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HOMEBREW Digest #0548
HOMEBREW Digest #548 Mon 03 December 1990
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Re: Wine Bottles (bostech!loc)
various yeasts (Marty Albini)
RE: Homebrew Digest #547 (November 30, 1990) ("b_turnbaugh")
Re: Glass Fermentation Locks (bostech!loc)
Notes from Anchor Steam tour (Bob Clark - Sun Engineering)
Butterscoth - Diacytle (dreger)
Concern about "aroma" (Gerard K. Newman)
Mark Rouleau is worrying, dammit! (krweiss)
Long Ferment (Marc San Soucie)
Re: 1st time brew questions (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
Weizen Bier (Mike Charlton)
Origin of lime in beer (Bob Devine 30-Nov-1990 1243)
brewing hazards (Pete Soper)
measuring attenuation (Pete Soper)
Anchor Christmas Ale--it's finally here! (Alan Edwards)
Send submissions to homebrew%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
Send requests to homebrew-request%hpfcmr@hplabs.hp.com
[Please do not send me requests for back issues]
Archives are available from netlib@mthvax.cs.miami.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 09:21:37 EST
From: bostech!bostech!loc@ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Wine Bottles
I mis-placed who orginally asked about using wine bottles, but the bottom
line is regular wine bottles will not hold the pressure created by
conditioning beer. Champagne bottles on the other hand are fine to use.
Beer can reach 60 PSI and champagne can get as high as 90 PSI. American
champagne bottles can be crown capped just like a regular brown longneck.
The European chapagne bottles have a larger O.D. to the mouth (and some
have larger I.D. also, so make sure the cork/plastic stopper you get fits
tight) so you have to use wire bails to hold the stopper on.
I find champagne bottles a real plus at parties because there are fewer
bottles to deal with (and I can't afford kegging at this time). They
condition is about the same time. I have several cases of champagne bottles
and will fill a case of those and the rest in 12oz'ers so I have party
material on hand at all times.
Enjoy,
Roger Locniskar
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 6:58:48 PST
From: Marty Albini <martya@sdd.hp.com>
Subject: various yeasts
Those who recall my message of a couple days ago:
Williams denies their dry ale yeast is Edme. They won't say
what it *is*, and "understand my concern." They also
volunteered to replace, free, a package that arrived with a
hole in it. A good outfit to do business with.
I recently made a weizenbier from a 1.5kg can of Ireks
wheat malt (*no barley at all*) with Williams' liquid wheat
beer yeast. The package supposedly contains two strains: one
to give a fruity character, and one to calm down the other.
The problem is, I *like* the spicy flavor of wheat beers, and
this came out much too subtle for me (though it is admittedly
overhopped).
Can somebody recommend a yeast which will produce the
kinds of flavors and aromas found in, for instance, Schell's
wheat beer?
- --
________________________________________________Marty Albini___________
"Thank god for long-necked bottles, the angel's remedy."--Tom Petty
phone : (619) 592-4177
UUCP : {hplabs|nosc|hpfcla|ucsd}!hp-sdd!martya
Internet : martya@sdd.hp.com
CSNET : martya%hp-sdd@hplabs.csnet
US mail : Hewlett-Packard Co., 16399 W. Bernardo Drive, San Diego CA 92127-1899 USA
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 07:45:05 PST
From: "b_turnbaugh"@csc32.enet.dec.com
Subject: RE: Homebrew Digest #547 (November 30, 1990)
Hi All,
I am relatively a new brewer, about 7 batches and all ales. I read
a couple of digests ago that Mcnally@wsl.dec.com suggests trying to culture
Chimay yeast and brewing a batch. Well I went out and bought a pint of the
red label ($4.89 a pint) and successfully cultured the yeast. This has to
be the best ale I have ever tasted, and I would really like to brew an all
grain batch. It is really sweet and not much bittering hops. Any comments
on Chimay, and anyone have a recipe??? It was mentioned that there is a
recipe for Trappist ale in "DAVES" book. Is that Home Brewing by Dave Miller?
Thanks: Bob T.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 10:44:24 EST
From: bostech!bostech!loc@ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Glass Fermentation Locks
In Digest #546 Peter Soper talks about using glass fermentation locks and
that they are "expensive unobtanium over here".
There is a source for these in the U.S.A.. Beer and Wine Hobby in
Worborn, MA always has them in stock. They are not cheap, but if handled
properly they should last a *long* time.
They can be reached by phone at 1-800-523-5423 or (617)933-8818.
Enjoy,
Roger Locniskar
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 09:28:53 PST
From: bobc@Eng.Sun.COM (Bob Clark - Sun Engineering)
Subject: Notes from Anchor Steam tour
My brewing buds and I took our (almost) annual tour of Anchor Steam
yesterday. I thought I'd just mention a couple of details which have
been brought up for discussion here at different times:
1) They aerate the wort while hot
2) They use two different yeasts, one lager, one ale, for the various
brews.
3) For Liberty Ale, they dry hop (whole hops). Speaking of which, the
Liberty out of the tap is *wonderful*!
Noise: No on newsgroup. rec.food.drink is already there. Thank you, Rob.
Bob Clark
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 09:59:10 PST
From: dreger@seismo.gps.caltech.edu
Subject: Butterscoth - Diacytle
All this talk of diacytle and butterscotch has got me craving a Newcastle,
Old Peculiar, Youngs Winterwarmer ! My perception of the tastes of these
brews is that there is an underlying carmely smoothness (butterscotchy)
flavor, which I really enjoy. The problem is in my attempts to duplicate
this taste by adding Mollassus and greater than a pound of medium crystal
malt produce great beers but they don't have the butterscotchy taste.
Does any one know how to achieve higher levels of diacytal, but not so
high as to make it cloying? I've read that one brewery obtains higher
levels of diacytle because the yeast readily falls out of suspension.
I recall a few days ago a digest reader indicated that he racked his
beer into a secondary and fermentation abruptly ceased. I am wondering
if this brew turned out to have noticable diacytle ?
Any help is appreciated
Doug Dreger
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 18:51:06 GMT
From: gkn@Sds.Sdsc.Edu (Gerard K. Newman)
Subject: Concern about "aroma"
Hi:
First, a little background:
The guy across the street, who owns a restaurant (a very nice one,
at that) and I collaberated on a lager -- he has nice restaurant
stoves, walk-in refridgeration, etc. and an interest in homebrewing.
We brewed a bock, 2 stage, partial mash, OG ~ 1.060, Wyeast Bavarian,
with a FG ~ 1.016 or so. Primary fermentation was 10 days at 45
degrees F, secondary was 4 weeks (!!) at 45 degrees F. The length of
the secondary fementation was driven by the continual signs of activity
from the fermentation lock, so I figured if it was happy I should be.
The mash went as well as any I have ever attempted; hell, with that
nice restaurant stove it was wonderfully easy to control the temperature.
The secondary fermenter is a 22 liter lexan carboy, with a #12 rubber
stopper in the top. The stopper is the standard black rubber lab
grade stuff, and the carboy was autoclaved before use (it's nice when
your SO works in a tissue culture lab and can borrow the 'clave on
weekends ;-).
When we bottled this the other night, we noticed a very thin film
across the top of the beer in the carboy (which was crystal-clear,
so we didn't need to fine it). The film was whitish, slightly oily,
and smelled *exactly* like the rubber stopper. I mean, not a "rubbery"
odor, but *exactly*. The carboy was transported from the restaurant
to the house (about 25 miles) in a truck, and I wasn't there, but I
don't think it was subjected to any abuse on the way.
Now, here's the question:
What is it? If it's bad, any speculation on what we did wrong?
Not worrying, mind you.
gkn Gerard K. Newman gkn@sds.sdsc.edu 619.534.5076
San Diego Supercomputer Center gkn@sdsc.bitnet 619.534.5152 FAX
PO Box 85608 sdsc::gkn (27.1/span)
San Diego, CA 92186-9784 ucsd!gkn
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 10:56:53 -0800
From: krweiss@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Mark Rouleau is worrying, dammit!
Mark Rouleau writes:
> The beer in the primary was covered with gooey plasticky mustard-colored
> stuff. I left this top layer and the bottom layer of trub/dead yeast behind.
>
> The medium-brown beer started bubbling away happily in the carboy at a
> rate of about one ever 5-10 seconds. Within a day an inch of sandy
> sediment (dead yeast, I assume) had accumulated. Seven days have passed
> since the racking and it's still bubbling about once every 10 seconds.
> The layer of yeast is now almost two inches high, and the beer is
> dark-brown.
>
> What should I do?
Oh my God! Mark, you poor bastard, you've got 5 gallons of b-b-b-beeeeer!
;-)
I've never actually said this before, and I'm sure there will be about a dozen
other posts with the same advice, but Mark, relax, don't worry, have a
homebrew! When the bubbles slow down to one every minute or so, prime it and
bottle it.
You've done everything absolutely perfectly, as far as I can tell from your
post. The only comment I would make is that rather than doing a single stage
fermentation in a large carboy, I'd use the large carboy as a primary, and
continue to rack into 5 gallon secondaries after the krauesen settles down. In
my admittedly limited experimentation with home brewing, the two factors that
had the greatest positive influence on my beer were switching to two stage
fermentation, and switching to liquid yeast cultures.
Ken Weiss
krweiss@ucdavis.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 10:15:36 PST
From: marcs@SLC.COM (Marc San Soucie)
Subject: Long Ferment
Marc Rouleau writes:
> My current batch is a brown ale with two cans of John Bull Amber, a pound
> of crystal steeped at 175 degrees for 25 minutes (I now know that was too
> high), hop pellets, and Wyeast German Ale yeast.
Yum. My favorite basic recipe, save for leaf instead of pellet and some variety
of English instead of German.
> The beer in the primary was covered with gooey plasticky mustard-colored
> stuff. I left this top layer and the bottom layer of trub/dead yeast behind.
Right.
> Seven days have passed since the racking and it's still bubbling about once
> every 10 seconds. The layer of yeast is now almost two inches high, and the
> beer is dark-brown.
Sounds great.
> What should I do?
Wait until it's done fermenting. Sometimes these things just take a while. With
this recipe, which I've used in one form or another about 15 times, the
fermentations have almost always taken 2-3 weeks, and occasionally longer. Your
ferment temperature (70) is reasonable, though mine usually sit at 65 degrees
or so. A ferment of 8 weeks is not unheard of. You have a happy beer, and a lot
of happy yeast. Sooner or later you will have a happy grin on your face.
Marc San Soucie
The John Smallbrewers
Portland, Oregon
marcs@slc.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 17:16:54 mst
From: hplabs!hp-lsd.cos.hp.com!ihlpl!korz (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
Subject: Re: 1st time brew questions
Duane Smith writes:
> The temperature of the beer was 75 F when I pitched the yeast.
> The room temperature where I put the carboys varies from 65-70 F.
> After 24 hours active fermantation started But I never had a
> blowout occur---Why Not??
>
> The level of the beer in the carboy was up to the outside shoulder.
>
> The foam got up to the carboy neck but never out of it.
> Was the temp. too cold?
> Did I not put enough water in the carboy?? it was a 5 gal. carboy.
> All of the nasty brown stuff has dried on the carboy glass at the
> top.
Don't panic. The beer will come out just fine. The reason you did not
have blowoff is because the level in the carboy was too low. I top off
the carboy with boiled, chilled water so the level of the beer in the
carboy is 1.5 inches below the bottom of the stopper. Note that I use
a 5/8" diameter hose stuck onto a 1/2" hard plastic tube (3" long) stuffed
through a reamed-out rubber stopper. When I drilled out the stopper, it
was ugly, but the plastic tube was a snug fit so it has a tight seal.
Too small a blowoff hose can clog and give you a beer volcano. Another
method for attaching a blowoff tube is to press a 1.25" OD PVC hose into
the neck of the carboy -- no stopper at all.
The main advantage of getting rid of the kraeusen (yes, it has a double
meaning in brewing), the "head" if you will, is to reduce the amount of
fusel oils that are produced during the vigorous initial fermentation.
These fusel oils (I've also read fusel "alcohols") are rumoured to
cause headaches and I have found that my beer is much less astringent
since I started using the blowoff method. Whether this astrignency is
due to the "fusels" or some other fermentation by-product, I don't know.
One thing you can still do, is try to get as little of the brown crust
into the beer when you siphon it out of the carboy.
Al.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 18:55:23 CST
From: Mike Charlton <umcharl3@ccu.UManitoba.CA>
Subject: Weizen Bier
Hello. I thought I'd comment on the Weizen bier topic. Having been
to Germany recently and having had many of their fine beers on tap, I have
formed a great interest in brewing weizen bier. There are 2 types of weizen
bier: krystal (sp?) and hefe. The krystalweizen is brewed at high
temperatures throughout the fermentation process (~68 degress F) and is
filtered before it is kegged or bottled. This is because the saccaromyces
delbruecii strain of yeast has a very high phenol content and imparts a
strong clove flavour (in general, stronger than most people prefer --
myself included). A hefeweizen bier undergoes a primary fermentation
at 68 degress F for about 2 weeks. At this time, it is shocked cooled
to near freezing. The result is that the yeast is killed. They rack the
beer off the yeast and pitch a slurry of lager yeast at high kraeusen.
The beer is then lagered for 1 to 2 months. The resulting beer has a
very much reduced phenol content. If the beer is served from the bottle,
it is usually swished around to pick up every last bit of the yeast
sediment (a little different from our normal homebrew pouring techniques
:-)). I have successfully made a krystalweizen using Miller's recipe
and using WYeast German Wheat Beer Yeast. I found that it was very much
in character with the beers I had in Germany. However, It tastes much
better if you are careful not to pour in the yeast. I don't have a spare
fridge yet, so I haven't tried a hefeweizen bier. I think I'll have to
buy a fridge, though, because I think it is my favorite
type of beer.
Mike Charlton
P.S. Please excuse the numerous spelling mistakes. I don't really have time
to check all the spellings...
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 17:48:00 PST
From: Bob Devine 30-Nov-1990 1243 <devine@cookie.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Origin of lime in beer
Stephen D. Cohen writes:
> The Suddeutche Weizen is often served with a slice of lemon
> (the Mexicans Yuppies didn't invent it! :-)) to bring out the fruity
> flavors of the Weizenbier.
The reasoning for putting lime juice in Mexican beers predates yuppies.
Here's a quote from a DECie (Gerardo Fernandez) who was born and lived
for most of his life in Mexico
The first mexican beer with lime (and salt) was Tecate. Like 20 years
ago they develop a marketing stategy to have more market share with
that beer and they thought in putting the lime to avoid the can taste
this beer has (ugh!) This comes in bottle now also... Modelo respond
saying that lime in beer would make the same effect than LIME IN
MILK!... And in the US you only get Modelo beers that way at the
bars!, that's embarasing!.
Bob Devine
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 21:58:01 EST
From: Pete Soper <soper@maxzilla.encore.com>
Subject: brewing hazards
With all the talk of blowoff tubes recently I thought you'd like to hear about
an additional hazard. Not the explosion hazard but rather the effect of
temperature changes. It is important once the fermentation has subsided to
swap the blowoff tube back for a fermentation lock if there is any chance
of a temperature drop and the blowoff tube diameter is small. This is because
once the CO2 production subsides, a drop in temperature will cause the yuck in
the blowoff sump to be aspirated into the fermenter. If CO2 production is still
going on at a significant rate it is likely that the evidence of this
happening will be erased, leading to all manner of confusion and superstitious
conclusions.
While on this subject let me share a story. A year ago a friend of mine who
is a much more experienced brewer than me was trying out an experimental
fermentation procedure with a 5 gallon glass carboy. It got stopped up while
in the peak of activity. He had been away from the house and when he returned
he was greeted by a smell permeating the house. When he entered the room where
his fermenter had been he found glass shards driven into the walls and
hardwood furniture and wort smeared over the walls, floor and ceiling. My friend
is convinced that if the explosion had happened while he was in the room he
would have been killed outright.
Another hazard that has been covered in private mail and perhaps in the
Digest has to do with air expansion from heat. There is a popular large funnel
sold by homebrew shops with a screen in it that allows wort to be easily
poured from kettle to fermenter. If the fermenter happens to be a glass carboy
with the typical narrow mouth and the wort happens to be hot, to be diluted
and cooled by cold water in the waiting carboy, then you can get an effect I
and others have seen first hand. While there is little danger of breaking the
carboy with the hot wort since it will just dive into the cold water and be
cooled, there is a fast jump in temperature inside and the air in the carboy
will expand very quickly. This can cause a positive pressure that is so abrupt
that hot wort can be blown back out the funnel, toward the bodies of the
people present. I treated this as a one-trial learning experience a few years
ago and feel pretty lucky that my wife who was holding the funnel was not
struck. I got minor burns but it was mainly an injury of pride.
One last thing about pressure hazards. If you start using a counter pressure
bottle filler, you *will* eventually spray beer into your face at least once.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 23:10:44 EST
From: Pete Soper <soper@maxzilla.encore.com>
Subject: measuring attenuation
I've found something that helps make time pass more quickly as I wait for a
fermentation to take place. This is to keep a log of the date, time and the
seconds between fermentation lock "glubs". I've collected a lot of data and
have come to some general conclusions about its usefulness.
First, there is no argument that we don't know how much gas comes out of a
fermentation lock when it glubs. Likewise, there are almost certainly
variations in the volume from one glub to the next. However if we ignore this
and believe that over a large number of samples the volume of glubs average
out then we can concentrate on the glub rate. I believe it is the rate, the
total count and changes in rate that carry all the interesting information.
Before I forget it, it is also useful to log temperature if you can.
Significant temperature changes throw a wrench into what I'm about to describe.
Anyway, I'm going to describe a fermentation I carried in August and the data
collected from it and show you what can be learned from this.
Below is a typical line from my notebook for a fermentation:
August 18 8am 3.2 seconds 51F 10pm 3.9 seconds 51F
This just says that at 8am there were 3.2 seconds between "glubs" and so on.
Taking all the entries like these for a complete fermentation and converting
the date and time to cumulative elapsed hours and adding "glubs per minute"
the data for this fermentation looks like this:
elapsed hours seconds per glub glubs per minute temperature
6.00 10.00 6.00 53
16.00 5.00 12.00 52
25.00 4.00 15.00 51
31.00 2.50 24.00 51
40.00 1.71 35.09 51
48.00 1.00 60.00 51
54.00 1.00 60.00 51
64.00 1.18 50.85 51
74.00 1.36 44.12 51
87.00 1.82 32.97 51
98.00 2.22 27.03 51
104.00 2.40 25.00 51
112.00 3.75 16.00 51
122.00 5.50 10.91 51
126.00 5.90 10.17 51
136.00 9.60 6.25 51
146.00 9.0 6.67 51
Now by integrating the curve represented by this data we can establish that
there were 231,377 total glubs (give or take :-). This means that all the CO2
created except for that still in solution in the beer translates to this glub
total. So each time the lock glubs, 1/231,377 of the fermentation is complete.
Another way to look at it is that we know we start with 100% of the
fermentables and as the fermentation proceeds, this value will go down until
it reaches zero at the end. I'm ignoring a few inconvenient issues like the fact
that in the case above the fermentation isn't really done; after racking and
lagering there will still be another few percent of the total attenuation left
to do. Also, changes in temperature can cause changes in rate, especially as
the gas in the fermenter expands or contracts. But converting to show the
change in remaining fermentables the data look like this:
elapsed hours % fermentables cumulative
remaining glubs
0.0 100.0 0
6.0 99.5 1080
16.0 97.2 6480
25.0 94.0 13770
31.0 91.0 20790
40.0 84.1 36744
48.0 74.3 59565
54.0 64.9 81165
64.0 50.5 114419
74.0 38.2 142909
87.0 25.2 172972
98.0 16.7 192770
104.0 12.6 202134
112.0 8.4 211974
122.0 4.9 220047
126.0 3.8 222577
136.0 1.7 227502
146.0 0.0 231377
If the data from the first two columns above is plotted you will see the type
of reverse "S" curve that is frequently found in the brewing books.
My contention is that given a relatively constant fermentation temperature
it is possible to directly monitor the wort attenuation, without measurement
of specific gravity or anything fancier like gas flow rates, which are certainly
beyond the budget of most of us. Not to say I wouldn't like to hear a peep
out of those folks at Berkeley that polled about their electronic specific
gravity sensors some time ago. They asked their questions and then dropped
back off the planet.
What this really boils down to for most of us is common sense as we get used
to watching fermentations take place. We get a feel for the pace in various
situations, with various ingredients. This is just an attempt to show how
it is possible to get very fine grained information from simple observations.
Also, I've shared this with very few other brewers and am open to the
possibility that I've been deceived into thinking this has one iota of validity.
Please blast this bubble if you can.
The above example was of a lager primary fermentation for a Czech-style
pilsner. The original gravity was 1.048 and it was around 1.014 at racking
for lagering (don't have my notes handy). A packet of Wyeast 1042 was used but
special starter procedures were also used to get a real commercial pitching
rate. I had a few ounces of thick paste and the fermentation was roaring
after six hours at 53 degrees. It might also be interesting to know that the
starter was cooled to 35 degrees a day before pitching and was then warmed to
around 45 degrees just before being used. I really believe that if commercial
lager brewers can pitch at low temperatures and get fast results we can too. The
problem in my opinion is that as homebrewers with liquid yeast cultures we
are usually pitching way too little yeast or fumbling the temperature changes
in the wrong way.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pete Soper (soper@encore.com) +1 919 481 3730
Encore Computer Corp, 901 Kildaire Farm Rd, bldg D, Cary, NC 27511 USA
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 22:13:01 PST
From: rush@xanadu.llnl.gov (Alan Edwards)
Subject: Anchor Christmas Ale--it's finally here!
Hello fellow beer lovers:
Our local liquor outlet finally got a shippment of Anchor's special
Christmas ale. I eagerly bought a 12 pack. As I had my first taste,
I noticed on the label that they change the recipe every year. Then
I realized that it had a strange new taste that I had never had in
a beer before--spruce!. I've never had a spruce beer before, so
maybe I'm wrong, but I really like it. I know that there must be
some fellow beer lovers on the list who can tell me if I am right
or not. Go get some before they're all gone! And tell us what you
taste in it.
I got some St. Stan's Fest beer in the same trip. I'm looking forward to
tasting that too. I bought two cases of that last year, it was so good.
How I love the Holiday season!
-Alan
P.S.
My apologies if either of the above mentioned beers are not available
in your area.
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #548, 12/03/90
*************************************
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