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HOMEBREW Digest #4197
HOMEBREW Digest #4197 Mon 17 March 2003
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: janitor@hbd.org
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Contents:
All-grain critique, canonism for Renner, home malting, and dryhopping of lagers (guy gregory)
contests and results of experts ("Dave Burley")
re: Iodine based sanitizers ("Jonathan Royce")
RE: Iodine based sanitizers (rscotty)
out of style beers ("Tom & Dana Karnowski")
oxygen absorbing caps ("Tom & Dana Karnowski")
re: Hops and Head ("Steve Alexander")
dry ice purging, Burton waters,fly sparging- not ("Dave Burley")
Re: out of style (ensmingr)
RE: DCL yeasts ("Steve Alexander")
New RIMS website (hollen)
More info on chloramine (in municipal water supply) (David Radwin)
RE: pitchable tubes (Brian Lundeen)
Classic American Pilsner update ("Dan Gross")
Water Profiles ("A.J. deLange")
DME Sources (huck7248)
some rants are productive -- dried yeast ("Joseph Gerteis")
Shamrock Open 2003 Results ("Mike Dixon")
re: Iodine based sanitizers (Michael Hartsock)
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Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 21:22:58 -0800 (PST)
From: guy gregory <ggre461@yahoo.com>
Subject: All-grain critique, canonism for Renner, home malting, and dryhopping of lagers
Michael Fross AKA Frosty asks, in HBD 4192, in a brief
respite from slams on Bill and discussions of
corporate greed which might make people believe that
Enron never happened, regarding his brewing technique:
"I'm getting ready to do my first all grain batch,...
I thought it
might be helpful to share those steps with you and get
your tips and opinions as well as maybe helping other
new all grain brewers."
which is what folks here do, when not arguing about
botulism or clinitest.
"So, I would appreciate it if folks with more
experience than I, could look this long message over
and let me know if I've got mistakes or if
there is a better way of doing this."
-
- -----------------------------------------------------
After reading your post, I have the following
suggestions:
1. Let the brewshop crush your grain. Don't worry
about the cost, how much is it?
2. Relax on precision. 7 or 7.1 gallons really does'nt
matter at this point. Illiterate savages have been
making beer without measuring cups or RIMS setups for
years.
3. Try the iodine test, but also taste your mash. When
the grain tastes bland and the liquid is sweet, you're
doing well.
4. FWH after you've recirulated some and are happy
with the runoff.
Have fun with this, it's cool, and it makes great
beer.
Michael Hartsock asks,
"Isn't it a huge pain in the ass to malt and kiln
your own barley?"
No. It's fun, though it's a lot of work. Try it, it
makes some good beer, though my experience is you will
get lousy yield. We had a thread on this several
years ago.
"2. How do you sparge without hulls?"
You pour hot water over the grain, and let it drain.
It's really slow.
And re: the discussion of CAP: Jeff Renner is simply
the most singular of homebrewers. He rescued this
style, corresponds tirelessly, and it's darn fine
beer, which he nearly singlehandedly saved.
Also, re: FWH and dryhopping of lagers. Well, if
you're gonna enter an AHA competition, don't. If you
want to taste something you might not find somewhere
else, go for it. I've enjoyed it, especially in
viennas.
Cheers,
Isn
=====
Guy Gregory
Lightning Creek Home Brewery
Spokane WA
(1660.4, 294.3) Rennerian
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 09:26:32 -0500
From: "Dave Burley" <Dave_Burley@charter.net>
Subject: contests and results of experts
Brewsters:
I received a copy of an e-mail by a puzzled contester who felt that his
evaluation by an expert could not match his brew in any way. He made a pure
Saaz hops beer of relatively high hops level and was told his beers tasted
citrusy and were too low in hops. Here were my comments to him with a few
additions:.
As you can see even experts aren't much good at evaluating beers after tasting
more than one, especially if a previous one used hops ( and lots of them) more
typical of American lagers or worse, some of the high alpha hops. That
citrusy taste was undoubtedly from the last beer or so.
Same problem exists in the wine industry and why I don't have vinegar and oil
dressing on my salads as the wines which follow will all taste vinegary. I
use lemon or lime juice as the acidifier in my house if serving wine and ask
for some lemon wedges and olive oil when dining out.. I never drink a Rhone
style wine alongside a Bordeaux style, either.
Another of the reasons why I don't like contests for skilled brewers.
Unfortunately, it is not the skill of the expert but his taste buds' residual
loading which cause the error. Clearing the palate does provide a new
baseline for your taste buds but even that is not perfect. I am all in favor
of tasting beers in contests grouped with common hopping levels and hop types
as a way of providing a better evaluation.
Keep on Brewin'
Dave Burley
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 09:39:42 -0500
From: "Jonathan Royce" <jonathan@woodburybrewingco.com>
Subject: re: Iodine based sanitizers
Michael Hartsock wrote:
"I just came across this product that seems like a much better option for
brewers, in terms of cost. For $13.90 a gallon, with a no-rinse dillution
ratio of 1 oz to four gallons, Hillyard's product is FDA approved and used
in restraunts and dairy tanks."
This seems like an interesting find, Michael. I wonder, however, why you
think this is an iodine based sanitizer? Looking at the MSDS provided by
Hillyard, the active ingredients seem to be various isomers of
dimethyl-ammonium-chloride and ethanol, NOT iodine. It would be interesting
to see what the "non-objectionable odor" of this sanitizer is like, and how
much that odor would be imparted to a beer if used in a no-rinse manner.
BTW, there are a bunch of other, similar products on the market, such as
Simple Green Food Service and Butcher's Heptagon.
Jonathan
Woodbury Brewing Co.
www.woodburybrewingco.com
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 14:46:20 +0000
From: rscotty@attbi.com
Subject: RE: Iodine based sanitizers
Mike writes about Hillyard's h-101 product being a cost effective solution for
homebrewers. Always keen to save a buck, I did some investigation and found
that H-101 is not an iodine based product. From their spec sheet on their web
site:
Percent active ingredients 7.5
Octyl decyl dimethyl ammonium chloride 2.250%
Didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride 1.125%
Dioctyl dimethyl ammonium chloride 1.125%
Alkyl (C14, 50%; C12, 40%; C16, 10%)
dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride 3.000%
I'm no chemist (but there are some here on the HBD), soI can't shed much light
on the possible effects on our beer, but I wanted to point out that this isn't
an iodophor-like product.
Can the chemists out there chime in here? This does seem to be a very cost
effective solution assuming is suitable for brewing use. If a no-rinse
approach were used, what might it do to our beer?
Thanks,
Rich Scotty
Chief Sanitation Engineer
The Crapshoot Brewery
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 10:13:02 -0500
From: "Tom & Dana Karnowski" <karnowsk@esper.com>
Subject: out of style beers
Peter A. Ensminger writes
***
If you're worried that your beer is out of style but you still
want to enter a competition, you can enter it under category #24,
"Specialty / Experimental / Historical". This category includes
just about anything and judges look for "a harmonious marriage
ingredients, processes and beer". See:
<http://www.bjcp.org/styleguide24.html>.
I have the most fun judging this category, because you get some
really interesting efforts, sometimes very good and sometimes
very bad.
***
I think Peter has the right idea about this category, but I am afraid a lot
of judges don't feel confident in assessing beers based on such loose
guidelines (you get the same problem with fruit & spice beers too)
I think judges have a hard time with it generally. I know of a few
occasions where entrants had their beers score as "out of style" (!) because
the process they performed wasn't "experimental enough". However, no one
could tell the entrant where the beer should be placed, which makes you
wonder what judges were thinking.
In our bottle competitions (the last one was in 2001) we had an extra style
called "Spirit of Homebrewing" where you were judged according to how NOT
like any other style you were. We made up the scoresheets and they were
probably confusing to people, because the judge was supposed to pick the
closest style, and basically award 0 points if the beer was a perfect
example of that style and 20 if it was a out of that style. IN the end your
score would be high if your beer was outside of every BJCP style but still a
good, tasty "Regular type" (not spoiled, sour, etc) beer.
This is a little like the "plain good beer" or free-style concept except we
tried to put some more objective (is that the right word?) boundaries on it.
For example, if your beer was a great Northern Brown Ale, you wouldn't win
this "Spirit
of Homebrewing" category because your beer would score low on the "in/out of
recognized style" area.
I only judged it one time out of the 3 or 4 times we did it but the time I
did was great. We had 7 entries, I think, and we ended up having a lively
discussion about probably 20-30 different styles that these entries may have
landed in. ON the other hand, maybe I understood the purpose better than
some of the past judges did.
Tom Karnowski
Knoxville TN
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 10:13:16 -0500
From: "Tom & Dana Karnowski" <karnowsk@esper.com>
Subject: oxygen absorbing caps
A few years ago I used to purchase oxygen absorbing caps that seemed to be
different than the ones I recently purchased. The ones I used to get had a
dark gray rubber piece in the cap that was kind of textured. The ones I got
recently didn't have that, but they seemed to have a thicker rubber "O" in
the liner.
Have I got two different things confused here? What is an oxygen-absorbing
cap supposed to look like, and where do people get theirs?
thanks
Tom Karnowski
Knoxville TN
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 10:38:22 -0500
From: "Steve Alexander" <steve-alexander@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: re: Hops and Head
Shawn E Lupold asks,
>Is there any way to obtain the nice foamy head character of hops without
>overwhelming bitterness or aroma?
Not exactly - the foam positive agent is iso-humulone - which is
also the primary bittering principle.
I'm surprised that there isn't some artificial foam positive agent
used to replace this. Maybe there is, but I'm not aware of it.
High molecular weight proteins, increased viscosity and several
other factors add to head. You'd be surprised that 1/4lb of
wheat or raw barley will do to head (adds proteins and
viscous glucans, but this solution adds to haze problems.
-S
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 11:37:11 -0500
From: "Dave Burley" <Dave_Burley@charter.net>
Subject: dry ice purging, Burton waters,fly sparging- not
Brewsters:
Fred Johnson is contemplating using dry ice to purge his bottles before
bottling to remove oxygen.
First, despite what you might have learned in grade school ( remember the
paper bag balance?) about carbon dioxide being heavier than air ( it is), it
will not totally displace the air. Like all gasses CO2 is totally mixable with
all other gasses ( one of the definitions of a gas). As a result, it is
impossible to just put gas in a container, with concomitant turbulent flow,
and expect the CO2 to push out the air 100%.
Some years ago, I did some calculations for the HBD based on certain
reasonable assumptions and it would take approximately 100 times the volume of
the container in CO2 volumes to get oxygen to a low enough level.
The best way to do it is to put cool boiled water in the bottle ( or keg) and
push it out with CO2. Then you KNOW there is no air in the bottle ( or keg).
This is the way I keg all my brews. Works great. Blowing in CO2 doesn't,
despite what you think you learned in grade school. The paper bag with the CO2
in it sunk down because the MIXTURE of CO2 and air was heavier than the pure
air.
One thing you can also do is "fob" your bottles, as the big boys do. As you
fill a bottle, let some of your beer foam over before capping and cap on the
foam. This fills the head space with CO2 foam and helps reduce the oxygen in
the beer.
Fred, to answer your original question. dry ice often contains sulfur dioxide
and in some cases even ammonia, in small quantities, depending on its source.
I doubt it has much in the way of microbiolgical contamination unless it was
poorly handled
- ------------------------------
Ray Daniels apologizes for an excellent book and approach. Don't.
One of the brewing myths ( not unlike terrior in wine) is that local waters
controlled the kind of beer that was popular in a certain region. And that
all you need is a local water analysis to determine how to treat your water to
make beer like that. Oh, if it were only so.
I know, I know, I too have read it for years. Perhaps there is some truth in
it, but if you read brewing books a century or two old you will see that
brewing waters ( aka brewing liquors - because they were treated) were
treated from an early stage. Liming was a common method of water treating and
who knows how long commercial lime has been around? Several centuries, at
least.
This separates the local water analysis from the brewing liquor analysis. Now,
if you just had the brewery's liquor analysis, now we're talkin'.
- -------------------------------
To my knowledge, the term "fly sparging" is a mistake and came into the HBD
lingo as a result of Al Korzonas' visit to a British brewery. Possibly he was
having trouble understanding his guide or the guide was mistaken. He even
commented on the peculiar term, as I recall.
Likely the term is really "on the fly" sparging. Brits use this expression to
describe any continuous process.
Any British brewer have the answer for sure?
Keep on Brewin'
Dave Burley
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 11:47:06 -0500
From: ensmingr@twcny.rr.com
Subject: Re: out of style
Dave Burley makes a good point about beer judging and sensory
adaptation and habituation. I became especially concerned about
this when I recently judged a flight of smoked beers. After one
or two, the smoke character in all subsequent beers was minimal
or even totally absent. Was this because the beers had less
'smoke' or because my senses became habituated? I'm not sure.
Alas, there is no perfect solution to this problem, but there are
several things we can do to minimize this effect:
1. Good competition organizers will randomize the order of all
entrants in a category, since order may play a role (eg, beers
judged early, before habituation sets in, may be judged more
favorably).
2. Judges should try to take a brief break between beers to allow
our senses to 'rebound'. Rinsing with water may also help.
3. Judges should only sample small amounts of each beer.
There are surely other things we can do. Any other BJCP judges
care to comment?
In my experience with competitions, a very good beer may indeed
be unrecognized and be given a mediocre score. However, the beers
that do win, especially Best of Show, are always very good beers.
Cheerio!
Peter A. Ensminger
Syracuse, NY
http://www.hbd.org/ensmingr
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 12:16:31 -0500
From: "Steve Alexander" <steve-alexander@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: RE: DCL yeasts
>Well, I have to question Lallemand's commitment to brewing yeast in
general.
>This current renaissance of dried yeast seems to have eluded either their
>attention or their interest.
>From all I read Lallemand is part of the trend to higher quality
dried yeasts - cleaner, higher viability, better storage properties.
Where Lallemand lags behind is not quality, but range.
>As long as the perception remains that serious brewers will
>only use liquid yeasts, and dried yeasts will just end up under the plastic
>lid of a kit, I don't see that competitive factor driving new developments
>in packaging on either side of the fence.
Competitive factor driving the market - that doesn't describe the HB
market. Let's face it, the HB yeast market can really only support
a few small businesses. I think there is a great case to be made that
dried yeast saves labor money in the microbrewery&brewpub
marketplaces, but the HB market will have to be satisfied with whatever
scraps fall off that table. I'd just like to see a few of DCLs scraps
packaged for HB use..
-S
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 18:27:48 -0800
From: hollen@woodsprite.com
Subject: New RIMS website
Well, I have finally gotten around to updating my brewing web site
with pictures of the latest incarnation of my RIMS system.
My first RIMS system was built sometime in 1993, and the latest was
just completed in January of 2003. I have doubled the capacity of the
system in size and heat capacity, traded in my homebuilt temp
controller for an Omega PID controller, and have built a stainless
steel square tubing brewing stand. Of course, this sits nicely in my
100 square foot dedicted brewery with 4"x36" floor drain, 800CFM
exhaust fan and piped in 15psi LPG.
Check out the new pictures, and thanks to the HBD hosting my brewing
site.
dion
- --
Dion Hollenbeck Email: hollen@woodsprite.com
Home Page: http://www.woodsprite.com
Brewing Page: http://hbd.org/hollen
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 22:55:15 -0800
From: David Radwin <dradwin@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: More info on chloramine (in municipal water supply)
The topic of chloramine, a disinfectant used in municipal water supplies
instead of bleach, has cropped up from time to time. It seems to be
catching on in large municipal water supplies. There was a pretty good
set of articles about it in Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle,
http://www.sfgate.com.
Here are the highlights as pertains to homebrewers, followed by links to
the full articles.
> The most common ways to remove chloramine are through the use of
> small amounts of ascorbic acid or by using a carbon filtration
> system specifically designed to remove chloramine.
>
> Boiling water, letting it stand in an open container
> or adding salt will not remove chloramine.
and
> Q: Will my home water filter remove chloramine?
>
> A: Some do. Some don't. The SFPUC suggests that you check with NSF
> International, a not-for-profit public safety watchdog company
> in Ann Arbor, Mich.
>
> You can find everything you need to know on its Web site, www.nsf.org.
> Click the "search" link at the bottom of the page and type in
> "chloramine and filtration." NSF's phone number is (800) 673-6275.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S161143D3
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q581243D3
- --
David Radwin in Berkeley CA
news@removethispart.davidradwin.com
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 01:12:21 -0600
From: Brian Lundeen <BLundeen@rrc.mb.ca>
Subject: RE: pitchable tubes
John Misrahi writes:
I have seen all of the bickering over 'pitchable' yeast lately. People have
complained that White Labs supposedly states their yeast is pitchable for
any 5 gallon batch, without a starter, and that they are misleading people.
<snip>
So they don't claim you can cold pitch a tube into 5 gallons of fermentation
temp lager.....
I reply:
I can't comment on what anyone else might have written, but since I started
this thing, I want to be quite clear on what I said, in case my point is
being misrepresented here.
I didn't say that White Labs claimed that their tubes could cold pitch a
lager. I said,...
I don't want to pitch into 70F wort as they advise.
I want to be able to buy a tube with sufficient population for
cold-pitching.
As to why I actually cold pitched a White Labs tube, that was just to make
certain that lag time was unacceptable before I went complaining about it.
Didn't want someone writing back, "Ever try it? I cold pitch and get lag
times of.... Blah blah blah".
Now, I sent a note off to White Labs and their reply was, in a nutshell, a
tube with 5 times the population would cost 5 times as much, so it is not
economically feasible. I don't buy that. Wyeast XL packs contain about 3
times the cell count as their old 50 ml pack, and around here, sell for
about 50% more, not 3 times the price. However, it does tell me that White
Labs will not be putting out a cold-pitchable lager product, which is really
all I needed to know.
Next up to bat... Wyeast? Oh, why bother. Too many people are obviously
content with the status quo. No, Mr Bumble, no more gruel for me, I've got
more than enough to keep me happy.
Brian
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 06:49:52 -0500
From: "Dan Gross" <degross@starpower.net>
Subject: Classic American Pilsner update
So far my first CAP seems to be progressing very well. I brewed last week
and after a few mishaps (like forgetting to add the bittering hops at 60
minutes) brought on by distraction during the boil, I think I salvaged this
one. I was able to chill the wort to 50F pretty fast with my immersion
chiller because it has been so cold and my 5 oz of Ayinger yeast slurry from
starter got it going after about 10 hours. The wort has been fermenting
very well at 50F for about 8 days now and it has begun to slow. Yesterday I
brought the wort up to 60F just as the primary fermentation seems to be
nearly done. (I gather that this yeast may not need the diacetyl rest, but
I did it anyway).
Tonight or tomorrow I will check the gravity and if I am down to 25% of OG I
will rack and begin the lagering process.
Two questions:
1) Should I take the easy way out and simply rack to a keg for lagering? I
would prefer to do that.
2) Of course I now have a very nice slurry of yeast in the primary so I
would like to save the yeast. Should I wash the yeast three times with
water as outlined on the Wyeast web site, acid wash as described on the
White Labs site, or should I just pour the slurry into a sanitized flask and
store in the refrigerator? I will not be able to use it for at least a
month, maybe two months.
One other observation from this brew was that the trub was pretty fluffy and
it took longer than normal to settle after chilling the wort. I did a
cereal mash with corn grits for the traditional double mash. Did the corn
create this fluffy trub? I used irish moss at the end of the boil and
normally the trub settles pretty fast.
thanks,
Dan Gross
Olney, Md
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 13:39:58 +0000
From: "A.J. deLange" <ajdel@cox.net>
Subject: Water Profiles
Over the years I have collected a couple dozen (44) water profiles from
brewing books, magazine articles, the hbd, samples people have brought
me from overseas etc. I have found many, in fact most (34), of these to
be erroneous because they do not balance electrically at any reasonable
(< 8.4) pH. For example, I have 6 profiles for Burton which would
require pH's of 9.94, 10.20, 8.49, 6.62, 10.69, and 10.52 to be in
electrical balance. Of these, clearly, only the 6.62 and perhaps 8.49
are likely to found in any real world water supply.
In all cases, the pH required for electrical balance is high i.e. above
8.4 implying that negative charge (anions) are lacking at more
reasonable pH values. This means either that some anion(s) is not
reported, that some anion(s) is under reported, that some cation(s) are
over reported or that the pH's of the samples are indeed as high as my
calculations show or that I don't understand what is meant by
"carbonate" or "bicarbonate". In fact at any reasonable pH carbonate
will be present in only very small amounts relative to bicarbonate and
carbonic nevertheless the data is sometimes marked "carbonate". It is
also unclear as to what the units are as they could be as the ion or as
calcium carbonate and, in this same vein, the reported numbers could be
alkalinity numbers. Furthermore, while "as calcium carbonate" almost
universally means 50 times the number of milliequivalents per liter
these days, in the past it could mean 100 times the milliequivalents per
liter. It is interesting that pH is never reported in any of the usual
information sources and, of course, without pH it is impossible to
calculate balance. I have processed my set of water profiles under each
of the possibilities enumerated above. None of them yields a reasonable
set of balance numbers. It is, of course, quite possible that some
reports mean one thing in speaking of bicarbonate and others mean
something else.
The significance of this to us as homebrewers is usually that we want to
produce a replica of the water of some brewing city of reknown. If a
reported profile can only be balanced at pH 11.2 then you can only
synthesize it at pH 11.2 (note that there are other inconsistencies in
reported profiles which make close synthesis impossible as well). Thus
is choosing a profile for the example city of Burton one is better off
choosing a profile that can be balanced at a reasonable pH.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 11:28:33 -0500
From: huck7248 <huck7248@optonline.net>
Subject: DME Sources
Let me take a moment to thank all those who responded to my
"Questionable Carboy" post several weeks ago. Thank you for your input,
it's currently lagering a Czech Pilsner.
I've recently visisted several local homebrew shops in my area and
searched the web pricing different DME's. I've found M&F DME priced @
3lbs for about $8.00. Can anyone tell me of other sources for DME that
may be cheaper. I currently work two jobs and cannot devote a great deal
of time into research and I certainly can't afford to cut into the
precious free-time I have for brewing.
I'm a newbie to Home Brewing (since Christmas) and I find the HBD to be
a wealth of info. No matter how tired I am at the end of the day, I sign
on and see what's going on. Thanks to all the posters and keep it
coming.
One last question. If there any homebrewers out there who live in
Fairfield County, CT that would like to exchange ideas or recipes, feel
free to contact me via e-mail at:
huck7248@optonline.net.
George Finn
Greenwich, CT
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 09:37:16 -0800 (PST)
From: "Joseph Gerteis" <joseph540@elvis.com>
Subject: some rants are productive -- dried yeast
I had trouble posting this late last week. Please
forgive the time lag!
Steve Alexander reprises my own earlier rants in HBD
#4191.I realize that some rants are better put to bed,
so I'll leave the store in Texas alone. After my
original post on this thread I took a more extensive
look at the archives as Steve suggested. He is right
about the pattern of complaints over the years. Enough
said, andI've made up my own mind about this.
On to the more productive rant -- dried yeast, and
particularly dried lager yeast. Steve says:
> DCL thinks homebrewing is about making cheap beers and
> that HBers certainly
> wouldn't notice the 'subtle' differences between two
> different lager or ale
> strains since we just brew infected cheap swill from
> kits.
>
> I surely wish that Lallemand had the same range of
> yeasts in dry form.
> They certainly appraise the HB market more accurately.
As someone mentioned a few days ago, I think it is a
very good idea to lobby DCL (and Lallemand), and I
think it is a good idea to pressure the AHA to do this
too. (On a side note, DCL seems to be pretty clear
that these are different strains; it has to be Crosby &
Baker that's got it wrong.)
I wrote to DCL individually about marketing their other
lager yeasts in smaller packets, and got a "sorry
Charlie" response -- basically, they said that they
would have to make too many packets at once and that
they would not be assured of selling them. The only
way to convince them to market more of their lager
yeasts in smaller packets is to convince them that
there's demand, and that's hard to do individually.
At some point I also mentioned a head-to-head
evaluation of different DCL lager yeasts that I found
on the web. I never did find this again, despite a few
hours of searching. I did find the following link
which some may find interesting:
www.asbcnet.org/Journal/pdfs/2002/0718-01R.pdf
It's a technical article showing some drawbacks to
dried yeast -- namely decreased flocculation and
increased haze, which the authors think has to do with
increased "extracellular proteinase" resulting from the
drying process. There are nice evaluations of dried
DCL strains vs. the same strains pitched "fresh". Of
course, the added haze has to weighed against the
benefits of being able to pitch at something like an
adequate rate without having to step up a starter
several times -- that's my interest in dried lager
yeast.
Best wishes,
Joe Gerteis
Wishing Northern Brewer had DCL 189 in St. Paul MN
- -------------------------------------------------
Get your free @Elvis e-mail account at Elvis.com!
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 21:51:02 -0500
From: "Mike Dixon" <mpdixon@ipass.net>
Subject: Shamrock Open 2003 Results
For those interested, the results from the 2003 Shamrock Open which was held
on Saturday, March 15, can be viewed at:
http://hbd.org/carboy/shamresult2003.htm
Cheers,
Mike Dixon
Wake Forest, NC
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:39:56 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Hartsock <xd_haze@yahoo.com>
Subject: re: Iodine based sanitizers
Ah, well forgive me, i didn't read the msds. I
thought it was an iodine based sanitizer because I
called the guy on the phone at Hillyard and said "I
want an iodine based sanitizer for food grade
operations" and he directed me towards this product.
I'm sad to find that it is not.
sorry,
Michael
- --- Jonathan Royce <jonathan@woodburybrewingco.com>
wrote:
> Michael Hartsock wrote:
> "I just came across this product that seems like a
> much better option for
> brewers, in terms of cost. For $13.90 a gallon, with
> a no-rinse dillution
> ratio of 1 oz to four gallons, Hillyard's product is
> FDA approved and used
> in restraunts and dairy tanks."
>
> This seems like an interesting find, Michael. I
> wonder, however, why you
> think this is an iodine based sanitizer? Looking at
> the MSDS provided by
> Hillyard, the active ingredients seem to be various
> isomers of
> dimethyl-ammonium-chloride and ethanol, NOT iodine.
> It would be interesting
> to see what the "non-objectionable odor" of this
> sanitizer is like, and how
> much that odor would be imparted to a beer if used
> in a no-rinse manner.
>
> BTW, there are a bunch of other, similar products on
> the market, such as
> Simple Green Food Service and Butcher's Heptagon.
>
> Jonathan
> Woodbury Brewing Co.
> www.woodburybrewingco.com
>
>
=====
"May those who love us, love us.
And those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if he doesn't turn their hearts,
may he turn their ankles
So we'll know them
by their limping."
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #4197, 03/17/03
*************************************
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