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HOMEBREW Digest #0896
This file received at Sierra.Stanford.EDU 92/06/05 00:07:50
HOMEBREW Digest #896 Fri 05 June 1992
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Hop Identification-Sierra Nevada ("Peter W. Karlson")
Urethane in homebrew (WAYNE HINES)
mead supplies (Michael Gildner)
toilet humor (Russ Gelinas)
michigan ("Spencer W. Thomas")
Re: Wyeast Belgian revisited (Norm Pyle)
Immersion chillers and long siphons (BOB JONES)
Wyeast Delbrukii (Dennis J. Templeton)
Stuck lager (Tom Barstow - Sun BOS Software)
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Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 08:34:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Peter W. Karlson" <pk@columbus.dfci.harvard.edu>
Subject: Hop Identification-Sierra Nevada
According to Jack Erickson "Star Spangled Beer" the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
contains cascade, cluster & willamette
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Date: Thu, 04 Jun 92 09:22:53 EST
From: WAYNE HINES <IWLH%SNYCENVM.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: Urethane in homebrew
Chemists/Brwers:
A fellow brew buddy would like to know the posibility of homebrewed
beer containing urethane? Apparently urethane is a byproduct of quickly
fermented beer, so he tells me. He also explained to me that urethane is a
carcinogen, any explanation of this would also be appreciated.
Wayno
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Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 07:47:42 EDT
From: mmlai!lucy!gildner@uunet.UU.NET (Michael Gildner)
Subject: mead supplies
Hello Fellow Brewers,
I've decided to try to make a batch of mead since I can't
find a commercial variety to buy. I've never tasted the stuff,
I'm just curious. --- The problem is I don't know where to
find good honey. Does anyone know of a good mail order dealer
or a local place in the Balto-Wash. area to buy bulk honey?
Mike Gildner
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Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 9:47:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: R_GELINAS@UNHH.UNH.EDU (Russ Gelinas)
Subject: toilet humor
No, Jack, my question about using dehumidifier water was not a joke. My
initial feeling was "Ugh, scary stuff", but then I realized it might have
some nice qualities, such as never being exposed to chlorine and being very
soft. I would certainly use a new clean catch basin, and I would obviously
boil the hell out of it before I would use it. So I tossed the question
out, and got some good responses. I've decided not to use it, because it
will probably have a metallic taste, and there's a question of microorganisms
that I don't want to deal with, even with a boil. I'm sort of surprised,
though, Jack, that such a passionate "standard brewing practice" debunker
as yourself would dismiss a real question about a "non-standard" practice
as a joke.
Re. cleaning copper: One of the best pieces of advice I've received from
this HBD is to boil copper tubing in a water/vinegar mixture to clean it.
About a cup of vinegar in 5 gallons is enough. The tubing comes out shiny.
For an immersion chiller, you don't really care about the inside of the
tubing. I give it a once over with a steel wool pad and hot rinse after
each use.
Micah sez don't recycle the mash. Hmmm. That'll shorten sparging time too.
What the heck, I'll give it a try this weekend. Thanks, Florian, too, your
dump in boiling water to mash out should speed things up too. (I got sh*t
last weekend for spending too much time in the cellar. :-/
Russ
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 09:50:24 EDT
From: "Spencer W. Thomas" <Spencer.W.Thomas@med.umich.edu>
Subject: michigan
Lots of homebrew here in Michigan. There are several good supply
stores in the area. For quick "pick ups" I go to a local "party
store" that has a good selection. For major shopping trips, I go to
the G.W. Kent retail outlet (they're wholesale only by mail-order),
where prices tend to be a little lower (two data points: Coopers Light
Extract was about 25% cheaper, and I got Fix's book for near
wholesale). If you want grain, there's a supply shop about 20 minutes
south of Ann Arbor that has a roller mill in the back, and will sell
you crushed grain for the same price that Kent sells it uncrushed (in
small quantities).
We have an active homebrew club, the Ann Arbor Brewer's Guild, with
about 70 members, for which I serve as the e-mail contact. Josh
Grosse (a frequent HBD contributer) and I are now co-editing the
newsletter, as well. July will see our annual BeerBQ, complete with a
pig roast.
=Spencer W. Thomas HSITN, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
spencer.thomas@med.umich.edu 313-747-2778
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 08:06:52 MDT
From: pyle@intellistor.com (Norm Pyle)
Subject: Re: Wyeast Belgian revisited
This thread brings up a valid point about problem solving via the hbd.
Problems can often be attributed to technique, but also to bad luck. A good
technique may work well for years before a particularly hearty wild yeast or
bacteria infects your brew. I say the technique is "good" because it worked
for years. Often, a single variable will change for the instance the brew
turned bad, and the brewer will blame that variable, when it may have nothing
to do with the problem.
I guess the point is that if you have a problem, try to be as scientific
about it as possible (i.e. don't jump to conclusions). If you're commenting
on someone else's problem, do the same. We don't need to run off half-cocked
(or half-crocked) yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre house.
As far as Wyeast related problems go, I'm inclined to believe slow starts are
much more of an issue than purity. Just MHO.
Norm
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 09:00 PDT
From: BOB JONES <BJONES%NOVAX@NOVA.llnl.gov>
Subject: Immersion chillers and long siphons
In response to Frank Dobner questions :
Twice this month I have heard similar concern about cleaning the inside of
an immersion cooler. After further questioning, I discovered that some brewers
wrongly think you should place the cooler in a bucket of ice water and flow
the hot work through the inside of the cooler. Listen up brewers, you immerse
the cooler IN the hot wort and run the cool city water through the INSIDE of
the cooler. That way you don't need to worry (assumming any of REALLY worry)
about cleaning the cooler. I ask the first person who was doing this if he had
a hard time connecting up to the 3/4 inch hose fiitings and he said. yeah. I
ask if he stopped to think about why there were garden hose fitting on the
cooler to start with? He had no comment, just this pie in the face look.
On you other problem, Frank, of long siphoning. Why don't you just start
the siphon close to the brew pot, through a short piece of hose. Then just
connect that hose to the long hose that leads to the basement or wherever.
Gravity will do the rest of the work for you. Also you should be cooling with
your immersion cooler in your brew pot BEFORE you transfer to your fermentation
vessel to avoid hot side aereation problems.
Milwaukee dreamin,
Bob Jones
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 12:37:15 -0400
From: djt2@po.CWRU.Edu (Dennis J. Templeton)
Subject: Wyeast Delbrukii
In response to todays post about a home-cultured S. delbrukii not fermenting
all the way out:
My pure delbrukii was a little sweet but not "halfway" (more like 1.010).
Adding the other clone (S. cerevisciae) in the real batch produced a drier
product, as expected.
I got a private response that said that (as had been discussed here some
while ago) some/many folks use a single culture S. delbrukii in their wheat
beers with good result.
dennis
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 13:26:53 EDT
From: tbarstow@suneast.East.Sun.COM (Tom Barstow - Sun BOS Software)
Subject: Stuck lager
I brewed two batches of honey-ginger lager back in late
February (see recipe at end), the only difference being
the type of yeast used. Wyeast #2007 (Pilsener) is in one;
Whitbread Lager Yeast is in the other. The two-stage
fermentations seemed to proceed normally, although the colors
differed substantially until recently.
I decided to bottle last night and found that the Whitbread-
based batch seems to be stuck at 1.019 whereas the Wyeast
batch was down to 1.008. I went ahead and bottled the Wyeast
batch and boiled 2 tablespoons of yeast energizer with a cup
of water and dumped that into the Whitbread batch to see if
I could get the fermentation started again. Nothing as of this
morning, however.
So what do I do if it is stuck? Electro-shock? Threats?
Therapy? It's too sweet to drink (and presumably wouldn`t
carbonate, either). Please send replies to me directly at
tbarstow@suneast.East.Sun.COM
since I'm not currently getting the digest itself.
Thanks.
-Tom
Recipe:
3.5# M&F light DME
2.5# clover honey
2t yeast energizer
2.5 oz ginger root, grated
1.5 oz Cascades hops (65 min.)
0.5 oz Cascades hops (3 min.)
yeast
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #896, 06/05/92
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