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HOMEBREW Digest #0283
HOMEBREW Digest #283 Sat 21 October 1989
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Priming techniques (wtm)
Corn sugar and cidery flavor (Mike Meyer)
It's the water? (dave)
Hops in Fermenter (Mike Fertsch)
Mead serving temperatures (Pete Soper)
Cooling beer (Pete Soper)
California: The ``Golden Beer'' State (David L. Kensiski )
Holiday Cheer?? ( )
Send submissions to homebrew%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
Send requests to homebrew-request%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
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Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 08:17:54 MDT
From: wtm@hpfcrn
Subject: Priming techniques
Full-Name: Bill Mullaney
> From: roberts%studguppy@LANL.GOV
> 2. Priming: I know Papazian recommends the use of 3/4 cup of corn
> sugar for priming a five gallon batch, but I swear that I can notice a
> cidery flavor imparted by the corn sugar that doesn't age out for a
> month or two. On the other hand, when I prime with 3/4 cup of light
> dry malt extract (dry krausening?) there is no overtaste. Has anyone
> else observed this?
The first half dozen or so batches I made were primed with corn sugar,
and had a faintly detectable sweet flavor I couldn't define. "Cidery"
is as good a word as any to describe it. I can't claim to have an
educated palate, but the sweetness didn't contribute to the enjoyability
of the beer. So I experimented with priming with some of the original
"sweet wort" that I withheld before pitching. It involves some
measurement and not a little care, but I've not had any problems with
uncarbonated beer nor with exploding bottles. And the sweetness is
gone.
Bill Mullaney
(303) 229-2758
wtm%hpfcla@hplabs.HP.COM
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 09:16:03 PDT
From: meyer@tcville.hac.com (Mike Meyer)
Subject: Corn sugar and cidery flavor
Doug Roberts writes:
{
2. Priming: I know Papazian recommends the use of 3/4 cup of corn
sugar for priming a five gallon batch, but I swear that I can notice a
cidery flavor imparted by the corn sugar that doesn't age out for a
month or two. On the other hand, when I prime with 3/4 cup of light
dry malt extract (dry krausening?) there is no overtaste. Has anyone
else observed this?
}
My first batches were notorious for this problem, partly because they
used far too much corn sugar in the wort, and the (faulty) instructions
I was brewing from [a sheet from the wine/beer supply place, and M.R.
Reese's "Better Beer and How To Brew It"] said to simply pour your hot
wort onto the sugar rather than include it in the boil. At bottling time,
the cup of corn sugar I was adding made things worse. My very first batch was
cidery for over 4 months.
You don't mention whether you
boil the corn sugar or not; I use corn sugar for priming, but always
dissolve it in water and boil it for at least a couple of minutes. This
sterilizes it, and seems to keep it from getting cidery. I haven't had
a cidery batch of beer in a long time. I suspect that the cidery flavor
is from wild yeasts camping out in the sugar bowl, the same dudes who
provide us with apple cider. (can anyone confirm or refute this?)
One further note: provided the weather/storage place for newly bottled beer
is warm enough, your beer should be ready to drink after 7 or 8 days in the
bottle. I didn't beleive this either until about a year ago, when after
bottling a Nut Brown Ale in fairly warm weather, I popped one out of
curiousity. It was great, though it will get a bit dryer in a short time.
Mike Meyer
Signal Processing Laboratory
Hughes EDSG meyer@tcville.HAC.COM
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 10:19:21 PDT
From: whoops!dave@celerity.fps.com
Subject: It's the water?
I recently read a newspaper interview with the brewmaster at a local
micro-brewery here in San Diego. In the interview, he claimed that
San Diego tap water (which is truly scummy) is great for brewing with.
He said that, in general, the more gunk is in the water, the better it is.
Now, I'm a neophyte to brewing, so I don't know if this is tongue-in-cheek
or not. Any opinions?
David L. Smith
FPS Computing, San Diego
ucsd!celerity!dave or dave@fps.com
"Repent, Harlequin!," said the TickTock Man
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 14:29 EDT
From: Mike Fertsch <FERTSCH@adc1.mec.ray.com>
Subject: Hops in Fermenter
Al Hainer reports excessive Hop Sediment in his fermenter -
> I used pelletized hops (5 oz.) and when I racked it, there was a HUGE
> amount of sediment. This was not sediment in the normal sense, it was
> mostly beer with hops floating in it, but it was still too thick to go
> through the siphen. I left a good three inches in the primary.
All primary ferments have varying amounts of sediment on their bottoms. As
the wort initialy cools (prior to fermentation), some trub (proteins, hop
resins, and other crap) fall out of solution. During the fermentation,
some yeast settles out. My experience is that the trub has much larger
volume than the settled yeast. Some experts say that the wort should be
racked off the trub prior to yeast pitching, but I am not yet convinced
that this is necessary.
Three inches of trub/yeast is probably okay, and shouldn't be a cause for
worry. When bottling the beer, be sure not to get any of this material
into the bottles - if you ever tasted this stuff, you would consider giving
up homebrewing!
Contrary to what the hop pellet packages may say, hops should be strained
out prior to fermentation. An easy way is to fill the fermenter through a
mesh bag. Execesive hops in the ferment (especially 4 ounces of Bullions!)
will create a harsh bitter bite in the beer. A stout will probably forgive
you for this, but watch out with those light lagers!
Mike Fertsch
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 17:24:55 EDT
From: Pete Soper <soper@maxzilla.encore.com>
Subject: Mead serving temperatures
Could somebody familiar with Mead tell me what the proper serving
temperature should be? As over simplifying as this might be, I
need a single number that is the best tradeoff for all Meads. Thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pete Soper +1 919 481 3730
internet: soper@encore.com uucp: {bu-cs,decvax,gould}!encore!soper
Encore Computer Corp, 901 Kildaire Farm Rd, bldg D, Cary, NC 27511 USA
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 18:06:09 EDT
From: Pete Soper <soper@maxzilla.encore.com>
Subject: Cooling beer
In about a week I'll be helping with a homebrew contest and I in
turn need some help from you Digesters that have massive or even
little bits of experience with contests.
Here is the situation. My job is to get the entries checked in and
brought to the proper temperature prior to delivery to the judges.
Entries can be brought in as late as 90 minutes prior to the start
of judging and might be in the 70-80 degree range at that point.
I have picnic coolers, ice, and lots of thermometers, including an
IR pyrometer that is very fast and deadly accurate when pointed at
a typical beer bottle. I figure the sins I want to avoid are as
follows, in decreasing order of evil:
1. Loosing a bottle's identity
2. Breaking a bottle
3. Disturbing the sediment
4. Creating a chill haze
5. Delivering the beer too cold
6. Delivering the beer too warm
OK, items 1 and 2 can be dismissed since if I do one of those
I'll just fall on my sword and not have to worry about the consequences :-)
Number 3 might be relevent to the discussion if I'm moving the bottles
around frequently but hopefully even in this case I would move them
very gently.
Chill haze and any other bad effects of rapid over-chilling is what
I am concerned about. If it were not for this, I would plan on cooling
the beer as completely as possible by burying it in ice, then pull it
out and let it warm back up, giving each entry to the judges when it
had reached the "right" temperature. Doing it the other way, trying to
cool down to the "right" temperature appears to be out of the question
for a couple hundred bottles of beer for a number of reasons. Even if
I had extra arms I've determined that partial immersion in ice causes
radically uneven cooling. I've thought about ice-water mixtures but
only briefly.
So I'm leaning toward a compromise in which the dark beers get warp
factor 9 and the pale beers get kinder treatment and then they are
all subjected to varying degrees of "warm and deliver" prior to
judging. By kinder treatment I mean I'd try to segragate the pale beers
into categories like "already cold", "warm" etc. and just apply the
time in an ice bath needed to get each one to my 48 degree target.
But even so, 90 minutes is not long to shed 20-30 degrees and wouldn't
you know it, those guys want to judge the pale beers first, so there isn't
room for much error.
So I'm asking for your thoughts. And although I'm locked into the above
constraints this time around I'd especially like to hear about better
ways to do this in the future. Thanks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pete Soper +1 919 481 3730
internet: soper@encore.com uucp: {bu-cs,decvax,gould}!encore!soper
Encore Computer Corp, 901 Kildaire Farm Rd, bldg D, Cary, NC 27511 USA
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 16:56:07 PDT
From: david%cygnus.@Sun.COM (David L. Kensiski )
Subject: California: The ``Golden Beer'' State
I had lunch today at a local Pizza Place that happens to serve a good
number of beers brewed in California microbreweries. As I was
leaving, I noticed that they had posted the center page of a recent
issue of "California Celebrator, Beer News Brewspaper" on their
bulletin board.
The section they posted was a map of California listing many (if not
all) of the breweries, microbreweries, brewpubs, and homebrew shops in
the state. The article was titled:
The ``Golden Beer'' State
(A Guide To California's Beer Hot Spots)
I asked the proprietor if I could borrow the article, which I took
next door and photocopied. After pinning the original back up on the
bulletin board, I rushed back to work and, with complete disreguard
for copyright law, transcribed the information into my computer.
The list was broken into 4 regional sections, which I intend to post
here starting Monday. I will only post one section per day, as the
entire thing is nearly 500 lines long.
Some of the entries were very hard to read on my copy. If anyone has
the original or otherwise notices an error, please bring it to my
attention so that I might update my copy. Thanks, in advance.
--Dave
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 89 08:46:54 -0500
From: hpfcla!hpcea!hplabs!rutgers!ee.ecn.purdue.edu!zentner ( )
Subject: Holiday Cheer??
I'd be interested in hearing about any experiences with
Papazians recipe for Holiday Cheer, ie faster than average
fermentations (or slower), aging times, or whatever
"stories" anyone has. I started a batch last weekend and
by the smell during the boil am expecting malt flavoured,
carbonated orange juice, but then again, time can do strange
things. Thanks.
Mike Zentner zentner@cn.ecn.purdue.edu
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #283, 10/21/89
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