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HOMEBREW Digest #0394
This file received at Mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU 90/04/09 05:04:19
HOMEBREW Digest #394 Mon 09 April 1990
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Brewing shops (Nick zentena)
Spent grains and gardens (Ted Manahan)
Responsible drug use (Re: Charlie's flames) (Mark.Leone)
mead and bitterness (Pete Soper)
honey aroma and SOME wierd barley wine (Doug Roberts)
Oxygen in solution necessary for Fermentation? (John Mellby)
these are drugs too ! ? (Ihor W. Slabicky)
SG increasing during secondary (Mike Fertsch)
Re: tip tip (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
Re: Charlie's Flames (a.e.mossberg)
Send submissions to homebrew%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
Send requests to homebrew-request%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
Archives available from netlib@mthvax.cs.miami.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Apr 6 00:22:30 1990
From: contact!zen@uunet.UU.NET (Nick zentena)
Subject: Brewing shops
Subject:Toronto Area shops?&hops plants?
Hi,
I was wondering if anybody knew of a good Toronto area homebrew
shop?
Secondly does anybody know if Hops are viable this far North?
And Finally is the AHA available to Canadian residents?
Thanks
Nick
mnetor!becker!contact!zen@neat.cs.toronto.edu
or
zen%contact.uucp@udel.edu
or
uunet!utai!gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca!geac!becker!contact!zen@samsung.uucp
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 06:21:26 mdt
From: Ted Manahan <hplabs!hpldola!tedm>
Subject: Spent grains and gardens
Full-Name: Ted Manahan
>I don't have any cows, but I am trying to start a small garden in my small,
>urban yard. Can/should I use the spent grains as a mulch? If so, do I first
>have to let them compost?
Like Cher, I don't see why not. The grains would be great for soil
texture, and have some fertilizing effect. Composting first would be
good, but if it isn't convenient don't worry about it. Soil makes an
excellent compost medium for something as small as grains.
At my house the garden doesn't get the benefit of spent grains; my
chickens love to eat the stuff!
Ted Manahan
tedm@hpldola.hp.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 90 11:06:48 EDT
From: Mark.Leone@F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Responsible drug use (Re: Charlie's flames)
>I have mixed
>feelings when children 'learn' their parents are drug abusers
>for having an occasional beer. There is a lack of
>discrimination here that alarms me. Are objectivity and
>reality being distorted? Who is protecting whom? ....
Yes, objectivity and reality were the first casualties of our
country's glorious "War on Drugs." The *abuse* of drugs, whether legal
or illegal, obviously costs our society dearly, but the hysterical
restriction of responsbile drug *use* is clearly not a realistic
solution.
>Let people know how you feel.
The War on Drugs is a war on *my* rights, and I'm not going to stand
for it!
- --
Mark R. Leone <mleone@cs.cmu.edu>
Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 90 22:51:22 EDT
From: Pete Soper <soper@maxzilla.encore.com>
Subject: mead and bitterness
>From: jmellby@ngstl1.csc.ti.com (John Mellby)
>Amazingly the Best of Show was not the "Best Extract" or "Best All-Malt"
>it was a sack-mead!
The same thing happened to us at our "big" contest in this area (NC) last
year. One theory was that the judges were so tired of tasting beer that the
novelty of the mead caught their fancy. Just kidding. Still, it was
disappointing to many of us to have a mead win best of show. The mead makers
just smiled. (I put "big" in quotes to distinguish this from the use of the
word in Texas.) Thanks, John, for a fascinating report about your conference.
Take good care of that hand.
>From: abvax!calvin.icd.ab.com!bwc@cwjcc.INS.CWRU.Edu (Barry Cunningham)
>Depending of course on the alpha acid contents of the hops you used, I would
>expect this beer to be quite bitter when it is young. The 1 1/2 hour boil
>will get more bitterness out of the hops. Cutting back the boil to one hour
>or just using a little bit less hops will reduce the bitterness.
Remember that isomerization (the process whereby the hop bitterness can go
into permanent solution in the wort) is very nonlinear. The difference between
a 60 minute boil and a 90 minute boil is minimal - on the order of 10%.
>Your brewing technique, which you did not specify, may also significantly
>affect bitterness. In particular, forced cooling to get a good cold break
>and racking the wort off the trub (particularly if you have a lot of goop
>from pelletized hops) before fermentation gets going should reduce the
>bitterness from the trub considerably. However, you should pay careful
Is the real difference caused by reducing the time that the hops steep in hot
wort or by prevention of prolonged contact with the cooled wort? Are there
references to indicate any significant bitterness is contributed by hops in
cool wort?
Another factor to consider is the density of the wort in the boil. According
to Terry Foster 5% more bittering hops are needed for each 10 specific gravity
points over 1.050 to compensate for the fact that isomerization rates are lower
with thicker worts. So, for example with a recipe that will have an eventual
original gravity of 1.050 with 5 gallons, if only 2 gallons were boiled, you
would have a boil gravity of 1.125 and expect to get ((1.125-1.050)/.010)*5=
37.5% less bitterness than if you boiled all 5 gallons.
But you know what the real head banger is? Oxidation of hops in storage. Hops
are harvested pretty much once a year around Fall. No matter what, depending
upon the time of year, storage conditions and *a varying factor based on the
type of hop*, a fraction of the potential bitterness of any given packet of
hops that we use is lost. As homebrewers we don't know what the fraction is
for any given situation, only that it is sometimes very significant. For
instance, one study showed that a sample of Cascade pellets stored under
refrigeration went from 7.6% to 4.6% alpha acid content in 12 months[1]. In the
same study a sample of Hersbrucker pellets dropped from 7.4% to 4.7%. I'm
not writing this to make everybody lose their level of relaxation, just to
point out that there are major fudge factors that are not even under our
control, so we shouldn't get too excited if a batch of beer comes out a bit
too bitter or too sweet.
[1] Peacock, V.E., Deinzer, M.L., "Chemistry of Hop Aroma in Beer", ASBC,
Vol 39, No. 4, 1981. (attribution appeared in Fix, G., "Principles of Brewing
Science", Brewers Publications, 1989.)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 08:54:19 MDT
From: roberts%studguppy@LANL.GOV (Doug Roberts)
Subject: honey aroma and SOME wierd barley wine
> the sg dropped to 1.025, then
> climbed gradually up to 1.030 where it is holding constant at present. Can]
> anyone speculate on how sg can dip and then climb up again under these
> conditions? Can water evaporate out of an air-locked carboy?
The only time I've seen this happen is when I forgot to give the
hydrometer a good spin to shake off the bubbles that had stuck to it.
I've seen an error of 5 associated with an extra buoyant hydrometer,
especially with a sample that is still fairly active.
- --Doug
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 10:51:30 CDT
From: jmellby@ngstl1.csc.ti.com (John Mellby)
Subject: Oxygen in solution necessary for Fermentation?
Recently I was rereading Papazian's section in the Brewing Mead book
and he said that the initial 12-14 hours of fermentation require lots
of oxygen. He said this was typically ok, since there was lots of
oxygen available in solution in cold tap water.
But if this is the case, then when you boil the wort, wouldn't that drive
the O2 out of the water, and leave the primary fermentation short of
oxygen? In my case, since I don't have a wort chiller, I usually
boil 2-3 gallons of water and put it in the refridgerator to cool ahead of
time (this usually reduces the wort temperature to where I can add the
yeast). However, would this not reduce the supply of oxygen as well?
Is there really that much O2 in solution, or is the fermentation stealing
O from the H2O itself? O.K. so I'm not a chemist. I'm still puzzled?
Where does the O2 come from for the fermentation, if so much oxygen
is needed?
Surviving the American Dream
John R. Mellby Texas Instruments
jmellby%ngstl1.ti.com P.O.Box 660246, MS 3645
Dallas Texas, 75266
(214)517-5370 (214)343-7585
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| "Virtually no one's allowed to vote...women, servants, |
| chimpanzees (gestures to Baldrick)...even lords." |
| |
| "That's not true, Lord Nelson's got a vote." |
| |
| "He's got a boat, Baldrick." |
| -- BlackAdder |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 10:34:46 EDT
From: iws@rayssdb.ssd.ray.com (Ihor W. Slabicky)
Subject: these are drugs too ! ?
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 90 12:15 EST
Subject: Charlie's Flames
The Reasonable Majority
or
Homedrug Making and the Berlin Wall
Charlie Papazian
In Michigan a child came
home with a worksheet. Question number three instructed:
"Circle the following pictures that are drugs." There were
several pictures including a hypodermic needle, a pile of
powder, pills, milk and a bottle of beer. He got that question
wrong because he failed to circle the bottle of beer.
IMHO, the test was incomplete - it did not show a cup of coffee,
cigarettes, wine, tea, cola sodas, and other drugs. Maybe our
children should be taught to recognise ALL drugs.
Sen.
Ted Kennedy recently introduced an amendment to the Drug-Free
Schools and Communities Act, making reference to alcoholic
beverages as a "gateway drug."
I wonder how many times the Honorable Senator from the Commonwealth
has himself crossed through that "gateway"?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 14:12 EDT
From: Mike Fertsch <FERTSCH@adc1.adc.ray.com>
Subject: SG increasing during secondary
Florian "the puzzled" comments about SOME wierd barley wine where the SG of
a barley wine seemed to increase during secondary fermentation in a carboy.
> Under nearly constant temperature (Delta T = 5 degrees at most), the sg
> dropped to 1.025, then climbed gradually up to 1.030 where it is holding
> constant at present. Can] anyone speculate on how sg can dip and then
> climb up again under these conditions? Can water evaporate out of an
> air-locked carboy?
I've had this happen to me a few times. I ocassionally get brews where
the SG at bottling is higher than that at racking. This distrubs me,
but I never thought of a good physical explanation. I've assumed
that SG readings are always an approximation; different portions of the
wort have different densities, and readings can differ significantly from
measurement to measurement.
I guess that water can evaporate out of a carboy, and increasing the SG
because of reduced volume. I doubt that Sg can rise from 1.025 to 1.030
because of evaporation. Wort volume would have to reduce 17 percent in
the secondary to explain this 5 point increase in SG. We need to find
another physical mechanism for SGs increasing during fermentation.
Mike "the skeptic" Fertsch
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 14:10:50 mdt
From: hplabs!hp-lsd.cos.hp.com!ihlpl!korz (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
Subject: Re: tip tip
>Here's a Q-tip cleaning tip: A Q-tip will fit nicely ...
I don't know, I usually just use Q-tips once and then throw them out ;-).
Al. TGIF!
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 20:30 MST
From: BUZZY@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu
Please put me on the homebrew digest list. Buzzy
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 90 03:06:12 GMT
From: aem@mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU (a.e.mossberg)
Subject: Re: Charlie's Flames
>From Charlie Papazian's article, as submitted by <LLUG_JI%DENISON.BITNET@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu>:
>[...]
>wrong because he failed to circle the bottle of beer. Sen.
>Ted Kennedy recently introduced an amendment to the Drug-Free
>Schools and Communities Act, making reference to alcoholic
>beverages as a "gateway drug." Children are being taught that
>beer can lead to cocaine and crack. So now we may be
>considered homedrug makers. In a contemplative mood, I
>[...]
- --"Marijuana is an evil drug and it leads to heroin abuse"
- --"Say what?"
- --"Marijuana is addictive and evil."
- --"It's less addictive and causes fewer problems than cigarettes
or alcohol!"
- --"Hmmm.."
Perhaps attempts at marijuana legalization have come back to instead
make alcohol and cigarettes less accepted. Drug use, and alcohol
is a drug, has been around since before written history. What needs
to be done is to encourage responsible drug use, and drug use in
moderation. Instead, the pendulum swings against acceptance of any
drug use, excepting of course what the medical community says we must
have. :-) Freedom! Stop the new prohibitionists before it's too late!
No innocuous drug should be illegal. Making *any* innocuous drug illegal
makes it inevitable that other innocuous drugs will be made illegal.
Charlie talks about sharing a beer with a friend, this being a part
of the culture. The amount that the beverage industry contributes
to the American economy, etc. These are beside the point. If drugs
like tobacco, marijuna, peyote, etc are illegal, why should alcohol
be legal? It's hypocritical to arbitrarily make any commonly used
innocuous drug illegal and leave others legal. You can't look at
alcohol use in a vacuum, so to write, but you must look at the way this
culture views drug use in general. End of ramblings.
aem
- --
a.e.mossberg / aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu / aem@umiami.BITNET / Pahayokee Bioregion
We women begin the world with such limited prospects, and we surprise ourselves
sometimes. - Lillie Langtry
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #394, 04/09/90
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