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HOMEBREW Digest #2723
HOMEBREW Digest #2723 Tue 26 May 1998
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:
tubing size vs. pressure drops (John_E_Schnupp)
Re: Weavils from hell ("Braam Greyling")
What is PolyClar anyway? (Steve Markley)
3068 - a mixture of two species? (ALAN KEITH MEEKER)
Hop around the clock (ALAN KEITH MEEKER)
Ringwood yeast (ALAN KEITH MEEKER)
butt-jelly re-revisited... ("Pat Babcock")
Airlocks (do you needs them?) (Domenick Venezia)
Re: Spent grain recipe suggestion (Jeff Renner)
How much malt? ("Hans E. Hansen")
Malaysia (Tom_Williams)
re: apartment kegging (LowpineUno)
Evil weevils ("David Johnson")
Sour Mash (Ken Schroeder)
BURP's Spirit of Free Beer competition is June 6-7 and entry information
is available by contacting Jay Adams (adams@burp.org).
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 23:40:31 -0700
From: John_E_Schnupp@amat.com
Subject: tubing size vs. pressure drops
Does anyone have (or can point me in the correct direction)
information on the pressure drop on various tubing sizes (ID)?
Specifically I'm looking for 1/8" ID, but a chart or some
such table for sizes from 3/8"ID to 1/16"ID by 1/16" would
be great.
I'm attempting to make a cap for a 3L PET bottle which will
allow me to keep the beer at the correct carbonation level.
To due and keep it very portable, I will need to use some
small ID tubing or put up with having to carry around
4' - 6' of a larger ID tubing, in which case the whole thing
wouldn't be quit at portability friendly.
TIA,
John Schnupp, N3CNL
Colchester, VT
95 XLH 1200
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 10:43:01 +200
From: "Braam Greyling" <braam.greyling@azona.com>
Subject: Re: Weavils from hell
Jon wrote
>>>>
Does anyone have any insight into the detrimental affects and
degradation processes of these little *$&#(@*'s?
>>>>
I once got some malts straight from the maltsters with these thingies
in. I cant find any detremental effects on the beer due to these
little buggers. Except maybe I lose a point or two in mash
effeciency.
Luckily I could keep them away from my imported German malts.
Make sure you seal the infected malts off and keep them away from the
other malts. I store the infected malt in a different location..
Cheers
Braam Greyling
South Africa
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 06:18:14 -0600
From: Steve Markley <smarkley@micron.net>
Subject: What is PolyClar anyway?
A friend suggested I use PolyClar to help get rid of my chill haze(s). I
and concerned though, he couldn't tell me anything about it. I like to
know as much as possible about what goes into my beer! Can anyone tell
me what PolyClar is and the recommended usage? Thanks...
Steve Markley
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 11:33:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: ALAN KEITH MEEKER <ameeker@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu>
Subject: 3068 - a mixture of two species?
Robert Dittmar writes concerning the idea that Wyeast 3068 may actually be
a mixture of two different yeasts...
Funny you should mention this. I was just talking with a fellow at the
GABF On The Road here in Baltimore and he was making the same claim - that
3068 is a mixture of an ale yeast and delbrueckii and that, therefore, one
might see changes in character when re-using the yeast cake from one batch
to make a new one. Specifically, he was claiming the clove-like esters
come from one species while the banana-like esters come from the other.
Personally I tend not to believe this as I obtained very satisfatcory
results in my Bavarian style Weissbier from 3068 and I always start from a
well isolated single yeast colony from YPD agar. I ended up with all the
characteristics I was looking for in this beer including BOTH the clove
and banana esters. Additionally, The colonies all seemed uniform - not a
mixture of two different morphologies.
However, I suppose it is possible that all the esters could be supplied by
one species and that I picked a colony of this species for my starter.
Still, hard to explain the homogeneity of colony types though, especially
since this fellow claimed that 3068 is a mixture of cerevisiae, an ale
yeast, and delbrueckii which I believe is a lager yeast. I'd have expected
some distinctive colony differences.
Perhaps there is confusion between Wyeast 3068 used for Bavarian Weiss
(supposedly saccromyces delbrueckii from Weihenstephan 68) and Wyeast 3056
used for the *Berliner* style which apparently *is* a mixture of
cerevisiae and delbrueckii.
Maybe someone from Wyeast can clarify this matter?.....
Happy Brewing!
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
"Graduate school is the snooze button on the alarm clock of life."
-Jim Squire
-Alan Meeker
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Dept. of Urology
(410) 614-4974
__________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 11:39:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: ALAN KEITH MEEKER <ameeker@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu>
Subject: Hop around the clock
Concerning hop plants -
I've got new hop plants growing in my back yard and am trying to get the
buggers to grow up the trellis behind them. All the sources I've read say
that you should "train" them to grow CLOCKWISE along the support. So, my
question is is this CW as seen from ABOVE or CW as seen from BELOW ie -
from the point of view of the hop plant? I assumed it meant below but the
twines seem hellbent on going the other direction. hmmmmm I should
probably let them go whichever way they feel like.
Another question - do the bines twist the oposite way South of the
equator? Perhaps one of our prolific Aussie friends can jump in here...
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
"Graduate school is the snooze button on the alarm clock of life."
-Jim Squire
-Alan Meeker
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Dept. of Urology
(410) 614-4974
__________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 11:42:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: ALAN KEITH MEEKER <ameeker@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu>
Subject: Ringwood yeast
At the GABF I had an ale made with Ringwood yeast - it had a very
interesting taste profile! Has anyone here had any experience with this
yeast? Is it a single strain? Any widespread commercial examples of its
use? Reliable sources of cultures?
Thanks...
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
"Graduate school is the snooze button on the alarm clock of life."
-Jim Squire
-Alan Meeker
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Dept. of Urology
(410) 614-4974
__________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 11:37:25 -0500
From: "Pat Babcock" <pbabcock@oeonline.com>
Subject: butt-jelly re-revisited...
Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager...
Some may remember this exchange back in February, the forwarded being
the last installment. Immediately afterwards, having a good supply of
replacement o-rings purchased via a gift certificate to my local Brew
& Grow (thanks, Mom!), I ran downstairs, grabbed three of my least
favorite and most empty kegs, replaced the bung seals, lubricated
them with Vaseline [tm], sealed and pressurized them. Just over
three months later, they are chewing gum, folks. I went down to open
the kegs, and large gobs of o-ring stuck to the keg, and to the bung.
The ring came off in pieces.
Based on this, I have to reiterate my original "don't
do it". It just takes longer than the other types of seals seem
to, but it breaks the black rubber seals down just as well. And,
to head 'em off at the pass: don't know why some seem to have better
success using Vaseline than others. Perhaps they replace their seals
more often? This is gonna be a pain to clean up, and I would
rather not have had the experience. (On another note, I ruined the
seal on my whole-house-filter-cum-beer-filter the same way. It
swelled up like a water balloon.)
- ------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From: Self <pbabcock>
To: post@hbd.org
Subject: butt-jelly revisited...
Reply-to: pbabcock@oeonline.com
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 12:19:11 -0500
Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager...
In private conversation, Brian Wurst <brian@mail.netwave.net> said...
> P.S. - I've used Vaseline(tm) as a tank lid sealant for something on
> the order of 170 keggings and the gaskets are just fine...perhaps
> your swimming pool filter gasket material is a lower grade (or
> completely different) material than the food grade stuff in corny
> keg gaskets?
This is going to sound horribly untechnical, but it DOES seem to work
just fine on the black o-rings (such as the bung cover - heh! Butt
jelly! Bung! Snicker!). Those red, green and orangish-tan ones swell
up and get all gummy. Don't know if they are synthetic or what, but
that's been my experience. (And the pool cover ring is one o' them
orangish-tan ones...)
See ya!
-p
Somwhere right near Jeff Renner...
See ya!
Pat Babcock in SE Michigan pbabcock@oeonline.com
Home Brew Digest Janitor janitor@hbd.org
AOL FDN Beer & Brewing Maven BrewBeerd@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 08:53:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Domenick Venezia <demonick@zgi.com>
Subject: Airlocks (do you needs them?)
In HBD 2722 Dr. Pivo said:
> I've been fiddling with airlocks. The results are pretty preliminary,
> but it's starting to look like you don't need them.
This is not surprizing as open fermentation is/was widely used to great
success. I know a brewer who brews great beer and never uses an airlock
on his carboys. He just uses plastic wrap and a rubber band. The CO2
burps out under the rubber band.
Domenick Venezia demonick@zgi.antispam.com (remove .antispam)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 13:12:04 -0400
From: Jeff Renner <nerenner@umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Spent grain recipe suggestion
Low traffic right now, so I'll be a little freer with bandwidth than usual:
Jeremy York <jeremy@ThemeMedia.com> wrote:
>I've been using some spent grain in this bread machine recipe
>(in my "2 lb" large West Bend bread machine):
>
>3.5 tbs oil
>3.5 tbs honey
>4-5 tbs spent grain
>1 cup water less a tbs or so (adjusting for water in grain)
>1 egg (or 1/4 cup water + 2 tbs dried no-cholesteral egg product)
>1.25 cups whole wheat flour
>2 cups unbleached white flour
>1.5 tsp salt
>2 tbs wheat gluten
>2 tablespoons powdered milk or powdered buttermilk
>2.5 tsp yeast
One thing to remember about bread is that it is like beer - four basic
ingredients are all you need - flour, water, salt and yeast. You can even
leave out the salt, but that's like leaving hops out of beer. You probably
won't like it. Any other ingredients are probably complications for
beginners, but are fine once you have the technique down. It's like all
the other ingredients people like to add to beer. This recipe is a fairly
sweet, rich one with the honey, oil, and eggs. Not that there's anything
wrong with that, of course! But you could also make a simpler, leaner and
less sweet bread.
This recipe has very little spent grains in it. 4-5 tbs (<1/3 cup) would
weigh about 1-1/2 oz, or 45 grams, which would be about 10 grams maximum
dry. The 3-1/4 cups flour will weigh about 1+ lb, so you see that this is
very small proportion, ~2% of flour. Of course, when playing around with
proven bread machine recipes, you have less latitude for error. In a hand
recipe, if the dough is a little too stiff or wet, you just adjust the
flour or water toward the end of the kneading.
You could probably add a good deal more spent grains and reduce the water
and flour correspondingly. Each pound of spent grains (about 3-1/2 cups
unpacked) at ~80% moisture (typical) will have about 1-1/2 cup liquid and 3
oz. dry material, which will substitute for flour by weight. Of course,
spent grains have non of the dough building properties of flour, so bread
will be increasingly dense as you add more of them. You can also add them
withought reducing the flour, which will give more dough. You'll actually
have to add extra flour in this case to go with the extra liquid in the
grains. If you don't substitute spent grains for all of your liquid, you
can also use some last runnings instead of water or other liquid for
additional flavor and a little sweetness. BTW, if you used bread flour
rather than unbleached all purpose, you could probably leave out the gluten
and just just a bit more bread flour.
>The recipe is modified from one in "Bread Machine Baking"; all
>I did was to substitute the spent grain for some texture ingredients
>like wheat germ, steel cut oats, cornmeal, etc.
This is exactly how I wrote my Zymurgy article - that is, to encourage
bakers to substitute spent grains for part of a basic recipe. My basic
recipe is
2-1/2 lbs flour
3 c. liquid (including some to rehydrate yeast)
1 Tbs. salt
2/3 Tbs dry bread yeast (1/4 oz). Rehydrate yeast in 1/4 c water at
105-115F, add it and half the flour to rest of the liquid an stir until
smooth (this is a sponge), cover and let double at room temperature, add
the salt and enough of the rest of the flour to make dough of a proper
consistency, knead 5-8 minutes if by hand, cover, let rise until double.
Punch down, let rise again, divide into two or three loaves, shape, cover
and let double, bake 350-400F until brown and done.
>Hrm, now I'm wondering if some of the yeast collected from
>sediment would be any good for making bread...
You sure can, although it is not too reliable, so I wouldn't suggest using
it in a bread machine without some testing first. A lot depends on the
state of the yeast. Bread yeast is descended from ale yeast, but has been
selected for rapid gas production. But ale barm, the yeast from the top of
a fermenting ale, was used historically for bread, and it can give a nice
flavor to bread. I'd suggest a tablespoon of thick pasty top cropped yeast
for each pound of flour as a starting point.
Baking bread seems to be a natural corollary activity for brewers, and
using spent grains, last runnings and yeast ties them together nicely. I
suggest experimenting and having fun.
Jeff
-=-=-=-=-
Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan c/o nerenner@umich.edu
"One never knows, do one?" Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 11:35:55 -0700
From: "Hans E. Hansen" <hansh@teleport.com>
Subject: How much malt?
I would like to do a partial mash, with 1 lb of flaked barley.
What is the minimum amount of malted barley I should mash with
it? I realize that the specific type of barley makes a
difference, but all I know is it is 'generic' 2 row and probably
American. Would 2 lbs do it?
Thanks,
Hans E. Hansen
hansh@teleport.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 21:26:11 -0400
From: Tom_Williams@cabot-corp.com
Subject: Malaysia
Greetings to the international homebrewing community!
It appears likely that I will be moving my home brewery from
tornado-ravaged Dunwoody, Georgia to Malaysia for 2-3 years. I would like
very much to hear from any HBD'ers who are actually in Malaysia, or from
anyone else who can shed light on these issues:
1. Malaysian laws regarding homebrewing
2. Availability of homebrewing supplies in Malaysia
3. Practicality of supplies by mail order from the US, Great Britian or
Australia.
4. Existence of homebrew organizations in Malaysia
5. Practical brewing experience in Malaysia or similar climates
I will be located in Port Dickson, which is about 1.5 hours from Kuala
Lumpur on the Strait of Malacca. My e-mail address will remain the same.
Please answer by e-mail as I am off the mailing list and web access is
unavailable while I am temporarily assigned here. If there is a
significant response I will post a summary.
Thanks for all the support for the last 5 years,
Tom Williams
Dunwoody, Georgia
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 22:48:54 EDT
From: LowpineUno <LowpineUno@aol.com>
Subject: re: apartment kegging
Hello,
Just a thought on your predicament, I too have no room for an extra frig.
But that did not stop me from getting a keg (in the winter the pantry keeps it
cool). Before I go any further, I would like to say that I am somewhat of a
novice to brewing (9 batches so far), so this idea may have been covered
previously.
Anyway, my idea is a post-keg beer chiller. Similar to the wort chiller with
the copper tubing. Take a length of copper tubing, and a smallish cooler
(playmate style ~holds a 12pack), wind the tubing down into the cooler,
winding the tubing in a configuration such that as much of the tubing will be
within the cooler. Leave both ends of the tubing sticking out of the cooler,
have one end of the tubing point down ( like a spigot). On the non-spigot end
attach some appropriate sized plastic tubing, one end of the tubing goes over
the copper tubing, the other end shall have the picnic tap wedged inside.
Fill the cooler with ice 3/4 of the way full, and then fill with cold water.
Adjust the pressure down a little more than what you would normally have it,
this will allow the beer to be in the tubing (chiller) a bit longer. Wa-La
chilled beer w/o a frig.
Like I said, this an idea I had, have not tried it yet, but plan to. Any
comments, suggestions, improvements to, health hazards assoc. with my thought
will be appreciated.
Steve
Burlington NC
Lowpineuno@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 21:48:46 -0500
From: "David Johnson" <dmjalj@inwave.com>
Subject: Evil weevils
I have not tried this and am just speculating out loud.Fresh from my
victory over the fruit flies, I was thinking that we often freeze our bird
seed to kill infestations of insects. Would this kill the evil weevils?
After all they are from hell, and heat wouldn't bother them. Would it
change the taste of the grain? The birds don't seem tothink the seed we
freeze tastes any different. :^)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 20:56:47 -0700
From: Ken Schroeder <knj@concentric.net>
Subject: Sour Mash
I just signed back on to the list after an extended absence. Please
forgive me if this subject has been discussed recently.
I'm going to attempt a sour mash soon. First, I'm looking for
information/web sites on sour mashing. I have a proceedure in mind but
still need to figure out how to do it on my system.
My only real question is : What happens if the mash is allowed to drop
from saccrication temperature to around 55C over a period of 24 hours?
In specific, how would this affect head retention and body?
Ken Schroeder
Sequoia Brewing (now in the Santa Cruz Moutains)
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #2723, 05/26/98
*************************************
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