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HOMEBREW Digest #0433
This file received at Mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU 90/06/06 03:16:05
HOMEBREW Digest #433 Wed 06 June 1990
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Colorado Brewpubs (Richard Stern)
Colorado Springs Homebrew Shops (Rick Myers)
Red Star (Norm Hardy)
Infection (Martin A. Lodahl)
Phenol in mead, Norwich brewery info (BRWJ)
foxx bottle filler (Marty Albini)
Re: Homebrew Digest #432 (June 05, 1990) (jrb)
beer babble suppression (cckweiss)
RE: Homebrew Digest #432 (June 05, 1990) ("Dave Resch DTN:523-2780")
Help - inefficient sparge (Brian Glendenning)
Jay Hersh's comments about cider technique (florianb)
Barleywine Questions and Misc. (John Post)
Precision Scales (John Polstra)
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: Tue, 5 Jun 90 08:23:33 mdt
From: Richard Stern <rstern@hpcslb1.col.hp.com>
Subject: Colorado Brewpubs
Full-Name: Richard Stern
There is a fairly new brewpub in Breckenridge called (surprise, surprise)
the 'Breckenridge Brewery and Pub'. It's on Main street in Breck. Nice place.
I thought the beers were far better than Wynkoops, but I haven't been to
Wynkoops in over a year (and I've heard the beer has improved). A friend
tells me that the brewmaster used to be a brewer at one of the Strohs, so he
has alot of experience brewing large batches consistantly.
As for Major Kelly brewing at the Antlers in Colo Spgs: I wouldn't hold
my breath expecting good beer. He's just a homebrewer, and I wasn't very
impressed with his homebrew last time I tasted it.
Richard Stern
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 8:42:31 MDT
From: Rick Myers <cos.hp.com!hpctdpe!rcm@hp-lsd>
Subject: Colorado Springs Homebrew Shops
Full-Name: Rick Myers
In Digest #432 Peter Klauser says he has to mail order all his homebrew
supplies, since he lives in Colorado Springs, plus he doesn't like the
restaurants, etc. and the general 'culture'. Oh well, he can always move.
But seriously, C. Springs has three, yes, count 'em, three homebrew shops.
The oldest shop is town is Mayjor Kelley. An older couple also have a
shop they run out of a spare bedroom (Stoppel), and the newest shop
is located in Surplus City (run independently of Surplus City). I do
most all my homebrew shopping at Surplus City, as Vivian, who runs it,
is very knowledgeable, and is willing to special order anything unusual
I need at a reasonable price. I rarely find the need to use mail order -
besides, most mail order houses are so far away, the shipping brings the
price back up to what it is here in town.
- --
Disclaimer: I have no interest in any of the HB shops in town, I only brew
here.
*===========================================================================*
Rick Myers
Hewlett-Packard Colorado Telecommunications Division
5070 Centennial Blvd.
Colorado Springs, CO 80919 (719) 531-4416
INTERNET: rcm@hpctdpe.hp.com
*===========================================================================*
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 90 19:48:55 PDT
From: hplabs!polstra!norm (Norm Hardy)
Subject: Red Star
I recall reading somewhere that all dry yeasts seem to act more like ale
yeasts than lager yeasts, that is, even though some are labeled as lager,
they don't perform well below 55f.
Red Star lager yeast seems much better than it's ale counterpart. Hey, when
I started brewing 5 years ago (wow, how time flies!!), the local homebrew
shop even then recommended against Red Start ale yeast, and steered me
towards Edme or Munton-Fison.
Question, does anybody use yeast nutrients in the boil to give the yeast
a helping hand before pitching? Seems to work great for me.
Norm
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 90 13:28:18 PDT
From: Martin A. Lodahl <hplabs!pbmoss!mal>
Subject: Infection
Yesterday I was over at a friend's house admiring his latest batch
of Pilsner, and he mentioned that he was planning to bottle that
evening (why does bottling always seem less of a big deal to
others, than to me?) because the batch of brown ale he had in the
secondary was beginning to look "weird". It had looked like
fermentation was over, but then, when the weather suddenly warmed
up, it developed a very thin layer of a greenish foam on the
surface, marked by a couple of BIG bubbles (appx. 10 cm across!)
that had stood several days without breaking or changing! My first
thought was that it's some form of wild yeast. I've certainly never
seen anything like it. Does anyone know what this is? I'll
report on the flavor of the beer, when I get back from vacation.
- Martin
= Martin A. Lodahl Pac*Bell Minicomputer Operations Support Staff =
= pacbell!pbmoss!mal -or- mal@pbmoss.Pacbell.COM 916.972.4821 =
= If it's good for ancient Druids, runnin' nekkid through the wuids, =
= Drinkin' strange fermented fluids, it's good enough for me! 8-) =
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 10:58 EDT
From: BRWJ%VAX5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu
Subject: Phenol in mead, Norwich brewery info
Way back in December I brewed a mead from approximately 12
pounds of local (Ithaca, NY) honey according to Papazian's recipe for
still mead ("Chief Niwok's" or something like that in Zymurgy about a
year ago). I combined the honey with 2 gals of water, added heat to
raise the temperature to about 200 degrees and maintained that temp
for an hour or two (I don't have my notes here). I then combined this
with enough cold, pre-boiled water to make 5 gals. I believe the only
other ingredients besides honey and water were acid blend, yeast
nutrient, and Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast. I transfered to the
secondary after about a month of primary fermentation and bottled
after 6 months.
Here's my problem. At both transfer and bottling time I noticed a
pronounced odor and flavor of phenol in the mead. When I work with
phenol in the lab, it's done under a hood -- the fumes are considered
detrimental. Yet when I look at the ingredients for cough drops, I
see phenol listed. So what gives? More importantly, will this
taste and odor of phenol dissipate with age in my mead, or should I
free up some bottles this weekend? I have not had this problem before
with mead, although I have had the harshness and dry character others
have mentioned when using Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast. The
harshness takes about a year in the bottle to disappear. I should
mention that the other meads I've produced all contained 9 pounds or
less of honey in a five gallon batch. Are the
phenolic by-products a result of fermentation to a higher alcohol
level?
On a happier note, I will be spending two weeks in Norwich, England in
July and would accept any advice on local pubs/breweries to visit in
the area or on the way back to London. Is there a standard reference
to British real ales and where can I get it? Thanks in advance!
Jackie Brown BRWJ@CRNLVAX5.BITNET
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 8:50:08 PDT
From: Marty Albini <martya@hpsdl39.sdd.hp.com>
Subject: foxx bottle filler
To whoever (Doug?) who posted a warning to
pressure-test the Foxx bottle filler before use: a hearty
thank you. You have saved me much unpleasantness, kitchen
cleaning, and alimony.
Perhaps you can do me a further service. Could anybody
who has used this fine device comment on appropriate pressures
to operate the thing at?
For those of you hopelessly confused by the above,
I'll explain. Foxx Equipment sells a bottle filling kit which
lets you bulk-carbonate in a soda keg, and fill bottles
without foam. It uses counterpressure from your CO2 tank to
keep the gas in solution, and has a bleed valve to let you
control bottle filling. It's made of standard pipe fittings
and valves, and looks like somebody made it in their garage.
You could probably duplicate it for less than the purchase
price, but that pretty reasonable (~$17, I think).
You need a bunch of hoses to hook it up, and they sell
a kit which is, unfortunately, incomplete. There are no keg
conectors, and if you hook it up to your CO2 tank, you lose
the regular pressure line for your keg. My solution involves
tee fittings and quick-disconnects, and is pretty easy to
figure out, but don't expect to use it out of the box.
It also leaks from every joint, until you tighten them
up. The valves are have itty-bitty metal handles, the kind
that cut your fingers and are hard to turn. Again, easy to fix
(just cut some tubing to sleave the valve handle) but
annoying. I also had to shorten the filler tube to get it to
fit a Heineken bottle.
As you can see from the above questions, the
instructions included with it are incomplete. On the whole,
though, this promises to make priming sugar a thing of the
past. My fridge is too small for my 5 gal kegs, and 3 gals are
impossible to find used, so I'd have to pay ~$55 to get my
brew cold. From now on, my room-temperature brews will be on
tap, and the rest go into bottles.
- --
________________________________________________Marty Albini___________
"The above opinions were generated by a trained professional. Do not
attempt to duplicate these thought processes at home."
phone : (619) 592-4177
UUCP : {hplabs|nosc|hpfcla|ucsd}!hp-sdd!martya
Internet : martya@sdd.hp.com (or @nosc.mil, @ucsd.edu)
CSNET : martya%hp-sdd@hplabs.csnet
US mail : Hewlett-Packard Co., 16399 W. Bernardo Drive, San Diego CA 92127-1899 USA
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 90 10:30:33 PDT
From: jrb@cs.pdx.edu
Subject: Re: Homebrew Digest #432 (June 05, 1990)
Please re-route homebrew digest for
James Binkley
jrb@zymurgy.wv.tek.com
to
jrb@jove.cs.pdx.edu
thanks
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 09:54:35 -0700
From: cckweiss@castor.ucdavis.edu
Subject: beer babble suppression
As Roseanne Rosanadana might say,
A Mr. Jay Hersch of of Compuserve New Jersey writes in to say...
> I have been very patient with this but after reading the 100th page
> of scores and banter from J. Melby et al regarding the results of
> his various tastings I must protest.
While I tend to agree with Jay as regards my interest in Mr. Mellby's postings,
I'm opposed to censoring the material. I've probably posted my share of items
that were not directly related to Q&A on the mechanics of brewing beer. It's
the nature of an open forum that some material will be seen as irrelevant by
some readers.
I can't say I'd miss the Mellby files, but I would very much miss the feeling
I have that this Digest is open to general beer related discussion, and not
just nuts and bolts informational postings. Besides, I just download the whole
Digest to my micro, load up the word processor, and fast forward right through
lenghty postings that don't interest me. No fuss, no muss, and no need to
protest...
BTW, all you Red Star bashers better be right. I'm trying my first batch with
a liquid Wyeast culture. If this bag bursts, it's right back to Red Star
dry lager yeast and blissful ignorance for me! (Alas, no other dry lager
yeasts were available at R&R last Saturday) Also, I'm trying a ginger flavored
ale, sort of modeled on the Vagabond Ginger Ale in Papazian's book, except I'm
aiming for a drier, more pale ale quality. Any recipe suggestions? My plan is
6 lb. of light extract, 1 lb. of crystal malt, 3 oz. of grated ginger root,
2 oz. of Cascade boiling hops, and I don't know what for finishing. Maybe a
nice Cascade tea... I plan to try the Edme dry ale yeast for this one, as
Martin Lodahl mentioned that it gave him some *very* dry results. Hmmm, looking
at that recipe, it's more like ginger steam beer, isn't it. Oh well.
Ken Weiss
krweiss@ucdavis.edu
cckweiss@castor.ucdavis.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 11:53:24 PDT
From: "Dave Resch DTN:523-2780" <resch@cookie.enet.dec.com>
Subject: RE: Homebrew Digest #432 (June 05, 1990)
In Digest #432 Peter Klausler writes:
>Brewpubs in Colorado Springs? That's a laugh. There are none.
>
>No music, theatre, restaurants, vegetarians, or books, either. The major
>cultural activities are somewhat more like:
> - throwing (partially) empty Coors cans at road signs
> - pawnshop browsing
> - cutting tops off front-range mountains for strip-mining
> - gun fondling
> - grafitti
> - running red lights (unenforced in the Springs)
> - shooting holes in signs which prohibit firearms in Nat'l Forests
> - shooting prairie dogs
> - blowing up prairie dogs
> - littering
> - daytime television
>Not the most amenable environment for establishing a brewpub, or even a
>yuppie fern-bar. (So maybe there's some advantage to the Springs, after all.)
WOW, what a flame!!! ...and I thought that I liked living here in Colorado
Springs. I won't address Peter's bulleted list because it is inappropriate for
this forum; my responses would be as well... Besides, I think Peter's comments
show him in the correct light and don't deserve a response!
The two comments that I will address, however, relate directly to homebrewing and
are blatantly incorrect:
> homebrewing is a natural alternative; one must mail-order
>supplies and use bottled water, however.
There are currently three homebrew supply shops in Colorado Springs:
- Stoppel and Associates
- Major Kelly's
- Surplus City
A large variety of equipment, extract brands, whole grains, specialty grains,
hops (leaf and pellet) and yeast can be found here... One does NOT have to
mail-order supplies.
With respect to using bottled water, the Colorado Springs tap water is of very
good quality for brewing. I called the Colorado Springs Department of Utilities
and got a free detailed water chemistry analysis mailed to me. If anything, the
water is too pure, one needs to add certain minerals such as gypsum to get the
concetrations of specific ions to the appropriate levels when doing all-grain
brewing. The levels of any impurities were extremely low!
Dave (Yes, from Colorado Springs!)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 15:23:45 EDT
From: Brian Glendenning <brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Help - inefficient sparge
My brewing buddy and myself brewed our second all-grain batch on the
weekend. Everything seemed to work OK, but our sparge seemed to be
inefficient (again!). We started with 9# Canadian 2-row malt, 1#
crystal malt, and 12oz brown sugar but only ended up with an OG of
1.045 (made up to 5 USG).
Does anyone have any suggestions? We're using the scheme where we have
2 buckets, one inside the other, with a lot of 1/8" holes drilled in
the inner bucket and a drain in the lower bucket.
I get the impression from Miller that the grain bed is such an
efficient filter that the sparge operation will take more than an
hour. In our case the sparge water comes through at such a rate that
the sparge is over in 15 or 20 minutes - and that is with the spigot
partially closed.
Is the problem with the ground grain (the local homebrew shop grinds
it and they say they don't have complaints from others)? The water
doesn't seem to be running down a crack between the edge of the grain
and the buckets edge. Should we just close the spigot off so that the
water trickles through?
I'm puzzled - any advice will be gratefully received. (What extraction
efficiencies do you all get?).
Brian
- --
Brian Glendenning - Radio astronomy, University of Toronto
brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca utai!radio.astro!brian glendenn@utorphys.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: 05 Jun 90 12:40:27 PDT (Tue)
From: florianb%tekred.cna.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET
Subject: Jay Hersh's comments about cider technique
In # 432, Jay tells how he chills the cider to remove yeast, thus eliminating
or reducing the dryness. Can you please go into this further?
1 Do you keep it chilled until drinking? If not,
2 Does it resume fermentation after bottling?
The reason I ask is that it seems with my cider that it ferments out all the
way at room T. Thus one has to be careful with bottling until there is
very little sugar left.
Thanx to Doug Robers for following up on the wet T-shirt method of temp control.I'm going to try it in my loft also.
While Jay's on the subject of irrelevant data, may I say two things?
1 I apologize for the dream sequence.
2 I don't see a need here for discussion of brewpub data. As Jay
mentioned, it is a forum for homebrewing, and I can't see much
about brewpubs that have to do with homebrewing. Unless there's
a point about brewpubs that is relevant to homebrewing, could
we please move these discussions to rec.food.drink? A tabloid
of such low SNR is where swillpub discussion belongs anyway.\
Florian the complainer.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 1990 15:42:18 PDT
From: post%vaxt.llnl.gov@lll-winken.llnl.gov (John Post)
Subject: Barleywine Questions and Misc.
This is my first post, so please excuse the formatting...
Some comments on recent topics...
1) Red Star yeast is indeed no bueno (IMHO), unless you like that crappy
taste. I used a dry yeast last time called IronMaster...Has anyone else
tried it? Favorable, or no?
2) What have people done to sucessfully brew all-grain barleywines?
Specifically, grain quantities, sparging techniques, and recipes would be
appreciated.
3) Has anybody actually built a small brewery as depicted in Bill Owen's
book? Does a water heater burner have enough thermal output capacity to
heat 12-13 gallons of wort to boil in a relatively short time period?
Thanks in advance. It's been great to read the Digest for a couple of
months now. Has any thought been given to making it into a regular
newsgroup?
john
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
| post@vaxt.llnl.gov |"...It's only MY opinion...Not their's..."|
| post@lis.llnl.gov |"The Most Important Thing Is To Be There' |
| | ...Dr. Milton Drandell, Cal Poly SLO |
|John Post, Lawrence Livermore| ....I'm Relaxing...I'm Not Worrying.... |
|National Labs (415) 423-9981 |.......Just Wish I Had A HomeBrew...... |
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 14:49:42 PDT
From: hplabs!polstra!jdp (John Polstra)
Subject: Precision Scales
Does anybody have any ideas about where to obtain a precise but
inexpensive scale?
I've recently gotten interested in treating my brewing water with
chemicals (gypsum, chalk, etc.) to make it more appropriate for
whatever style of beer I happen to be brewing. (Darryl Richman: this
was inspired by your recent Zymurgy article, thank you.) I've worked
out what I need to add, but the quantities are very small (often less
than 0.5 gram of additive per gallon of water).
So, to do this right I need a scale with a precision of around a tenth
of a gram. (Well, OK, I could make do with precision of one gram.)
I have been told that inexpensive triple-beam balance scales are sold
for the purpose of measuring small amounts of other, er, chemicals.
The local source for such scales was described to me as "Big Nicky,"
whose place of business is "usually on the corner of First and Pine,"
and whose business hours are "after dark." (I gather that Big Nicky
also sells, er, chemicals that can be measured with such scales.)
However, I decided to Just Say No to this idea after hearing that Big
Nicky refuses to back up his products with a guarantee of customer
satisfaction.
Can somebody suggest a different source? By "inexpensive" I suppose I
mean "substantially less than the price of a laboratory balance scale."
- John Polstra jdp@polstra.uucp
Polstra & Co., Inc. practic!polstra!jdp@uunet.uu.net
Seattle, Washington USA ...{uunet,sun,pyramid}!practic!polstra!jdp
(206) 932-6482
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #433, 06/06/90
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