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HOMEBREW Digest #4662
HOMEBREW Digest #4662 Tue 30 November 2004
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
German-American Brewers. ("Dan Listermann")
German Heritage ("Tom Clark")
Re: corny fermenting ("Michael O'Donnell")
German-American Homebrewers? ("Peter A. Ensminger")
Re: Vanilla bean - source? ("Alan Folsom")
Uses for Temperature Correction Factor ("val.dan.morey@juno.com")
Pump/recirc. with a CFC? ("Strom C. Thacker")
B.Sc yeast project (Alon Philosof)
where to put the pump ("steve lane")
Fermenting in a corny keg ("Ronald La Borde")
Brewing and Heritage ("John Oconnell")
RE:Vanilla bean - source? ("Troy A. Wilson")
RE: fermenting in a corny ("Rick Gordon")
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Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:48:20 -0500
From: "Dan Listermann" <dan at listermann.com>
Subject: German-American Brewers.
Fifth generation German-American, But I am an English ale freak.
Dan Listermann
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:52:40 -0500
From: "Tom Clark" <rtclark555 at charter.net>
Subject: German Heritage
It would be hard to discern where most of our home brew enthusiasts have
their roots.
However, is there any question as to where the best brewer's families
originated?
Tom Clark - West Virginia
(Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England and Germany)
P.S. My Scottish side says you're supposed to distill it first, then age it
for several years.
My German part says to carefully ferment it is a cave at about 35 degrees,
then carefully age it least a month or so.
My Welsh part seems to think "Lets have a pint as soon as we get home from
the coal mine".
My Irish background says "Let's drink it now and we'll gladly fight anyone
who gets in the way".
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 20:43:46 -0800
From: "Michael O'Donnell" <mooseo at stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: corny fermenting
At 08:14 PM 11/29/2004, you wrote:
>I'm contemplating using a corny for a fermenter. Does anyone
>have any experience and/or reasons not to do this ?
Mike:
Yes and No... yes, I've done it; no, I can't think of any reason not to...
I don't necessarily see anything wrong with what you have planned, although
it is a lot more work than what I do... I just slap a hose onto the gas out
fitting (poppet removed, of course) and then wait until fermentation has
died down... at that point, I rack it to another keg... I've bent the dip
tube so it is about 1.5" off the bottom, and I throw away a few pints to
get rid of the worst of the yeast cloud when I rack... then I push into a
new keg, and wait a while before sticking it in the fridge (or lager,
depending on the brew)... Occasionally, I get a fairly cloudy keg, which I
guess is what I get for being so casual about the whole thing.
Anyway, those are my thoughts... your system ought to work fine, but if you
decide that swapping a blowoff hose for an airlock and pushing yeast out
every day are too much work, then don't be shy about not doing those steps.
Fermenting in corny's has been one of the best things I've done... it has
allowed me to control my fermentation temp (because I could fit 2 kegs into
my little temp chamber where I could only fit one carboy) and has reduced
cleanup time immeasurably. For a certified klutz, it means no more moving
glass carboys around.
cheers,
mike
Monterey, CA
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:42:43 -0500
From: "Peter A. Ensminger" <ensmingr at twcny.rr.com>
Subject: German-American Homebrewers?
Interesting question!
I recently started making my own wine. When I went to the Farmer's Mkt
to pick up some California grapes, the store owner says to me in a thick
Italian accent: "Hey! You don't look like a wop." ... I guess lots of
Italians are into home wine making.
Cheerio!
Peter A. Ensminger
Syracuse, NY
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 07:31:24 -0500
From: "Alan Folsom" <alan at folsoms.net>
Subject: Re: Vanilla bean - source?
Vanilla bean shouldn't be too hard to find. Any 'gourmet' supermarket
should have it, or any local cookware shop that has spices. If you're
stuck, the absolute best place (unsolicited testimonial) for getting any
spices is www.penzeys.com. They have three varieties of fresh vanilla.
Finally, our local homebrew store carries fresh vanilla all the time. In
interest of full disclosure I do fill in there occasionally to feed my habit,
but keystonehomebrew (www.keystonehomebrew.com) carries it and
they will ship next day if you call and ask nicely ;-)
Cut the beans in half lengthwise, and scrape the stuff from the middle,
that's where the flavor comes from. I would definitely put it in
secondary, as lots of aroma would be lost earler. If you want a nice
vanilla flavor I'd suggest two beans in five gallons, and taste after a few
days to see how it's going. It would probably be a week or so, but it's
to taste.
Al Folsom
- --
Alan L. Folsom, Jr. alan at folsoms.net
http://www.folsoms.net
PGP Public Key Available on Servers
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:50:35 GMT
From: "val.dan.morey at juno.com" <val.dan.morey@juno.com>
Subject: Uses for Temperature Correction Factor
Fred comments:
> Perhaps ... given us reason to make some adjustments to those
formulas.
I believe temperature correction factors can be useful in the following
applications:
1. First wort hopping
2. Mash hopping
3. Dry hopping
4. Batch that are cooled slowly such as Lambic or Berliner Weiss
5. Batches that are not boiled but rather are simmered for several
hours with hops.
Are there other temperature correction models available? Do you agree
that temperature correction factors would be useful? I for one, would
like to see more work in this area.
Cheers,
Dan Morey
Club BABBLE http://hbd.org/babble/
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:22:48 -0500
From: "Strom C. Thacker" <strom at wort.org>
Subject: Pump/recirc. with a CFC?
I typically don't use my pump with my CFC, mostly b/c I don't have
the fittings set up to do it (the pump tubing is semi-rigid polypro.
tubing with polypro. compression fittings, while the chiller tubing
is soft vinyl with hose barbs).
This may be silly, but all of this talk of using a pump with a CFC
has me wondering if it would make any sense at all to use a pump with
a CFC to recirculate the cooled wort back into the boiling kettle
until the entire volume of wort is close to pitching temp. This
would be similar to what some folks do with an immersion chiller. My
thought is that it would set up a nice hop bed/filter (I use a false
bottom in my boiler), leave the cold break behind, and probably still
cool the wort pretty fast. And it would allow you to cool the wort
to lower temps, convenient for lagers with relatively warm cooling
water.
The downside is that the wort would go from hot to cold to hot/warm
to cold again, especially at the beginning of the recirculation
process. Assuming no significant air uptake at hot temps, is this a
bad thing?
Are there good reasons to do (or not to do) this?
Thanks,
Strom
Newton, MA
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:30:36 +0200
From: Alon Philosof <rahel-f at bezeqint.net>
Subject: B.Sc yeast project
hi!
I'm interested in doing a project (and a paper of course) on beer yeast
for credit to my biology B.Sc university diploma.
I know there are are a few biologists on list so I thought I'd ask for
help with an Idea or guidance.
the project is to be done in a single academic year (2 semesters).
I prefer to focus on biochemistry and or cell physiology, maybe even
with a commercial or practical aspect.
so,
feel free to help,
thanks a bunch.
Schrodinger's cat
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:59:29 -0600
From: "steve lane" <tbirdusa at hotmail.com>
Subject: where to put the pump
I'm making the plunge to put a pump on the boil kettle. My boil kettle
setup is a ball valve with a slotted copper circle at the bottom and when I
had the kettle welded, I had two 1/2" stainless female couplings welded to
the side 10" up and 16" up from the bottom. I'm thinking that these two is
where I will run the pump inlet and outlet.
I figured to use the ball valve coupling at the bottom to drain the kettle
once the wort is chilled and not run it through the pump.
For those that are using the pump on the boiler, do you put it on the
outflow of the CFC or on the inflow? I'm using the side openings as my
thinking says I can create one whale of a whirlpool while chilling and it
will keep alot of the hops and cold break out of the pump inlet.
Any thoughts on why this setup should be errrrr..... set up differently?
Thanks,
Stephen
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:10:55 -0600
From: "Ronald La Borde" <pivoron at cox.net>
Subject: Fermenting in a corny keg
>From: "Webb, Mike" <mike.webb at pse.com>
>
>I'm contemplating using a corny for a fermenter.
I know of several who do this, including myself. It works well for me,
since I changed from the glass carboys. I have only fermented in
corny's about 5 or 6 times, but that is now my standard method.
When the club does a brewoff, it's sooooo much easier to transport the
sealed wort in a corny than carry a glass carboy in the car back home.
One member dropped his carboy on the way to his car, ruining the whole
brew day for him; well, he did have some beer to drink, and lunch, so
maybe the day was not completely ruined.
That's how I got started with the corny, so now I usually use it at
home also. I do have more blowoff because I use a 5 gallon corny. I
have cut the long dip tube off about 3/4 inch in the primary. This
allows me to transfer out without moving much of the bottom yeast
sediment along with the beer. Once I used some StarSan and pumped it
out of the corny I was going to use as a secondary only to then
remember that I just left about an inch of StarSan on the bottom. I
hate to tell you when I remembered this - but it was just immediately
after I moved my IPA to it! Now I do not cut the tube on the
secondary. This allows me to flush all the sanitizer out.
The idea of purging some yeast out from time to time sounds good, but
I would guess it would not be likely to budge off the bottom in any
meaningful amount. It's worth a try though.
I am trying to come up with a way to use a closed system of transfer.
I have been able to move from the primary corny to the secondary keg
with the peristaltic pump. I use the pump as a vacuum pump on the
secondary gas in connector with the beer transferred from primary
liquid out to secondary liquid out (now in). I wait until the primary
is almost empty and stop transfer. In order to be free of air in the
secondary, I put the sanitizer into the secondary to completely fill
it up, then move it out with CO2. When I transfer from the primary,
the entire setup is sanitary and closed to the outside except for the
air bleed input on top of the primary. I could use a filter at this
point, but I have not done this yet; just realize I could also put
some CO2 at very low pressure here and eliminate air. It's a lot of
work, wastes CO2, and takes time. The beer tastes no different then
when I used to just siphon off the glass carboy, so is all this
necessary, probably not, but it's a nice entertainment on a good day
outside.
Ron
=====
Ronald J. La Borde -- Metairie, LA
New Orleans is the suburb of Metairie, LA
www.hbd.org/rlaborde
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:06:15 -0500
From: "John Oconnell" <JOconnell at martinriley.com>
Subject: Brewing and Heritage
Subject: German-American Homebrewers?
As a mostly Scotch-Irish southerner (not to be confused with the
"Scotch-Irish" who settled much of the rural south, but a recent,
one-generation, merger of West Virginia and New Jersey families), I
looked over the names from the 2004 Mid-South Homebrew Series Winners,
posted a few days ago. This time I tried to make a few guesses about
the heritage of the brewers listed.
http://www.antiochsudsuckers.com/midsouth/mshboy2004.htm
Given that you tend to guess wrong with this method as often as you
guess right, and that names are changed over the years, I would still
have to admit that "Germanic" surnames show up more often than a
comparative sample pulled from a phone book. But there are more obvious
common denominators present:
1. The names are generally male (no one would dispute this is a
male-dominated hobby). (With all due deference to Tina Collier, of
course!)
2. The names are generally "Northern European." That is, no Chans,
Martinez, Obamas, or Patels on the list.
So, without diving into stereotypes any more than I have already, and
given the sample is a list of homebrewers who live in the south, what
can be discerned about the common heritage of the people who brew?
1. They come from a heritage historically familiar with beer and
brewing.
2. They come from social and religious backgrounds that do not prohibit
drinking alcohol.
3. They come from groups that have generally achieved the economic
stability to allow them to indulge in somewhat time-consuming,
unprofitable hobbies.
German-Americans score high on all three items. As do Irish- British-
Scotch- and even Belgian- and Polish-Americans. I'm not sure, given the
three qualities listed, any particular heritage group is more or less
represented in homebrewing, based on population.
Cheers,
John O'Connell
Atlanta, GA
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:57:37 -0500
From: "Troy A. Wilson" <troy at troyandjulia.com>
Subject: RE:Vanilla bean - source?
I'm not sure of an easy source. I bought mine at a spice specialty store
in Milwaukee.
I do know that I took two whole beans and chopped them into small pieces
and tossed them into the secondary for about 2 weeks. I had a
fantasticly subtle vanilla flavour to my beer. I assume had I left the
beer on it longer the flavour would have gotten stronger.
I'm sure you can just sample the beer until it hits the flavour
intensity you are looking for then rack your beer to bottles or keg.
Troy
Twin Geeks Brewers
Seymour, IN
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:39:07 -0500
From: "Rick Gordon" <regordon at bellsouth.net>
Subject: RE: fermenting in a corny
Mike asked about fermenting in a corny keg -
I occasionally use a corny for a secondary. The key is that if you leave the
valve as is, you will build up pressure and have to release it every so
often. I believe that lagering beer should not be disturbed by hard working
people with better things to do, so I took an old gas-in connector and
removed the valve parts (spring, poppet, and everything). I plugged the
"out" tube with a short piece of tubing and a large bolt - the other opening
is left open. On the keg, I take off the whole gas-in valve and use an extra
gas-in valve with the guts and inlet tube removed - you could just remove
the parts on the original valve and put it back on if you can't dig up
another valve body. I have an airlock and small rubber stopper that just
fits hole in the top of the gas-in connector to complete the system.
The end result is a closed fermentation system just like any other
fermenter. I shove the whole thing into the beer fridge and let it lager
away - no worries about pressure build up etc.
At kegging time I replace the modified gas-in valve and connector with the
normal ones and either push the beer into another keg (beer-out to beer-out)
using gas, or, when I am really lazy, I have been known to just carbonate
her up and damn the sediment (not recommended, but it works). If you've
taken the effort to lager it, you should obviously take the time to rack to
a clean keg. In theory you could rack several more times, but I'm too
impatient. You can also trim the beer-out tube in the fermenter corny a bit
to help reduce any sediment transfer.
Never tell anyone that the batch in the keg right now came out really great
and they just have to try it or the keg will invariably blow in the middle
of the pour. "Here's half a glass of foam, but I swear the rest of the keg
was really tasty!"
Rick Gordon
"Hopfen und Malz, Gott Erhalt's"
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #4662, 11/30/04
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