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HOMEBREW Digest #4571
HOMEBREW Digest #4571 Mon 02 August 2004
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Quality Beers from Music City Brewers ("Stephen Johnson")
re. repitching/plambic slurry ("John D. Misrahi")
I like bottling: 750ml and autoclaving. (Raj B Apte)
RE: I Hate Bottling ("Troy Wilson")
RE: Beer in Hershey area ("Scott D. Braker-Abene")
Gluten free beer (Ralph Link)
(cboyer)
RE: Beer In Hershey Area ("Tim Detman")
belgian beer store in Toronto/Mississauga? (Raj B Apte)
Re: Beer in NYC ("Raymond T. Gaffield")
re: My Berliner Weisse method (tmeier)
MFL? FFL? What the hell? (Jeremy Hansen)
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Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 22:00:17 -0500
From: "Stephen Johnson" <sjohnson3 at comcast.net>
Subject: Quality Beers from Music City Brewers
Sorry for the length of the post that follows, but I need to address
some comments that appeared in a recent HBD. Before I do, let me
publicly thank Pat Babcock for his tireless efforts to get the Digest up
and running again. I've missed it quite a bit of late!
If I'm following his logic correctly (and Tom, please correct me if I'm
wrong), Tom Meier of Nashville (previous member of the Music City
Brewers (MCB) in Nashville and the Rocket City Brewers (RCB) in
Huntsville, now of the Antioch Sud Suckers (ASS) in Nashville, TN)
points out that there may be a strong positive correlation between the
quality of beers that our members are brewing and our current standings
in the Mid-South Club of the Year competition (Tom's list is
"unofficial" because the "official" scoring is being handled by one of
our members, and late postings of score information from other
participating competitions have prevented an up-to-date record of the
Mid South Homebrew Club Standings). It also seems that Tom feels that
our club membership has an overall lack of concern with mash ph and
knowledge of advanced brewing chemistry to be a useful resource to other
homebrewers in the area.
I'd like to take a moment to shed some light on where he might be in
error on both of these points. First, while it may be true that our club
is not earning many points in the Mid-South Club of the Year
Competition, this may in large part be due to the fact that many of us
who used to enter and have done well in the various regional
competitions have not been entering these events the past months.
Entering competitions is certainly one way to gauge the quality of one's
brewing, but it is not the only way. I can't speak for all of us, but my
career path took a logarithmic leap once I completed my PhD in Special
Education from Vanderbilt University and got "a real job". This has
curtailed my brewing on a large scale and what I do brew goes into kegs,
not bottles for competitions. I don't think that my beers have suffered
in their quality now that I'm not entering very often. I've never been
satisfied with my counter pressure filled bottles, and have lost
interest in getting inconsistent feedback on many of my beers that were
entered into competitions. There are many other similar stories by many
of our "veteran" brewers in our club who used to rack up the ribbons by
entering 10 or 15 beers into each of the various competitions in the
region. This is what propelled our club to be Mid-South Homebrew Club of
the Year 2 years ago. But just the fact that we are not entering
competitions on a large scale like we did in the past does not correlate
to indicate that we have fewer quality beers brewed by our club members.
For example, just this past weekend our club was given a booth at the
3rd Annual Music City Brewers' Festival and we had 8 different beers on
tap during the course of the afternoon and evening. Many patrons
continued to come back to our tent because of the high quality of beers
we were serving, and had comments along the lines that ours were often
their favorites of the whole festival. Also, for the first time, one of
our own members, Terry Wallis, had a successful run in the AHA Nationals
this year, as well as MCAB. She has made some wonderful beers and has
won BOS at some of the area competitions as well as the Queen of Beers
competition in California. It is probably from her efforts along with
some others that our club has any points at all.
But, like many clubs, we are going through an ongoing metamorphosis and
have many new novice brewers in our club, and our mission has evolved to
help these brewers make better beer. Talking about water chemistry and
mash ph might turn the novice brewer away from the hobby. Many of these
new brewers are just starting at the extract stage and haven't moved
into the full mash level of brewing. However, for example, when it does
come up that someone is interested in making a true pilsner style beer
from scratch, we do point out (as Fred Scheer did in a previous post)
that it is important to soften their water by diluting their mash water
with distilled water because of the relative hardness of our Nashville
water (it is very similar to Munich's water). We also frequently refer
them to many useful brewing publications on such matters, including some
excellent articles from back issues from the now defunct Brewing
Techniques that several of us have gathered over the years. I've often
referred individuals to search the HBD archives for some excellent
resources on water chemistry. Or, we might try to hook them up with any
of the wonderful live resources our city has: Dave Miller, Travis Hixon,
Fred Scheer, and Linus Hall.
It has long been the mission of the Music City Brewers to help those in
this community learn more about making beer, beer style appreciation,
and try to have some fun in the process. We also realize that we can't
be all things to all people, and perhaps we haven't done a very good job
in our 9-plus years as a homebrew club in catering to the needs of those
technically advanced brewers on the high end of the "beer geek" scale.
We would hope that those highly knowledgeable individuals might be
willing to help those of us who are uniformed learn from their wealth of
information. As a life-long educator, sharing with others in a helpful,
supportive way has been a big part of my own passion for homebrewing.
Steve Johnson, Membership Director and founding member
Music City Brewers
Nashville, TN
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 23:36:25 -0700
From: "John D. Misrahi" <lmoukhin at sprint.ca>
Subject: re. repitching/plambic slurry
Re, Dave Reidel's post:
i have done this...my experience is that certain organisms come to
predominate..so if one is doing a repitch, add a fresh packet as well as
'insurance' (I figure you still get the benefit of a quick start to
fermentation etc..)
And as Michael Grice said,
You are all of course invited to join the Plambic mailing list for
discussion more focused on this sort of thing
https://secure.neap.net/mailman/listinfo/plambic
We have some very knowledgable brewers there..and the sound/noise ratio is
pretty perfect..
john
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Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 21:25:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Raj B Apte <raj_apte at yahoo.com>
Subject: I like bottling: 750ml and autoclaving.
Hi All,
I was really starting to hate bottling also until I
modified the usual bulk prime/rack to bottle procedure in
two ways. First, I switched from sanitizing to sterilizing.
To sterlize I use a pressure cooker at 10psi for 15
minutes. The caps I sanitize. The advantage here is that I
don't get everything wet by racking sanitizer in and out of
the bottles and I don't worry about rinsing the sanitizer.
Second, I switched from 250-330ml bottles to 750ml. Its
half the work and the beer may benefit from being in larger
bottles. The 750s are nearly explosion proof (the ones I
use are 900g empty--that's a lot of glass) so I don't worry
about overpriming. And they really are a much better size
for social drinking.
raj
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 00:19:48 -0500
From: "Troy Wilson" <troy at troyandjulia.com>
Subject: RE: I Hate Bottling
I also use the picnic tapper method of bottle filling. I do it over a
clean bucket and drink the overflow when I'm done.
Troy A. Wilson
troy at troyandjulia.com
There are only 10 types of people in the world:
Those who understand binary and those who don't.
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 06:14:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Scott D. Braker-Abene" <skotrat at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: Beer in Hershey area
Alan asks about beer in the Hershey area
I have to say that there is no place greater anywhere on earth than Shangy's
SHANGYS THE BEER AUTHORITY
40 E MAIN ST, EMMAUS, PA 18049
Phone: (610) 967-6793
It is about 75 miles from Hershey and it is worth a 7,500 mile drive. You will
never again be at a distrubutor that has this selection of beer. Take a
suitcase of cash and leave the car half empty... You will need the space for
the beer you buy.
C'ya!
-Scott
=====
"My life is a dark room... One big dark room"
- BeetleJuice
http://www.skotrat.com/skotrat - Skotrats Beer Page
http://www.brewrats.org - BrewRats HomeBrew Club
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 08:36:20 -0500
From: Ralph Link <ralphl at shaw.ca>
Subject: Gluten free beer
I have just meet a person who has a gluten allergy, he has asked me if I
know of any gluten free beers. Does any one know of such beers?
Thanks
Ralph
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 10:16:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: cboyer at ausoleil.org
Subject:
Last night, after an all-0grain session ended in darkness with a leaky
counter-flow chiller, I got to worrying about possible infections in the
brew. Fortunately, I had a two-quart starter, and even though the beer
was 78 dF I pitched anyway...better to get that yeast in there and
crowding out any nasties rather than wait for the 6.5 gallons to chill
another eight degrees in ambient air.
Then, I got to thinking: two quarts of starter based on 46 points of DME
must have made some alcohol over the 2.5 days that it ran. I started with
a pitchable tube of White Labs WLP-300 (Hefeweizen) and it ferments quick
as it is. So, I certainly pitched a tad of alcohol along with the high
cell count of yeast.
Later, I mused to myself: what if I had boosted the alcohol a bit higher
with grain alcohol added to the wort? Two or three ounces might have been
enough to stunt any germs/bacteria etc. and not appreciable affect the
yeast as it went into it's O2 uptake in the main wort. A crazy idea, yes,
but one wonders if that might work.
In the case of my batch, it had noticable fermentation in four hours and
at +8 hours, blowoff had begun. Beer tastes clean, so I got lucky. Time
to fix that cheap C-F with a new one.
Your thoughts?
Cheers,
Charles
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 11:06:53 -0400
From: "Tim Detman" <tdetman at comcast.net>
Subject: RE: Beer In Hershey Area
Alan Asked about a good beer distributor:
The best beer distributor is about 30 mins away from Hershey in
Shiremanstown (near Harrisburg).
http://www.westybeer.com/ selection is huge. If you're like me you'll
wander around in there for a while trying to deicide which beers to
adopt. Def worth the short drive!
In PA you have to buy an entire case at a time unless you buy it from a
bar/restaurant where you can get 6 or 12 packs (its quite stupid).
One of the best beer selections at a pub is Kclingers.
http://www.kclingers.com/ Again, closer to Harrisburg than Hershey but
well worth the drive. They have 2 locations, the one in Etters is
closer to Hershey and the bigger of the two.
895 Old Trail Road
Etters, PA 17319
They have an impressive food menu and brew some beer in house. Both
those places are right off interstates so the drive is pretty easy.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
Tim
Carlisle, PA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 10:54:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Raj B Apte <raj_apte at yahoo.com>
Subject: belgian beer store in Toronto/Mississauga?
Hi All,
I'll be in Mississauga, ON, in the next few weeks and
wondered if anyone knew of a good store for Belgian beers
in the area (Toronto). I can't make it to Unibroue, but I
expect to stock up that as well.
thanks,
raj
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 22:03:10 +0200
From: "Raymond T. Gaffield" <raygaffield at mac.com>
Subject: Re: Beer in NYC
Hi,
It's been quite a few years since I've been to NYC, but I thought it
had a fairly healthy offering of brew pubs. What happened to Heartland
and West Side Brewing ? I thought both were worth a visit.
One place that I know is long gone but was one of the best brew pubs I
have ever been to was Zip City.
At any rate, I have old t-shirts and fond memories of these places.
Cheers,
RAY
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 23:28:08 +0100
From: tmeier at real-ale.net
Subject: re: My Berliner Weisse method
Chad Hogan wrote in with an interesting no boil technique for a sour
mash berliner weisse. Great info Chad! Sounds like the traditional
method I read about somewhere. As I understand it Kindl now mashes
normally and uses a delbruckii culture.
I have done one sour mashed berliner weisse. Sacc rest, then cooled
to 120F and did a 3 day hold at ~110F. Boosted to 120F once or twice
a day and wrapped in heavy blankets. I found mine took a very long
time to mellow (6 months) and yet was only about 1/2 as sour as
straight Kindl Weisse. It was well received in judging, but I
thought it was lacking that Kindle Weisse punch.
How did your method age, and what was the resulting sourness like?
..
Well, my Friday post ruffled some feathers. Mea culpa. Music City
Brewers is a solid club and runs the best competition in a four
state area. I was remiss in leaving out that their points in the
Mid-South series do not necessarily reflect the skill of their many
veteran brewers. A stern rib poking may do some good and get some
of those neglected brew kettles or CP fillers dusted off.
Tom Meier
Nashville, TN
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:00:49 -0500
From: Jeremy Hansen <cfjh at eiu.edu>
Subject: MFL? FFL? What the hell?
Hi gang.
I would like to put a fitting in my keg's gas line, so that I can easily
switch between a single gas-in, and my three-way gas distributor. I'd like
to put it in the middle of the hose, rather than buying a threaded gas-in,
and disassembling the three-way piece. But I can't find who sells a male
thread to barb, and a female thread to barb. I assume that MFL means "male
something left" threaded. Could anyone provide some clarity, and where I
could find these items?
Is it possible to put in a fitting that self-seals, such as is found on ice
maker water filters? Would this leak under pressure?
Thanks.
Jeremy Hansen
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #4571, 08/02/04
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