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HOMEBREW Digest #3750
HOMEBREW Digest #3750 Tue 02 October 2001
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: janitor@hbd.org
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Contents:
re: brezel recipe/Duck(Ente )anyone ? ("Stephen Alexander")
Teaberries in my beer? (gsferg)
Stuck fermentation (David Passaretti)
Re: thermal mass for picnic cooler ("Dennis Collins")
RE: long mash times/dry beer (Paul Shick)
Re: Browning fresh hops? ("Dave & Joan King")
BUdvar malt - re: Beta Glucans in Malt ("Stephen Alexander")
Gravity of Apple Cider (Robert.D.Dittmar)
Superiority of 50 pt British system for BJCP scoring ("Tracy P. Hamilton")
Mash and Kettle pH questions (Mike.Szwaya)
Re-brewing for comps (Mike Bardallis)
Budvar vs. Czechvar ("Eric R. Theiner")
KROC World Brewers Forum (The Brews Traveler)
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Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 07:18:11 -0400
From: "Stephen Alexander" <steve-alexander@ieee.org>
Subject: re: brezel recipe/Duck(Ente )anyone ?
Bob Sheck writes ...
>Try http://www.foodtv.com/recipes/re-r1/1,6281,,FF.html
Bob, if you want a *German* recipe on the web you need to
surf the *.de sites. Try http://kochbuch.unix-ag.uni-kl.de
You need a little German or a version of babelfish to get thru it.
13 brezel recipes in my first search, tho' I don't know if I'm
ready for bacon pretzels yet. I've used some of the bread
recipes there over the part several years with good results.
-S
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 07:22:33 -0400
From: gsferg@clary.gwi.net
Subject: Teaberries in my beer?
>Greetings,
> Yesterday I was working out on a mountain top and ran across a patch of
>teaberries. I managed along with some help to pick a full sandwich bag of
>them. I would like to use these in a teaberry brew and was wondering if
>anybody else out there had any experience with them they could share with
>me. I am not even sure if I should add them to my mash, (I think they would
>just float to the top) the boil, or maybe even my secondary fermentor.
>Also, any recipes for an ale that would accentuate the teaberry flavor would
>be much appreciated.
Teaberries AKA Wintergreen berries (or extract) are a common ingredient in
Root Beer. I see no reason why you couldn't use them in an ale recipe though
I've never heard of it being done. Good reason to try it. Let us know how it
turns out.
George-
- --
George S. Fergusson <gsferg@clary.gwi.net>
Oracle DBA, Programmer, Humorist
PGP Key: http://clary.gwi.net/gsferg/gsferg@clary.asc
- --------------
I am a man, I can change, if I have to, I guess.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 05:28:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Passaretti <dpassaretti@yahoo.com>
Subject: Stuck fermentation
I recently brewed an American style pale ale (all
grain) with an OG of 1.045. A 500cc White Labs Burton
Ale yeast starter was pitched into 12 gallons of well
aerated wort at about 78F. The fermentation was rip
roaring in about 3 hours. After 3 days it stopped at
1.018. The resultant beer is now very sweet. I have
let it sit for several weeks (after racking to a
secondary) and the gravity has not budged. Was the
fermentatiopn temp to high? What now? The beer now is
likley oxygen free, correct? Should I reaerate and
pitch more yeast, repitch without o2,...?
Thanks
David
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 20:30:26 -0400
From: "Dennis Collins" <dcollins@drain-all.com>
Subject: Re: thermal mass for picnic cooler
I thought I would throw in my two cents on this. When I got the ProMash
program, I had no clue what to use for the thermal mass variable, but I knew
if I preheated the cooler, it the variable would be zero. At the time I was
brewing with a friend who actually had running hot tap water on a faucet
outside where we brewed, so I just filled up my cooler with the hot tap
water and let it sit for 15 minutes or so to preheat, then dumped out the
water and mashed as usual. The mash temp predicted from ProMash with a
thermal mass of zero was always right on.
Now that I'm brewing at home, I have no such luxury of running hot water
outside, so I was back to trying to figure out that pesky thermal mass
variable. However, I am using a RIMS type system. So what I did was
recirculate just my mash water through the heater (or heat exchanger in my
case) at the temperature that ProMash gave using a thermal mass of zero.
After about 10-15 minutes of recirculation, the cooler was preheated with
the exact temperature water needed. Then I just stop the recirculation,
pour the grain in and mash as usual. So far, the temps have come out dead
on. Those of you out there with recirculating systems might want to
consider this.
Dennis Collins
Knoxville, TN
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 08:43:51 -0500
From: Paul Shick <shick@jcu.edu>
Subject: RE: long mash times/dry beer
Hi all,
Troy Hager writes in about his technique of
mashing/sparging one day and boiling the next, commenting
on they high attenuation he gets in his brews.
Troy, I don't think it's the long mash time here,
as much as it is the fact that you let the wort sit so
long before bringing it to a boil. As you point out, the
grain bed in most lautering systems rises only to the low
160s, so there's a lot of alpha amylase still active at
that temperature. Leaving all of this in your wort overnight,
still active, will chop up most of your dextrins into shorter
chains. If you raise the temperature of the sweet wort shortly
after runoff, I'll be you'll get beers with more body and less
attenuation.
Paul Shick
Cleveland Hts, Oh
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 10:44:35 -0400
From: "Dave & Joan King" <dking3@stny.rr.com>
Subject: Re: Browning fresh hops?
Badger,
IMHO, the bag will not be helpful. Hops need to dry rather rapidly to
maintain their freshness. The best I've found is a screen suspended
horizontally from strings, raised up into the rafters of my garage. After 1
or 2 sunny days, the heat and low humidity does a nice job on them. I've
used a clothes drier on low heat, but I'm afraid of cooking them.
Dave King (BIER)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 11:13:50 -0400
From: "Stephen Alexander" <steve-alexander@ieee.org>
Subject: BUdvar malt - re: Beta Glucans in Malt
Nathan Kanous writes ...
>[...] the level of beta glucans in finished malt was controlled
>almost entirely by the maltster.
The raw grain have variable amounts of beta-glucan gums
but Nathan is right - the maltster is largely in control of the
amount of undegraded glucans in the finished malt.
One surprise is that the degradation of beta-glucans in
the malting process is usually complete before full modification
occurs, but St.Pat's malt is pretty well modified at 38.33 Kolbach
yet has higher BG levels.
> To be honest I'm surprised that the folks at Miller don't know
>this already.
I might have missed the reference, but it should be no surprise
to anyone that lesser modification of malt results in higher
undegraded BG levels. Perhaps Miller was surprised at the
extent of this effect for this malt given the relatively high
Kolbach.
The BG degradation can be manipulated by the malting procedure
and given a low-kilned malt the brewer can further degrade BG in
a 50C mash rest.
I'd like to point out that the moderate increase in viscosity that
sends commercial brewers into hissy-fits may give little or no
difficulty to an HB lauter. If you've mashed with significant
amounts of unmalted barley or rye you already know the drill.
Keep some rice hulls on hand just in case but I wouldn't expect
to need them in my system using this malt even w/o a 50C rest
- YMMV.
- --
The Hartong number listed for this malt (35 measured) makes no
sense to me. I suspect the number might have been 3.5 which
would indicate modest undermodification by extract measure.
Lynn - can you check this ?
BTW - M&BS (circa 1973) lists 30-33 SNR(Kolbach) as undermodified
and 37-40 as overmodifed. St.Pats at 35-38(measured 38.33 by
Miller) is not undermodified by historical standards by nitrogen
measure. OTOH most pale malts today register north of 40%SNR
and several into the mid 40's. Standards seem to have changed
even for the Czechs.
===
OK - you guys who've tried St.Pats Budvar malt - what do you
think ? Flavor, viscosity, difficulty sparging. What's the real
story ?
-S
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 10:16:46 -0500
From: Robert.D.Dittmar@stls.frb.org
Subject: Gravity of Apple Cider
Does anyone know off-hand the typical gravity of unfermented apple cider.
I (of course) can take the gravity myself when I buy a gallon from the
store, but I was planning to use a gallon of it in a brew and I'm trying to
plan ahead.
As I said, just a ballpark number would be fine. I just want to plan for
enough starting gravity from other fermentables to hit my target O.G.
Thanks,
Rob Dittmar
St. Louis, MO
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 11:11:47 -0500
From: "Tracy P. Hamilton" <chem013@uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu>
Subject: Superiority of 50 pt British system for BJCP scoring
It ha'pence to be because there is a lot of "gimmes",
swillings and fartings from the judges as they pound
down the brews until it is time to quid, and only bottles
with crowns are allowed.
Tracy P. Hamilton
Birmingham Brewmasters
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 11:07:24 -0700
From: Mike.Szwaya@co.clark.wa.us
Subject: Mash and Kettle pH questions
Good morning. I have a couple of questions about maintaining mash and
kettle pH.
I decoction mashed a Dunkel yesterday using half undermodified malt and half
Munich. Right after the strike, I measured pH at 5.2. I proceeded with the
rest of the mash (acid rest @ 98F, protein @127, sacch. @ 145-149, and
dextrin/mash out at 170.). I pulled the 2 decoctions at the protein and
sacch. rests and boiled 20 min. each time. To make the Dunkel, I added 2%
carafa at the 30 min. mashout rest.
By the end of the mash, the pH dropped to 4.9. I'm attributing the large
drop to the carafa added at the end.
I sparged over 60 min. and stopped runnings at 1.010 & 5.2 pH. Portland tap
water is considered extremely soft and unless I'm brewing something with a
very distinctive mineral profile, I leave it alone. For the Dunkel, I
didn't do anything. Sparge water I typically adjust to pH 6 or so with
lactic acid.
Kettle wort measurements were 1.050 & 4.9 pH. Literature I've seen
recommends a kettle pH between 5.1 and 5.5. At the least, I wanted to raise
the pH up to the lower end of that range so I added about 1/8 tsp. chalk to
18 gal. No change. Added another 1/8th tsp. Still no change. Added 1/4
tsp. Again, no change in kettle wort pH. After this point, I left it
alone.
By knockout, I yielded 15 gal. of 1.059 wort and a pH of 4.7-4.8.
My questions are this:
- What else could (or should) I have done for pH management? More chalk?
Left it alone?
- What is the useful life of a sealed pH electrode that's used in the
brewing environment (assuming it's stored in pH electrolyte solution)?
- What sort of effects on the finished beer can I expect from what happened?
Most literature warns of too high a pH, but what happens when it's too low?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mike Szwaya
Portland, OR
Email: Mike.Szwaya@co.clark.wa.us
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 15:21:33 -0400
From: Mike Bardallis <dbgrowler@provide.net>
Subject: Re-brewing for comps
Years back, I seem to recall seeing or interpreting that re-brewing was not
permitted in the NHC. That is not the case now, nor for the last few years at
least. I actually discussed this with Paul G. a couple of years ago, in the
context of the problem of getting a bitter or mild to the second round in good
condition, and he told me that there was no prohibition on re-brewing. As to
fairness, I don't buy that argument. Everyone is permitted to; it's the brewer's
decision; another thing to consider along with packaging, priming rate, etc.
etc.
Mike Bardallis,
brewing near the big tire
in Allen Park, MI
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 17:18:17 -0400
From: "Eric R. Theiner" <logic@skantech.com>
Subject: Budvar vs. Czechvar
I had Budvar in Austria and Munich, so maybe it wasn't as fresh as it could
be... But there is a slight difference between the product there
(remembered) and what I'm drinking here (perceived). It's in the crispness
of the beer. I wish I could be more exact than that. It could reflect a
low level of oxidation from the long trip between there and here.
What do the rest of ya'll say?
Rick Theiner
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 18:31:19 -0600
From: The Brews Traveler <BrewsTraveler@adamsco-inc.com>
Subject: KROC World Brewers Forum
I want to thank everyone that attending the KROC World Brewers Forum
last Thursday evening making a huge success. Hopefully everyone that
attended had a great time and we did raise a good deal of money for the
American Red Cross in the process.
Here is a brief description of the evening (in case you blew it and
didn't make it):
* Chris White presented an outstanding technical discussion on yeast.
* Mark Dorber gave a very humorous presentation on the cask conditioning
process.
* Fred Eckhardt enumerated his perfect solution to fighting (and
winning) terrorism.
* James McCrorie awarded KROC in a show of his appreciation.
* John Adams referred to James McCrorie as an Englishman.
* 135 individuals from all around the globe, led by Fred Eckhardt, sang
America the Beautiful.
* We raised $835 for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
Thank you everyone!
- --
John "The Brews Traveler" Adams
KROC World Brewers Forum Director
http://www.adamsco-inc.com/BrewsTraveler
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #3750, 10/02/01
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