W. Slabicky)
Kit Yeasts - Who Makes Them? (Marc San Soucie)
Bye bye (Peter Klausler)
which cider you on? (Dick Dunn)
lager, plastic, cider (Donald P Perley)
about two-liter bottles (MANSFIEL)
Re: Re: Lager question (florianb)
bigger bottles (Dick Dunn)
Send submissions to homebrew%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
Send requests to homebrew-request%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 89 10:34:29 EDT
From: Steve Anthony <steveo@Think.COM>
Subject: Champagne Bottles
Chuck Ferguson writes:
>I have heard it is feasible to bottle in champagne bottles. Some
>champagne bottles have a lip on them that will accept a bottle cap and
>some bottle cappers are high enough to cap a champagne bottle.
>Unfortunately, I was not able to lay my hands on a suitable supply of
>empty champagne bottles and I had no desire to drink sufficient
>quantities of champagne to collect my own supply.
You can get a supply of champagne bottles by going to New Years Eve
parties, weddings, etc... and asking for the empties. Over a few years,
I've garnered about 4 cases of the things. You do have to be carefull, as
some of the bottles have the wrong size mouth. Bring a bottle cap to check.
The black frosted bottles are definitely the wrong size. It's a pleasure
to get some Dom Perignon bottles and sip the champagne and then at a later
date sip your own homebrew from the same bottle.
With regard to capping, I've tried regular caps, but haven't been able to
get a good seal. So I'm switching to the plastic champagne caps (reuseabe)
and the wire holders (not reuseable, but cheap & biodegradeable).
Another advantage is that the quantity of bottles to be washed is lower per
batch. Finally, the amount of brew in each bottle is perfect... a pint for
me and a half-pint for my wife.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 89 10:37:26 EDT
From: iws@rayssdb.RAY.COM (Ihor W. Slabicky)
Subject: 2 liter soda bottles
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 89 12:57:45 EDT
From: ferguson%X102C@HARRIS-ATD.COM (ferguson ct 71078)
Subject: Bottling in 2 Liter Pop Bottles
Has anyone else tried bottling in 2 liter bottles that can confirm my
findings or warn of possible hazards? Does anyone have any data on
the rupture strength of 12oz. glass beer bottles?
My only concern would be about the alcohol in the brew leaching some of
the plastics out from the bottle. Yes, some liquors are bottled
in plastic - wines, too. I'd go with those types of plastic bottles
rather than the soda bottles since they are made to hold alcohol.
This is based on what I have read in Packaging magazine, which covers
all sorts of packaging stuff, including the use of plastic bottles for
wine, beer, and alcohol. I do not recall any specific plastic types
which should be used or not used. You may be completely safe, since
your brew stays in the bottle for a relatively short time.
Most plastic bottles (like the 2 liter plastic sode bottles) are made
from layers of various materials, to give them strength and to make
them less porous to gas pass through. If you keep soda in a plastic
bottle for a year or so - it'll go flat. Soda in glass bottles keeps
it's carbonation for a long time. I would recommend that you get
nice, clean, undented, and unscratched plastic bottles for your brews.
You might try a local bottling plant and buy some of their empties
before they ever fill them. The other thing to remember is that the
cap is made of aluminum and screws on. The threads may wear out and
deform after some time. This may not be noticable to you, but the
bottle will not hold the carbonation. Switch to fresh caps even
if you don't switch bottles that often to prevent this.
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jul 89 11:06:31 EDT (Thu)
From: mds@wang.WANG.COM (Marc San Soucie)
Subject: Kit Yeasts - Who Makes Them?
Here's an interesting one for you that I just stumbled over. I haven't done
much kit brewing, preferring to slop together my own recipes from relatively
raw materials (extracts and stuff), but lately I've been trying out some
kits in order to try their malts. Recent purchases have included Dogbolter,
Bierkeller (unhopped), Kwoffit Bitter, Telford's Nut Brown Ale, and others
that I cannot recall. In each instance the kit was accompanied by a cute little
packet of dried yeast. Some are packed in papered foil, others in foil, others
in plastic.
I have had some excellent beers made from some of these kits, notably the
Dogbolter and Kwoffit, and in each instance it struck me that the yeast was
exuding particularly fine aromas as it worked. This led me to think that some
cheap culturing would allow me to use one of these fine yeasts in a scratch
batch, producing a superior batch of beer. This in turn led me to my local
homebrew supply shop, the newly redecorated Beer And Wine Hobby in Woburn,
where I expressed my satisfaction with the Dogbolter yeast to Karin Baker,
the proprietor.
Karin, in her rather inimitable fashion, twinkled her eyes and let out a
quick chuckle, then proceeded to laugh outright, after which she said,
"Well, I'll let you in on a little secret...", whereupon she informed me
and my friend that Dogbolter yeast is actually Edme yeast, repackaged for
Dogbolter. Me being slow to catch on, I asked "How about Kwoffit?" She said,
"Same there", and with a sweep of her hand toward her racks of malt extracts,
said "Almost all of those yeasts are Edme. They package most of the kits for
the malters."
She was most amused, and I was most surprised. I have had good luck with Edme
yeast in the past, but I certainly didn't expect this. Could it in fact be the
case that special aromas and flavors were the result of malt flavors, hops,
and/or temperature exclusively, that yeast was not a factor?
I am still rather amazed by this turn of fact. Or is it mere supposition?
Has someone pulled wool over Karin's eyes as well? Are there further facts
out there to reinforce either side of this question? Let us hear...
Marc San Soucie
The John Smallbrewers
Massachusetts
mds@wang.wang.com -or- uunet!wang!mds
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 89 10:41:17 CDT
From: pmk@bedlam.cray.com (Peter Klausler)
Subject: Bye bye
I am moving from Cray Research in Minnesota to Cray Computer in Colorado.
Please remove my subscription to the homebrew digest, until we get some
e-mail connections established at my new job.
I'd ask for recommendations for pubs and supply shops in Colorado, but
tomorrow's my last day in the office and I don't think responses would
make it here in time. So, instead, I'll just bid you all farewell; thanks
for the great brewing information.
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jul 89 07:47:15 MDT (Thu)
From: hplabs!utah-cs!cs.utexas.edu!raven!rcd (Dick Dunn)
Subject: which cider you on?
The discussion about corn/table sugar -> cidery taste reminds me of a talk
at an AHA conference a number of years ago. In that talk, Michael Lewis
(UC Davis) asserted that using ordinary table sugar in a beer did *not*
cause a cidery taste. They had done some careful brews and blind tests.
His conjecture was that "cidery taste" was folklore, aided by the
difficulty of reproducing taste-test results when there's a significant
time lag between them. Beers brewed with a lot of table sugar had less
body, of course.
I'd add to that the fact that a lighter beer is less able to mask any
contamination or off-taste.
So...has anyone followed this thread of reasoning since then? I don't
really recall how long ago this was, but it has to be at least five years.
The myth/fact of cidery taste remains as healthy as it's ever been...so
have we gained some information (somehow refuting what Lewis said then) or
lost some information?
---
Dick Dunn {ncar;ico;stcvax}!raven!rcd (303)494-0965
or rcd@raven.uucp
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 89 13:39:48 EDT
From: perley@glacier.crd.ge.com (Donald P Perley)
Subject: lager, plastic, cider
>
>What would you recommend--bottling or further aging in the carboy?
>Thanks.
>
>[Florian Bell, Boonesborough, Oregon]
If what you want is a lager, then age it. Eckharts "Treatise on Lager
Beer" (or something like that) has a table of reccommended lagering
times vs temperature. In short it says: colder = longer. If you are
sure fermentation is complete, you can cap the lock to keep oxygen
from diffusing in.
re: plastic soda bottles
I always do at least a few on batches that I don't keg. As well as checking
carbonation, they are better for taking "off site" because of the bigger size,
and I don't mind as mutch if I don't get them back.
Remember to keep them in the dark, even more than regular beer bottles.
The caps will gradually wear, and won't seal as well after too many uses. Either
rotate them out of your inventory as you drink more soda, or your homebrew shop
should be able to get new caps. (or get an odd reputation for begging screw soda
caps from your friends.)
re: cider
>What is required for cider brewing in terms of equipment and
>ingredients? Are there any good books on the subject? Finally,
>does anyone know any good recipes for Cider?
Garden Way puts out a good book on making hard cider, a mix of
history and technique, it is a couple hundred pages.
As far as equipment, if you have a good set of brewing equipment
that should be most of it. An titration acidity test kit will help
($5-$10 at a winemaking shop), and a press if you are starting from
apples instead of sweet cider.
If you have a choice, get or make the sweet cider with a good percentage
(around 1/3) of crab apples, and avoid the desert type apples (mac, red
delicious) in favor of ones with stronger flavor.
The simplest thing you can do is pasteurize the cider (170 F for 10 minutes),
add sugar (cane) to get OG ~ 1.080 (it will probably start around 1.045-50, so
roughly a 5 lb bag per 5 gallon batch). Use champaigne yeast and proceed just
as if it was beer. I reccoment a 2 stage ferment. This will give a dry sparkling
cider. semi-dry to semi-sweet is trickier, especially with commercially grown apples.
-don perley
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 89 12:23 EDT
From: MANSFIEL@ECS.UMASS.EDU
Subject: about two-liter bottles
Two-liter soda bottles are made of polyethylene-terephthalate (PET). This
material is permeable to both carbon dioxide and oxygen. If beer (or Coke for
that matter) is stored in PET for any length of time longer than, say, a month
or so the beer will lose its carbonation and will become oxidized. If you
have ever seen coke in 2-liter bottles on sale real cheap it's possible that
it has been around awhile and is on the flat side.
As for the "rupture strength" of glass bottles, there is not a simple answer.
Glass has reasonably good tensile strength, but it is a brittle material and
fracture machanics are a very important consideration. Imperfections in any
material such as scratches, voids, cracks, etc. can dramatically increase the
stresses in the material in the vacinity of the flaw. The more brittle a
material is, the more dramatic these increases in local stresses can be. As
a result, the amount of pressure a glass bottle can hold depends on depends
on the flaws in the bottle as much as it depends on the tensile strength of the
glass.
It should be noted that when one uses glass for bottling that only containers
designed to hold pressurized contents (beer, soda, champagne, etc) should be
used.
Personally, I prefer to use new (unscratched) bar-type brown glass bottles.
The brown glass isn't any stronger, but it prevents at least some amount of
light from getting to the beer. Though it is unlikely that scratches on the
surface of the bottles are goingto cause problems under normal circumstances,
using unscratched bottles may provide a larger margin for error in case of
accidental overpriming or contamination at the time of bottling.
Todd Mansfield
Univ. of Massachusetts
MANSFIEL@UMAECS
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jul 89 13:22:10 PDT (Thu)
From: florianb@tekred.cna.tek.com
Subject: Re: Re: Lager question
So I have had two replies to the bottle-or-not lager question, one
advising immediate bottling and the other advising aging for a month
minimum. Although the sg is where I expect the final sg to be, the
bubbles are continuing to come at a rate above what I usually get
for brews ready to bottle. Therefore, I will let it sit in the
carboy for a couple more weeks at least.
John Polstra advised...
>Hey, Florian . . . throw out that s**t. Buy a liquid yeast, *any*
>liquid yeast. You'll never regret it. The complete absence of "crud"
Yes, I plan to go to liquid yeast and propagate it, just as soon as
I finish remodelling the kitchen, change the grease in my transmission,
split up all the firewood for winter, finish with the landscaping, etc
and so on and so on. Just too many hobbies...
On the question of 2-liter bottles, I think I mentioned in a digest
about a zillion issues back that a friend of mine bottles in those
things. He demonstrated their robustness by throwing a pressurized
bottle up into the air and letting it crash down on the pavement without
exploding. He also mentioned having thrown one out of a speeding car...
They are probably good for withstanding the pressure. The other questions
have to do with light spoilage and leaching of the plastic. It looks
kind of strange, too, when one puts beer into a soft drink bottle.
Hey, now that we are on the subject, can't soft drink glass bottles
withstand the pressure of beer? How could one get a bottle any thicker
than a Pepsi bottle?
[Florian Bell, Boonesborough, Oregon]
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jul 89 08:26:40 MDT (Thu)
From: hplabs!utah-cs!cs.utexas.edu!raven!rcd (Dick Dunn)
Subject: bigger bottles
> I have heard it is feasible to bottle in champagne bottles.
Strictly, nit-pick-ily, no. It's possible to bottle in American sparkling
wine bottles, but not Champagne bottles...
>...Some
> champagne bottles have a lip on them that will accept a bottle cap and
> some bottle cappers are high enough to cap a champagne bottle.
Almost all sparkling wine bottles have a crown-cap rim. In principle, this
is because good sparkling wine (made in the "methode Champenoise") finishes
fermentation in the bottle with a metal crown cap on it. The last stage of
preparation has slowly inverted the bottle to bring the yeast to the cap.
The neck of the bottle is frozen, the bottle is brought upright and opened,
the carbonation ejects a plug of frozen wine with the sediment, and the
bottle is corked and wired. But I digress...
So there's a reason for the crown-cap rim on some bottles. Bulk-fermented
sparkling wines ("Charmat" process) don't go through the riddling/disgorging
process, but they all seem to have the same style of rim anyway.
The catch is that Champagne bottles...in fact, all foreign bottles...use a
larger rim than American bottles. It is just barely possible to cap the
foreign bottles with normal caps with some cappers--BUT it is also
possible to crack the rim and drop a piece into a bottle while you're
bottling! So I recommend sticking to the American ones. If you're not
sure, just compare to a beer bottle.
This suggests a good source of sparkling wine bottles: Find a restaurant
that serves a "champagne brunch" (usu Sun) and make arrangements with them
to pick up their bottles. You may need to offer the help a couple of
bottles of homebrew, and be sure you show up to get the bottles if they
agree to save them, but you should be able to get enough bottles for a lot
of beer in just a couple of Sundays.
Certainly the bottles are all strong enough for beer; sparkling wines are
bottled at much higher pressures.
TRY the bottles with your capper before the bottling session. I've found
that they just fit under my slot-machine capper. The magnums won't fit it,
but I have a hand capper (the two-lever style) that I can use on the
magnums. HOWEVER, I found that this hand capper got into an argument with
some of the regular bottles and would crack the second rim section (the
part the capper pulls against from below) on one style of bottle. This is
not something you want to discover while you're bottling!
Magnums (if you can get them) work just as well as standard-size bottles,
but they're a lot harder to come by. (Same caveat for foreign vs domestic
applies here--the crown sizes are the same as for the regular.) A magnum
is great for parties. I've never had the luck to get my hands on anything
larger, but I think I've seen that at some size they don't crown-cap the
bottle. (That may even apply to a jereboam.)
> I heard of a homebrewer who bottled in 2 liter pop bottles and decided
> to try it myself.
I used one 2-liter Watney's bottle as a test. It seems to have worked
well. I don't know how it's going to be to clean it after it's been used a
few times, but the first shot worked fine and all the mentioned advantages
hold for it. It has some brown tint to it, but I don't know whether that
is really functional, since it's not very dark and the inherent
transmission properties of the plastic (probably PET; anyone know for
sure?) are surely different from glass.
---
Dick Dunn {ncar;ico;stcvax}!raven!rcd (303)494-0965
or rcd@raven.uucp
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #206, 07/21/89
