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HOMEBREW Digest #2428
HOMEBREW Digest #2428 Wed 28 May 1997
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: janitor@hbd.org
Many thanks to the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers of
Livonia, Michigan for sponsoring the Homebrew Digest.
URL: http://www.oeonline.com
Contents:
Re: Weizen (MARK WOOD)
re: Help, ruined? ("Moyer, Douglas E")
Brewpubs in Montreal (David North)
Yeast Autolysis Question? (RANDY ERICKSON)
Whole hops are more natural than pellets (Brian Pickerill)
D.r Pivo's reply ("David R. Burley")
Carbonation (JeffHailey)
1997 Longshot Competition (Jim Thomas)
Sulfuric Acid + Salt as ingredients? (Hector Landaeta)
A Cree Indian recipe for Home uh,er? Brew??? (TheTHP)
Sparge Time, Gelatin Finings (aab1)
re:dry yeast question ("Greg Pickles")
carbonation and fill level (Spencer W Thomas)
lagering/o-rings/hose ID/fizzkeeper/air "carbonating"/hop year/keg priming (korz)
Serious Gas>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> (Charlie Scandrett)
Airlocks? Why bother? (Mike Spinelli)
Longshot URL Correction (Jim Thomas)
Gravity and pressure... (Some guy)
keg mods and priming/pressure cooking/seeded hops/pressure ferment/too-dark beer (korz)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 08:23:17 -0400
From: MARK_WOOD@ed.gov (MARK WOOD)
Subject: Re: Weizen
David Johnson <dmjalj@inwave.com> wrote . . .
<< I just made a bavarian style weizen. I used wyeast 3068 and it has
finished fermenting and is now sitting there looking murkily at me. I
know that this yeast doesn't floc well and that the style can be
cloudy but should I go ahead and bottle "Big Muddy". >>
I'm currently brewing my second batch of Weizen, using Wyeast 3068.
The first batch is just 10 days in the bottle, but it's already
delicious !! I hate to rub it in, but my Weizen finished very clean
and clear. It can almost pass for a Pilsner in terms of color and
body. I used only 6 pounds of 55%/45% wheat/barley malt extract and
about 5 AAU's of Hallentauer hops. That's it. OG of 1.040. FG of
1.008. My second batch was 7 pounds of extract but it's about a
gallon more. OG is 1.045. It's in the secondary now and I expect it
to be clear and ready to bottle by the weekend.
It's true the 3068 doesn't floculate particularly well. My bottles
aren't horribly yeasty, but it's much harder to pour without getting
some yeast in your glass. Still, this is style appropriate. If
you're in doubt, I suggest giving it plenty of time in the secondary.
This beer is great with minimal bottle conditioning and is a very
refreshing hot weather beer.
Woody
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 9:30:13 -0400
From: "Moyer, Douglas E" <moyer-de@salem.ge.com>
Subject: re: Help, ruined?
John,
I'm no expert, but as I understand it, there will be little to no oxygen
left in the carboy's headspace after initial fermentation. (Initial
fermentation's yeasties using what they need plus the normal air mix
being lighter than CO2, and thus bubbled out the airlock early on.)
Recent posts and an article in Brewing Technologies lead us to believe
that the yeast can reproduce and do their sugar/alcohol conversion trick
without oxygen, but their cell walls will be progressively weaker unless
they can get what they need from nearby dead yeast cells (which it sounds
like you left behind in the primary fermenter). Therefore, if you are
going to repitch during the secondary you probably need a large starter
or your yeast will not have the materials they need to produce enough
generations to do the trick.
I would guess that a better starter size is more critical at this stage
of the game. I would hesitate to bottle it. I'm interested in hearing
what the collective mind will produce...
Doug Moyer
Big Lick Brewing Collective
"A Big Lick--when size matters!"
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 11:12:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: dnorth@ijco.com (David North)
Subject: Brewpubs in Montreal
I will be in Montreal for a week in June and am trying to find brewpub
recommendations. I've done my searches, but the addresses I found were not
very meaningful to me. I will be staying downtown. Private e-mail please.
David North
dnorth@ijco.com
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:41:10 -0700
From: RANDY ERICKSON <RANDYE@mid.org>
Subject: Yeast Autolysis Question?
Hi All:
I've got a question for all the yeast experts out there.
I planned to brew this last weekend using about two cups of slurry I'd
saved from the previous batch. I basically followed the washing
technique from the FAQ and kept the jar at 35 degrees (F) for three
weeks. The yeast was 1968 ESB, BTW.
I popped open a jar of starter wort, and opened the yeast jar. Whoa,
big-time rotten tire aroma, very unpleasant. I consulted Miller and
TNCJOHB and pretty much concluded that what I had was autolysis
which in my interpretation is a terminal condition. I added the wort
anyway, since it was open, but I scrapped my brewing plans.
The funny thing is, after one day, and even now after three, the starter
smelled normal, not offensive at all!
Which begs the question, Is autolysis reversible? OR did I misinterpret
the condition of my yeast? It seems to me that three weeks is not that
long of a time to expect to store slurry, especially at that temperature.
Thoughts, comments?
Thanks -- Randy in Modesto
------------------------------
Date-warning: Date header was inserted by BSUVC.bsu.edu
From: 00bkpickeril@bsuvc.bsu.edu (Brian Pickerill)
Subject: Whole hops are more natural than pellets
Responding to a question about whole versus pellet hops, I mentioned that I
had not used whole hops yet, but was looking forward to using them in their
natural form.
Ray Estrella takes me to task in HBD 2421:
>Is Folger's less natural than whole bean coffee, extract less natural than
>whole grain barley, flour less natural than whole wheat, etc.?
Yes, absolutely. In _nature_, coffee is found as a bean, barley and wheat
are corns, and hops are not in pellet form. They are _processed_ into the
consumer products, not found that way in _nature_.
> There is nothing wrong with pellet hops.
Uh, right. Don't make it into a value judgement. I never said there was
anything wrong with them, in fact I said that it's all I have ever used!
>I use a 85 -15 % split in favor of pellets
>right now. Will go to 60 -40 % next season, after I harvest my first hop crop.
Are your new hops growing in pellet form, Ray? :) Pelletizing the hops
doesn't make them artificial, but it does make them less _natural_.
>... Pellets are easier to work with, storing, measuring, etc. And give a
>better utilization for bittering.
Those are reasons for processing the hops. Mainly, I'm looking forward to
using whole hops as a filter bed for hot break in my converted keg. I want
to avoid hot break in my primary and the pellet trub that is impossible to
strain out of the last gallon of wort. I get a lot of pellets in the trub
even when using hop bags.
- --Brian Pickerill
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 12:46:02 -0400
From: "David R. Burley" <Dave_Burley@compuserve.com>
Subject: D.r Pivo's reply
Brewsters:
I'm sure Dr. Pivo's incorrect characterization of my comments on the effe=
ct
of headspace and carbonation was unintentional, but I respectfully submit=
that he should read comments more thoroughly so as not to make a similar
error in the future.
As he pointed out, I did outline all the potential reasons why it could o=
r
couldn't happen and then say that I was skeptical ( because I always
assumed that the pfft on opening was misleading as to carbonation of the
beer), but I also said that I couldn't deny the observations of others su=
ch
as Scott Murman and AlK. I especially highlighted the one experiment AlK=
(
I called it a "deaf and blind experiment" after someone else here in the
HBD characterized it as such) did in which he compared several partially
filled bottles. He did the experiment carefully in that he let his wife
open the bottles in the next room and then he judged the "carbonation" by=
subjectively observing the head and tasting the beers,as I recall. =
What is lacking in all of these observations is the definition and
evaluation of carbonation as the CO2 dissolved in the beer. I submit tha=
t
the sound of pressure release of a bottle does not allow the observer to
determine the degree of carbonation of a bottle, nor head height nor even=
the taste - within limits. AlK's clever experimental method did eliminate=
the first problem, but not the second.
I do believe that one can explain a higher pressure release or a longer
more observable release with more headspace, easily, as I did in my first=
set of comments. The pressure in the bottles is the sum of the air plus t=
he
CO2 generated by the sugar added as priming. Like others I have observed
that an overfilled bottle has less of a pfft than a normally filled one. =
This sound is related to the volume and pressure of the gas in the
headspace and unrelated to the carbonation levels in a normal, properly
primed beer. Beer temperature, time of storage at a cold temperature ( u=
p
to about a day - as we keggers know) will affect this pressure. I assume
that we subconsciously believe that more pfft is a higher carbonation -
which is not always the case when the headspace contains air or the beer
temperature is different or the beer was recently cooled. Thus my
skepticism on the myth which relates headspace and carbonation. =
Based on my understanding of chemical stoichiometry, I cannot believe tha=
t
the carbonation is higher in partially filled bottles unless "normally"
filled bottles have not fully consumed the sugar added as priming. I cou=
ld
then believe that perhaps the oxygen in the headspace allowed the yeast
population to grow a little and helped the yeast consume more of the suga=
r,
as a way to explain AlK's results. Or another explanation ( discredited
here recently by Jeff Hailey as an important source of excess CO2) is tha=
t
the presence of oxygen in the headspace altered the biochemistry along
known pathways to produce CO2 exclusively instead of CO2 and alcohol from=
the priming sugar.
In my earlier epistle I suggested that several independent observations b=
e
made by HBDers in which the "headspace effect" was evaluated by experimen=
ts
in which in which the larger headspace did not contain any oxygen. Fill t=
he
bottles with CO2 or with nitrogen and then partially fill the bottles wit=
h
primed beer. In the absence of a GC or other instrumental method for
detecting CO2 it is possible to do a gravimetric or volumetric method for=
CO2 detection. Only the determination of the carbon dioxide content in t=
he
beer immediately upon opening ( or even better sampling through the cap o=
f
an unopened bottle via a septum) will prove whether or not headspace
affects actual carbonation. =
Keep on brewin'
Dave Burley
Kinnelon, NJ 07405
103164.3202@compuserve.com
Dave_Burley@compuserve.com =
Voice e-mail OK =
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 13:32:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: JeffHailey@aol.com
Subject: Carbonation
Well, folks, here I am to beat a dead horse.
Let's start by asking a question. What is carbonation? Rather,
how do we, as beer drinkers, measure carbonation while enjoying
our favorite brews?
Postulate 1: When drinking a beer, we can not tell directly the level
of carbonation (that is to say, the number of volumes of co2 dissolved
in the beer). Rather, we feel the bubbles of co2 coming out of
solution and being dispersed into our mouths.
OK, having said that, lets talk about co2 coming out of solution. In
theory, the release of co2 from solution should follow an exponentially
decaying curve. The rate of release has to do with a number of
factors, including:
1) Initial Carbonation level
2) Surface Area/volume ratio
3) Solubility of co2 in the beer
Q: Which of these 3 factors can we control?
A: All of them!
Initial carbonation is controlled by the priming rate. Surface area to
volume ratio is controlled by the container in which we serve the
beer. Solubility of co2 in the beer is controlled by the makeup of
the initial wort (ie ammount of protiens and dextrins) as well as the
handling of the beer.
CO2 is less soluble in a solution that has been handled roughly.
Shake up a can of coke (Don't try this experiment with BEER!).
Open the coke -- you get spray and foam. The co2 dissolved
in the coke is escaping very quickly. So, by rough handling, co2
escapes from solution more quickly than with gentle handling.
This gives the impression, upon drinking, of more carbonation.
I don't remember why this is so, but I remember talking about
this in my college physics classes.
Now, back to the bottle filling. The headspace above the beer
exerts a force on the beer in proportion to the pressure. When
the bottle is opened, the gas in the headspace tries to equalize
with the atmosphere. This, in turn, reduces the force on the
beer. This force of escaping gas moves the beer, causing co2
to become less soluble. If you have a greater headspace, the
force of escaping gas in the headspace lasts longer, moving
the beer more, causing co2 to become even less soluble in
the beer. Since the co2 is less soluble, more co2 escapes
solution, giving more bubbles, giving the impression of higher
initial carbonation.
Having said all of this, the same kinmatic solubility of co2 (to coin
a phrase) may have to do with the differing priming rates used
in kegging, as well. The beer in a keg system undergoes more
rough handeling than that in a bottle when it travles through the
beer line and tap.
I'm sure there are holes in this theory, but It's the best I have come
up with yet.
Cheers!
Jeff Hailey
Brewing in Tulsa, OK
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 12:58:15 -0500
From: Jim Thomas <jim.thomas@telops.gte.com>
Subject: 1997 Longshot Competition
Brewers,
Just called the Boston Beer Company Longshot Hotline (617) 368-5049 and
found out that there will be NO 1997 World Homebrew Competition. The
announcement says something like..."we regret to inform you that we will
not be holding this year's World Homebrew contest." They go on to say
that instead, Boston Beer Company will be sponsors of the AHA National
Homebrew Comp. NINKASI award for the next two years.
Interesting thing is if you hit the www.longshot.com homepage, there is
no mention that the competition has been cancelled.
Not to bash the AHA, but I find it interesting that they haven't
published something about this---electronically or otherwise. They did
after all promise a free WHC entry for those brewers who made it past
the first round of the NHC. I'll bet their entry numbers were improved
by this offer/affiliation.
Interesting stuff...huh?
Jim
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 14:11:03 -0400
From: Hector Landaeta <acarrasc@reacciun.ve>
Subject: Sulfuric Acid + Salt as ingredients?
<fontfamily><param>Times</param>I remember distinctly from being a
trainee at a PR job in Venezuela's foremost industrial brewer,
Cerveceria Polar, that during a visit to their prime brewing plant in
San Joaquin, my colleague there said that Polar's Master Brewers added
some amount I can't remember of "edible" sulfuric acid and about 9
kilograms (19.8 lb.) of salt to the mash (I can't remember the capacity
of the boiling tank but it was HUGE). I remember him saying that the
Master Brewers followed an ancient formula (I believe he said it was
German), that sternly dictated that those ingredients should always be
present in a pilsener (their mainstay product). I find now, as a
beginner at homebrewing, that no book or article I have consulted ever
mentions anything about sulfuric acid or salt. Not that I'm dying to
add them to my first beers but it did make me curious then and more
still now that I'm trying at deepening my understanding of beer making.
Does anyone have any clues?
Thanks.
Hector Landaeta
</fontfamily>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:41:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: TheTHP@aol.com
Subject: A Cree Indian recipe for Home uh,er? Brew???
All
I have recently been in contact with a fella living in Northern Scatachawan
Canada Somewhere north of the 55 parallel...He has made some beer himself but
much prefer's the native brew.
>It's called Chi Pwi Gees, in cree.
>Here's how they make it...
>ingredients
>4 potatoes
>2 grapefruit
>2 pounds of brown sugar
>9 packages of yeast
>2 cups of white sugar
>5 gallons of water
>and, whatever other fruit you want...
>
>directions: boil the brown sugar 20 minutes, then mix everything
>together in a cooler or pail, (cut up fruit, of course), let
>sit in a warm place 12-24 hours, and drink, and get drunk, tell lots of
>funny jokes and do stupid things.
>
>To drink, just dip your mug in the cooler, and drink with all the
>grapefruit and stuff floating around.
>
>Sounds neanderthal eh? Well, I love their home brew. It's warm
>and like a hot wine you'd buy at a ski resort for $7.50 (US)
>and with 5 gallons, lots of people can get drunk, and
>here in the north, when lots of people get drunk, strange things
>happen, cool and wonderful things, children are conceived....
>
>Anyways, about the brew we were drinking, tell me what you think
>of it. It doesn't seem to make you sick, and those people drink
>it every day, and they can still think pretty well.
>But what is it we are actually drinking, when it sits only that long?
>
>Any ideas how to improve it??
Wow, where to start?
Q1. Lacking any sugars from malt, I would say its not beer. But what then is
it?
Q2. Is all that yeast really neceassary? Im assuming this is bread yeast NOT
brewers yeast. I don't know off hand the max density of yeast cells in a 5
gal batch. Or how many viable cells are in the average baking yeast packet.
Help Jeff? Dan?? Wouldnt 2 0r 3 hit the same maximum limit?
Q3. What kind of alcohol level are we looking at here. Can't be too big can
it?
Suggestions for Improvements.
Substitute Malt sugar for the white table sugar.
Use brewers yeast instead of bakers yeast.
Do a partial mash with the potaotes any suggestions on temps/times.
This was just too interesting not to post. Tell me what you think, Ill
Summerize and repost.
Phil Wilcox
Poison Frog Home Brewery
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 15:32:14 -0400
From: aab1@chrysler.com
Subject: Sparge Time, Gelatin Finings
Howdy,
I've been brewing for about a year now and have recently completed my
first allgrain batch (successfully it seems so far, it's dry hopping
right now) using alot of knowledge and ideas gained from lurking around
here. Most questions I have get asked and answered before I get around
to it, but this one hasn't.
My question is, how long does one typically sparge for a 5 gallon batch
(collecting around 6 gallons that is) My homebrew shop says the flow
rates should be low enough so it takes at least an hour, some other
guys say they spend at least 10 minutes sparging, so, which is it
anyways.
Next question, There was some discussion about gelatin finings in the
secondary. Well, my latest batch is still looking a bit hazy so I
figured I may give it a try, but, I still havn't seen a complete post
on how to do it. If someone would be kind enough to email me or post to
the list some directions, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
Andy
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 13:05:01 -0700
From: "Greg Pickles" <gregp@wolfenet.com>
Subject: re:dry yeast question
In HBD 2427, Tim asks:
<snip>
>Is dry yeast naturally less attenuating than liquid yeast? What is up
>with the rocket starts and dead stops?
My answer is the famous "it depends". For any given brand of dry yeast you
will probably be able to find liquid yeast cultures that are more
attenuative ans some that are less. For me, life has been such lately that
I just can't make up starters (I frequently don't know when I will have
time to brew more than 24 hours in advance). Hence I have been using
Nottingham dry yeast and have found it to be very attenuative. Too much so,
in many cases. If I want a little less attenuation with a dry yeast, I use
Windsor. I have found that if I have a very fermentable wort, Nottingham
goes to completion very quickly - usually about 3 - 4 days (your 2 day
experience seems a little short but I have had a batch or two that were
nearly that short). Nottingham seems to be able to ferment some of the
higher sugars, at least better than other yeasts. If I have a dextrinous
wort, the bulk of the fermentation will go like gangbusters and then it
will slow way down and take an additional week or two to finish. I
attribute this to the yeast going after the higher sugars once the simple
ones are consumed.
Other factors that could be affecting your "rocket starts" are:
Pitching rate: Do you make a started for your liquid yeast? If not you are
certainly pitching at a higher rate when you use dry yeast.
Wort composition: Are the beers you have made with dry yeast the same as
those made with liquid? If they had a higher proportion of simple sugars,
they will ferment faster.
Ferementation temp: Different yeasts like different fermentation temps. If
you are fermenting all your beers under similar conditions, it may be that
your dry yeast likes the temp better than the liquid yeasts you have used.
I have found that Nottingham goes like crazy in the high 60's to low 70's
(deg F) but it produces too many esters for my likes. I have better luck in
the low to mid 60's and the fermentation rate is very reasonable.
Hope this helps,
Greg Pickles
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 16:30:50 -0400
From: Spencer W Thomas <spencer@engin.umich.edu>
Subject: carbonation and fill level
Does anyone on this list have a dissolved gas analyzer that can
measure dCO2? If so, can you please do an experiment and give us some
actual numbers, so we can lay this blinking thread to rest!?!
=Spencer Thomas in Ann Arbor, MI (spencer@umich.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 16:01:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: korz@xnet.com
Subject: lagering/o-rings/hose ID/fizzkeeper/air "carbonating"/hop year/keg priming
Sorry about these being a little dated... I was off-line most of last
week and these piled up:
Spencer writes:
> 1. Should ales be aged at ale temp(65F) or at lager temp(32F)?
>
>Depends on what you want to happen. Aging cold will reduce esters,
>diacetyl, etc., giving you a more "lager-like" flavor. Aging warm
>will do other stuff, but will still tend to mellow the harsh edges and
>round out the beer.
This is what you would think, but oddly, my experience (albeit one
datapoint) was the opposite: half of a Duesseldorfer Altbier batch
was cold-conditioned (40F) and half was warm-conditioned (65-70F)
for six months. Contrary to what you might think, the cold-conditioned
half were fruitier than the warm-conditioned ones. In all other
respects the beers were identical.
I *believe* that where cold conditioning benefits the beer is when
there are a lot of oxidized polyphenols and proteins (of the right size)
in the beer: the cold conditioning causes chill haze to form and
then settle out. Also, cold conditioning would be recommended when
you are using a yeast that is prone to autolysis since the cold would
slow this process. Comments?
***
Doug writes:
>1) How often should I change o-rings on the disconnect shafts?
I change mine every 5-10 batches. It really depends on how much you
fiddle with the connections. If you put them on and take them off 50
times per batch, I would change them after every batch.
>2) Is it unreasonable to expect the o-ring to hold pressure at 28 psi?
Not at all... the tanks are rated to 130psi. I wouldn't recommend
testing this rating, but I've used up to 40psi for force carbonating
warm beer and didn't notice any leaks on either the liquid or gas sides.
>I'm beginning to like the idea of giving the keg a shot of CO2 only when
>needed...
This won't help your problem (beer leaking out of the connector) unless
you also disconnect the liquid side too. One thing that may help is
stainless steel connectors. I've seen some pretty shabby plastic
connectors. Sure, the SS connectors are three times the price, but they
last 100 times longer.
***
I wrote:
>you were not where you thought you were. I still insist that if you are
>indeed saturating 33F beer with 25-30 psi of CO2, you have more than 4
>volumes of CO2 dissolved in it -- this will be foam city unless you have
>a 12 foot, 1/4" ID hose and it will be very highly carbonated whatever
>the hose length.
Actually, what I meant to write was 12-foot, 3/16" ID hose. The pressure
drop per foot on 3/16" ID hose is considerably higher than on 1/4" ID hose.
I would only use 1/4" ID hose where you *have* to run a very long beer line.
***
Art writes:
>This got me to thinking. Are those "fizz keeper" products a scam. You
>know, the pumps that attach to PET bottles to repressurize them...with
>ambient air. That shouldn't stop the CO2 from coming out of solution, right?
Right. They are a scam. Whoever dreamed them up never bothered to check the
physics.
>As a corollary question, why can't I "carbonate" with ambient air (mostly
>nitrogen)? Won't air go into solution under pressure and create bubbles as
>it comes out of solution in the glass? I understand the flavor
>contribution of carbonic acid won't be present.
No, air is mostly N2 and since N2 is relatively insoluble in beer, you to
get a significant amount of N2 in solution, you would have to use very
high pressures. Recall also that air is about 20% O2 and this would
severely oxidize your beer... no hop aroma, aldehydes... yuck! Remember
what (air pumped) kegger party beer tasted like the next morning? Feh!
***
Paul writes:
>Ask your home brew supplier or mail order service what harvest (as in
>year) the pellets or plugs are. Usually you?ll get a blank stare and then
>some lame explanation that since the hops have been pelletized or
>plugged it doesn?t matter. You can have faith in this if you want.
For the record, when I owned a homebrew supply store, I used to put
the crop year on each package of hops. This didn't seem to deter
people from buying 1993 crop year East Kent Golding pellets in 1995,
but I bought them in late 1993, they came in N2-purged, oxygen-barrier
bags, I repackaged them in CO2-purged, oxygen-barrier bags, and stored
them at around 40F (not as cold as ideal, but still pretty good). Whole
hops came in non-oxygen-barrier bags or burlap bales and those I
repackaged *immediately* into CO2-purged, oxygen-barrier bags.
Reality check: yesterday I brewed with some 1994 whole East Kent Goldings.
They were some stock that I held on to before selling the store. They
were regular stock, just like any customer would buy. When I opened
the packages, the room filled with the wonderful smell of fresh Goldings.
There is little doubt in my mind that these hops were as fresh as the
day I got them back in November of 1994.
I do agree with Paul, however, that this is often the exception rather
than the rule and I never sold US varieties of hop plugs at my store
simply because I knew the whole hops I had were fresher. Those hops
that were shipped to the UK to be made into plugs and then shipped back
may have been close enough in freshness to the whole hops I was selling,
but the wholesale price made the decision to not carry them easy.
Al.
Al Korzonas, Palos Hills, IL
korz@xnet.com
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 07:40:30 +1000 (EST)
From: Charlie Scandrett <merino@buggs.cynergy.com.au>
Subject: Serious Gas>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I have posted in the past about keg bombs and the dangers of working with
pressurised gas. Some have suggested that I lighten up? I reprot here a
story from a professinal forum (A HBD for pro brewers) about such a problem.
>I thought I'd share a little story with you. A story which happens to be
>true.
>You know how the old shop teachers always told stories about CO2 bottles
>getting dropped? How they go off like topedos? How they'll go right
>through a brick wall? Yada Yada Yada. Well fortunately we're all alive
>to tell ya "OH YES THEY DO". I arrived at the back dock a while back and
>observed a couple of cases of broken growlers that were just covered
>with muddy looking stuff. What's this? Says I. I look in the door, and
>the brewhouse looks like a disaster area. Gas bottles lying all over the
>place, holes in the ceiling. Dust and shit strewn all about. I head
>upstairs at an accellerated pace and find the owner and the restaurant
>mgr. viewing the damage in the grain room.
>One of the #20 bottles had a loss of structural integrity at a weld
>near the bottom of the bottle. Mercifully no one was in the brewhouse or
>the grain room at the time. The bottom fifth of the bottle blew right
>through the expanded metal on the rack and bent the 1/4" diamond plate
>front ramp. The top 4/5, complete with regulator and keg set-up, blew
>through the ceiling, taking out anything in its way! It blew through
>both layers of 3/4" plywood flooring in the grain room like it was
>cardboard (between the joists thank goodness), several grey totes full
>of tee shirts and didn't stop until it went through the sheet rock in
>the grain room ceiling.
> While waiting for somebody from our gas supplier to come survey
>the damage, I checked the inspection stamp on the tank. Over a year out
>of date, as was another #20 that I found. Needless to say, the gas co.
>was a little nervous. The retaurant manager said he couldn't believe
>the Brew Housse windows held, as far out as they bulged. Had the back door
>been latched instead of just closed, I bet they wouldn't have.
>The moral(s) of the story?
>*Check the inspection stamps on your gas bottles. I believe that they
>have to be hydrotested and stamped every 5 years.
>*Look out for old style two-piece bottle with a weld around the base.
>Personaly I wouldn't accept one no matter how recent the inspection.
>*Chain em up, but don't expect miracles. The chains are there to keep
>bottles from falling over and blowing up. We had ours on a steel rack ,
>well secured with chains and when this one "spontaneously combusted" it
>tore all that stuff to pieces.
>*DUCK!
Pressure is funny stuff! Always good for a tradesman's yarn.
Charlie (Brisbane, Australia)
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Date: Tue, 27 May 97 17:24:33 est
From: paa3983@dpsc.dla.mil (Mike Spinelli)
Subject: Airlocks? Why bother?
HBDers,
In an effort to streamline my brewing process and to generally keep things as
uncomplicated as possible, I've adopted a new technique.
I don't use airlocks anymore.
Switched to aluminum foil. Seems to be working fine. I don't sanitize it either
. This of course applies to carboys as opposed to plastic buckets.
Technique is to just double up a piece of foil and wrap it over and around the
carboy opening. Not super tight, but just snug. The Co2 appears to get by the
foil barrior just fine. I can't see how anything could get in, though.
Downside is you don't hear and see those neat bubbles coming thru an airlock. I
can live without that.
I used the foil on a couple of carboys filled with a Porter that erupted the day
after pitching. The foil just got pulled up and off the opening as krausen
spewed forth. Of course I had to attach blowoff hoses for about a day, but
after it subsided, the foil went back on til bottling day 10 days later. Hate
to think if I had airlocks on there and one got clogged. KABOOM!!!
Anyway, it works for me.
Mike in Cherry Hill NJ
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Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 16:53:40 -0500
From: Jim Thomas <jim.thomas@telops.gte.com>
Subject: Longshot URL Correction
Brewers,
Oops. In my preceding message about the cancellation of the 1997 World
Homebrew Contest, I just realized I may have posted an incorrect URL for
the Longshot website. The correct URL is www.longshotbeer.com.
See Ya,
Jim
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 18:11:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Some guy <pbabcock@mail.oeonline.com>
Subject: Gravity and pressure...
Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager...
Ramond Estrella sez: "The case with diving is gravity at work..."
Gravity is an acceleration. F=ma. Force=mass times acceleration. The water
above the diver has mass, and is subject to gravity which is an
acceleration; thus, we have a collection of forces exerted by a collection
of finite elements of water onto the very compressible you. Force over an
area is pressure (see where I'm going with this?) The collection of finite
elements creates a column of water that exerts a force over the surface
area of a very compressible you. In addition to the pressure due to the
weight of the column of water, it exerts the pressure of the column of air
over the column of water... Now, to tie it all together, the water
*PRESSURE* pops you like a zit. Though (pure) water is incompressible, it
still transmits pressure. The transmission of force via incompressible
liquids is precisely why the brakes work in your car (small force, large
area tranmits to large force on small area - but the pressure remains the
same). And all pressure is is a force over an area. Pounds per square
inch; newtons per meter squared. Any questions?
Now, for completeness' sake, beer is hardly pure water and is not
incompressible. Nor is tap water. May be tough to measure the amount of
compression attainable with kitchen appliances, but this does not make it
less "so". Back to beer...
See ya!
Pat Babcock | "Beer is my obsession, and I'm late for
pbabcock@oeonline.com | therapy..." -PGB
brewbeerd@aol.com | "Let a good beer be the exclamation point
janitor@brew.oeonline.com | at the end of your day as every sentence
Home Brew Digest Janitor | requires proper punctuation." -PGB
Webmaster of the Home Brew Page http://oeonline.com/~pbabcock/brew.html
Home of the Home Brew Flea Market
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 17:23:22 -0500 (CDT)
From: korz@xnet.com
Subject: keg mods and priming/pressure cooking/seeded hops/pressure ferment/too-dark beer
Erik writes:
>Will it be necessary for me to modify the keg in any way if I want to do
>this? For example, will I have to shorten the beer-side dip tube? If so,
>then by how much? In addition, how much priming sugar should one use
>for a Pilsner or Weizen in a 5-gallon batch? Will my standard 7/8 cup
>(when bottling) of dextrose be enough, too little or too much for use in
>the keg?
Personally, I think that 7/8 of a cup would only be suitable for fizzy
beers such as Duvel clones, so I would recommend going to the more-standard
1/2-cup to 3/4-cup priming rates for even bottled beer. I shortened
the dip tubes on two of my kegs and left the other six or seven alone.
I really don't find any difference except for the fact that there is more
beer left when the keg runs dry. Note that I force-carbonate most of my
beers so there will be less yeast in my case than when keg conditioning.
I think that 1" should be plenty. Note you really should use a tubing
cutter... I tried using a hacksaw on the first one and it took me an hour
to get the end round enough again to fit back into the keg.
As for priming rates, I have read (as most of you have) that you should
use less for kegs than you do in bottles, but frankly, I haven't heard
a valid argument, in terms of the physics of the situation, for why.
Sure, you'll read "because the headspace in a keg is different than with
a bottle" or "because the headspace-to-beer ratio is different..." but
when you ask "why would that matter?" you get a blank stare.
With several experiments I've done, I've convinced myself that too small
a bottle headspace decreases the rate of carbonation (and may even
decrease the overall carbonation level no matter how long you wait).
Is it possible that those who have written that a keg needs less priming
have been leaving very small headspaces when bottling? More priming
may have been necessary to compensate for the lower carbonation caused
by the small headspace. A larger headspace in the keg may (for these
people) result in faster and more complete carbonation and therefore
may appear to require less priming. Sound plausable?
***
Paul writes:
>So anyway, is there some reason all this wouldn't be beneficial to
>those of us who brew (yes, brew) with cans of syrup and bags of
>powder? I can see where there would be a problem with hop additions
>once the top was secured and the vessel pressurized, but that could
>be experimented around if the basic premise is sound.
>
>Does anyone have any thoughts on the use of a pressure cooker Re.
>extract brewing? (Other than, "Damn extract brewers trying to turn
>'cake mix' brewing into something even faster and more removed from
>the art of all grain!). I ask because I don't have a pressure cooker and
>am too frugal to buy one just to experiment on an idea that may be
>inherently flawed.
You can't do the entire boil under pressure -- part of the purpose of
boiling is to drive-off undesirable volatiles like DMS. You are right,
however, in saying that pressure-cooking *part* of the wort for a few
minutes may help increase melanoidins in extract batches. Extract
brewers may actually benefit even more than all-grain brewers from this
procedure because Munich malt extract is rare.
***
Nathan writes:
>Made a batch of beer this weekend. Used 3 varieties of hops. Two are from
>packages I have already used and not seen any seeds. The "odd" hop was
>labeled as Kent Goldings Product of UK. Should Kent Goldings hops have
>seeds? I only thought Fuggle had seeds. Is that true? Did I get "ripped
>off"? I'm sure the hops are fine, just labeled as the wrong variety. THanks.
Nope... many UK varieties are seeded. The East Kent Goldings I used yesterday
resulted in about a thousand seeds floating on the surface of the wort.
Seeded hops are rare from the US, but they are still very common in many
UK varieties.
***
Bret writes:
>I bought a 10 gallon corny keg so I wouldn't need a blowoff tube (I do
>5 gal batches). I filled the headspace with CO2. My question has to
>do with yeast's ability to grow/reproduce in a pressurized
>environment. I've seen some people making 12psi relief valves using a
>poppet spring from an extra tank plug, while others simply release the
>pressure once per day (my choice).
You don't want to do this. Yeast behave quite differently under
pressure. Firstly, I believe they would ferment much slower.
Secondly, CO2 toxidity soon becomes an issue and some yeasts have
very low tolerance to dissolved CO2. I don't recall which byproducts
are affected by pressurisation (acetaldehyde, diacetyl, DMS, higher
alcohols, esters, etc.) but I do recall that at least one went up
significantly and one one went down.
Bottom line: I don't think you want to allow the pressure to rise
until possibly the very end of fermentation (that's what many commercial
brewers do). There are commercial devices that hold the pressure
at a set level, but I'm quite sure they are out of range in price
for most homebrewers.
***
Dana writes:
> So - without cutting back on body/flavor adding ingredients, how
> can I 'lighten up' the color of my homebrew given my current
> constraints of not enough room for a pot big enough to do a full 5
> gallon boil? <snip>
Some extracts are simply darker than others. The palest I've found
are Alexander's Pale and Munton and Fison Extra Pale, although I know
there are others. Also, how fresh is the extract you are using? Old
extract is inherently darker. If you can't get fresh extract, use
dried malt extract. Water is a requirement in the browning reactions
that take place which cause extract to darken with age. Malt extract
syrup happens to have the ideal water concentration for these reactions.
Dried malt extracts have about 3% water, as compared to the 20% in
syrups, so the reactions progress much more slowly. Finally (and you
aren't going to like this), get a bigger kettle. Check Mexican
grocery stores... you can get 8-gallon enamel pots there for less
than $40.
Al.
Al Korzonas, Palos Hills, IL
korz@xnet.com
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #2428, 05/28/97
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