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HOMEBREW Digest #4867
HOMEBREW Digest #4867 Tue 11 October 2005
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Novembeerfest ("Jim Hinken")
cock ale ("Peter A. Ensminger")
Subject: New patent application for beer-like alcoholic beverage (Ed Kendall)
Wort Chiller Efficiency (Pete Limosani)
Re: Has anyone tried this recipe for cock ale? (Eric Wescott)
FW: Batch vs Continuous Sparge Efficiency ("Dave Burley")
mash temp (Marc Sedam)
Re: Mashing Cool (Joe Walts)
the weird beer issue (stencil)
Comments re HBD 4866 (Bill Velek)
The: Beer gun ("David Houseman")
Dry yeast / Nottingham ("eric")
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Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:08:07 -0700
From: "Jim Hinken" <jim.hinken at verizon.net>
Subject: Novembeerfest
Novembeerfest was previously announced. Unfortunately, the link to
the BJCP Style Guidelines in that announcement was to the 2001
guidelines. The 2004 style guidelines will be used. Here is the
announcement with the correct BJCP Style Guidelines link. I apologize
for any inconvenience.
The Impaling Alers are pleased to announce the 2005 Novembeerfest
homebrewing competition.
Novembeerfest will be held Saturday, November 5 at Larry's Brewing
Supply, 7405 S. 212th St. #103, Kent, WA 98032
Entries will be accepted from all 2004 BJCP/AHA beer style categories,
including cider and mead. The style guidelines may be viewed at
http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/. Three bottles are required for entry
with an entry fee of U.S. $6. The standard AHA entry form and bottle
labels may be used. Entry forms may also be downloaded from
www.impalingalers.org. Entries will be accepted through October 30
and may be shipped to:
Larry's Brewing Supply
7405 S. 212th St. #103
Kent WA 98032,
206-872-6846
Entries may also be dropped off at:
Mountain Homebrew and Wine Supply, 12121 N.E. Northup Way, Suite 210,
Bellevue, WA 98005, 206-882-9929
Bob's Homebrew Supply, 2821 NE 55th ST. Seattle, WA 98105,
206-527-9283
The Beer Essentials 2624 112th St. #E-1 Lakewood, WA. 98499 253
581-4288
The Cellar Homebrew 14320 Greenwood Ave. N. Seattle, WA 98133
206-365-7660
Olympic Brewing Supplies 2817 Wheaton Way Bremerton, WA 98310
360-373-1094
If you have any questions, please contact Jim Hinken at
brews.brothers at verizon.net
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 00:36:55 -0400
From: "Peter A. Ensminger" <ensmingr at twcny.rr.com>
Subject: cock ale
I've been interested in making a "cock ale" for many years, but never
had the nerve. Any food scientists out there to assuage my fears that
this beer is dangerous? And to you sparge-aholics: what sparge method is
best for a cock ale?
- -----
A "Cat's Meow" recipe for cock ale,
brewery.org/brewery/cm3/recs/13_23.html , gives a modern recipe as:
"Take a few pieces of cooked chicken and a few chicken bones (approx one
tenth of the edible portion of the bird) well crushed or minced.
Also take half of pound of raisins, a very little mace, and one or maybe
two cloves. Add all these ingredients to half a bottle of strong country
white wine. Soak for 24 hrs. Then make one gallon of beer as follows:
1 lb Malt extract
1 Oz Hops
1/2 lb demerarra sugar
1 gallon water
Yeast and nutrient
Add the whole of the chicken mixture to the beer at the end of the
second day. Fermentation will last six or seven days longer than usual
and the ale should be matured at least one month in the bottle. This
cock ale is of the barley wine type."
- -----
Sam Adams brewed a Cock ale for the 1996 GABF. This was reported by the
Great Lakes Brewing News (Dec 1997):
"For the connoisseur of bizarro beers, the Great American Beer Festival
is the perfect hunting ground. The 1996 festival brought us Boston Beer
Company's Cock Ale, based on actual 16th and 17th century recipes that
call for tossing a rooster into the kettle. Brewer Dave Grinnell
obtained two small male birds, plucked, gutted and boiled them, then
gave them a massage with 11 herbs and spices. The oven stuffers were
tied up in a cloth sack filled with dates and currants, then steeped in
the brew, a brown ale, as it flowed through the hop percolator. The bird
beer was a special issue to mark the 50th anniversary of a company
investor; there never were any plans for a commercial version. As one
brewery spokesperson said, "I don't think there's much market for a meat
beer."
Cheerio!
Peter A. Ensminger
Syracuse, NY
hbd.org/ensmingr
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 17:13:07 +0900
From: Ed Kendall <ekendall at usonet.ne.jp>
Subject: Subject: New patent application for beer-like alcoholic beverage
The major Japanese breweries all sell a version of this stuff. It looks
like ginger ale with the same head retention. It has the mouthfeel of
water and the beer-like taste is insignificant. It sells because it is
cheaper than real beer.
Ed
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:03:13 -0400
From: Pete Limosani <peteLimo at comcast.net>
Subject: Wort Chiller Efficiency
Fellow Brewers,
I'd like to thank all of you who responded to my query about saving water while
chilling. I received several more responses off the board than on. Please allow
me to paraphrase and summarize the group think.
One fellow used some equations to figure that it should take about 17 gallons
of 65* water to reduce 6.5 gallons of wort from 212* to 75*. In my experience,
it takes about 20 minutes or so to do the trick and the water is coming out of
my faucet at 2.5 gallons per minute. That's more like 50 gallons! Should I say
my chilling process has a 33% efficiency?
I believe his equations assume 100% efficiency in the heat transfer process.
To get 100% efficiency I would think that the temperature of the water exiting
the chiller would have to be the same temperature as the wort as any given
time. The temperature exiting the chiller is close to the wort temperature
when I begin chilling, but gets further away from it as chilling progresses,
hence my thought to slow the rate to save water.
The brother of an hbd lurker is a mechanical engineer specializing in fluids
and heat transfer! I'll summarize his thoughts:
1. Insert a coiled wire or series of springs into the piping. This changes the
water flow from laminar into turbulent. Agitating the water helps increase heat
transfer.
1a. Another fellow chimed in that stirring the wort (without splashing) helps
with heat transfer.
2. Add fins to the outside of the copper line. By adding fins to the tubing,
you increase the surface area which, in turn, will increase the heat transfer.
3. Run the water line through an ice bath. Every degree that you pre-cool the
water will pay off better than 100% because of the Logarithmic Mean Temperature
Difference. I don't have room for the formulas, but I believe it. This will
reduce the overall amount of water used, but I wonder how costs compare when
accounting for the energy used to freeze the ice--probably minimal.
4. Use a counterflow device. It is 25-30% more better. Some counterflow
chillers I've seen claim much higher returns than this. Indeed, the makers of
the Therminator (actually a plate chiller, but counterflow nonetheless) claim
it will chill 10 gallons of boiling wort to pitching temperature within 5
minutes when using 58*F cooling water at 5 gpm. (Hmmm. -Jim W.- Then 6.5
gallons should cool in about 3.5 minutes and use about 17 gallons.)
While all of these thoughts have been in the public domain for a time, here
is the direct answer I was looking for...
5. Turning the water flow rate down will not be of significant benefit to
reducing the amount of water required for the process. This sentiment was
echoed by another as well.
However, another fellow chimed in with...if the wort is much more than 10
degrees warmer than the exit water, you can turn down the water flow. This
will conserve water but still give practical efficiency for heat transfer.
10* is a general refrigeration difference for reasonable efficiency.
Hmmmmm...maybe I'll buy a Therminator!
A number of folks questioned whether my motivation was to save money. Not
really. 50 gallons of water doesn't cost that much. And the alternatives--
investing in a counter flow chiller, extending the immersion chiller to include
a trip through an ice bath, buying a Therminator--all probably cost more than
the water. It just seems somewhat wasteful to me to see 50 gallons go down the
drain just to cool wort. Others feel the same way and suggested storing the
water for reuse.
Final thought. I use a heat exchanger in my HERMS to add heat to the mash. I
use a heat exchanger in my pot to remove heat from the wort. Can anybody think
of a way to reverse the brewing process so the hot water coming out of my
chiller can be recirculated to warm my mash?
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 08:58:42 -0400
From: Eric Wescott <eric.wescott at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Has anyone tried this recipe for cock ale?
Regarding:
From: Brad Railsback <rails2bier at yahoo.com>
Subject: Has anyone tried this recipe for cock ale?
In some "old-fashioned" mead and braggot recipes, a pork bone would be
added. The reasons listed as to why varied, but the best we more
modern mead-makers can come up with is that the bones and flesh added
a nitrogen source (nutrients) for which honey is sorely lacking.
Other recipes called for raisins and other organic matter.
Perhaps the crushed chicken bones are for a similar reason, since in
the "old times" they didn't have nutrients they could add.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:32:25 -0400
From: "Dave Burley" <Dave_Burley at charter.net>
Subject: FW: Batch vs Continuous Sparge Efficiency
Brewsters:
Check out:
http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/
I suggest you read all of this, but as we have been discussing efficiency,
here are some important points he makes.
In his opening dissertation he comments on the relative efficiency of batch
sparging and continuous sparging. My extraction and highlights of his text
follow.
- --------------------------
FLY (or continuous) SPARGING
"It's important to go slow so as to extract the maximum amount of sugar
and not compact the grainbed, which would stop the runoff. Lauter design is
also highly important in fly sparging. ....... Because the runoff may take
an hour or more, many brewers do a mashout step in an attempt to denature
the enzymes and prevent further conversion from taking place while the
sparge is happening.
<<However, this method will usually yield the highest extraction from the
grain.>>"
- --------------------------
BATCH SPARGING
"extraction rates that range from slightly less to slightly more than fly
sparging. The more <inefficient> your lautering system is for fly sparging,
the bigger the gain in extraction you'll see from batch sparging."
- --------------------------
Pretty much sums up what I have been saying and perhaps explains the
confusion some have about Continuous and Batch sparging relative efficiency.
Continuous sparging, properly carried out, has the potential to give the
most efficient extraction, but running it improperly (e.g. fast or with
channeling) will reduce the efficiency and can drop it below even batch
sparging efficiency.
Keep on Brewin'
Dave Burley
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 9:41:14 -0400
From: Marc Sedam <alechemist at bellsouth.net>
Subject: mash temp
Yes, this is certainly possible. I'd venture even likely.
Gelatinization is a process not an event. I was trying to get
at that a little in the post. It's not like lighting a piece of paper on
fire, where you hit 451F and paper ignites. The malted barley starch
would all pretty much gelatinize this way if:
1) It was free starch, and not in kernel-form
2) You were actively stirring
3) Temperature change was instantaneous
The bottom line is that the gelatinization temps you see is the
peak of the curve generated by a differential scanning calorimeter
(DSC). It's an anlytical tool, though, and not a mash tun. A DSC
fits the characteristics I described above. As we all know, real-world
processes are difficult to model accurately. ;-)
So in the real-world mash, you have some starch that's gelatinized
slightly earlier, the majority that's happening at the peak, and some
left over on the tail. It's not a bell-curve, however, more of a
right-skewed. This is compounded by:
1) Wetting of grain--Gelatinization happens poorly in a dry environment
and it takes time for the entire volume of the kernel to be sufficiently wet.
2) Diffusion out into the sparge--enough said about that already
3) Temperature.
So what happens at the end (and again, why some brewers perform
mash-outs) is that you increase the temperatures so #s 1-2 above
happen faster, which brings gelatinization to (effective) completion.
Since all of 1-3 above are also not instantaneous, gelatinization (the
sum of them all) is also more gradual.
In your case, complete gelatinization WILL happen over time at your
constant temperature. I'm certainly not recommending that you
change anything you're doing. But I'd bet that the cloudiness you see
clear eventually is starch slowly gelatinizing and coming out in the
recirculating wort over time.
This is why an iodine test isn't always accurate and a long
recirculation is very helpful.
Cheers!
Marc
***********************************
Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 17:24:49 +0100
From: Signalbox Brewery <signalbox.brewery at ntlworld.com>
Subject: Mashing cool
Greetings
We mash one of our beers at 63C / 145F and - perhaps coincidentally
- it takes quite a time to clear, compared to our others. Could this
because starch is not being gelatinised at low temps?
David Edge
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:03:18 -0500
From: Joe Walts <jwalts at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Mashing Cool
Kyle writes:
> Dave, you're definitely below the starch gelatinization temp of
> 67C/152F, so you're not making a lot of the starch available to
> the amylase enzymes for "processing", and consequently those
> large starch molecules are causing your finished beer to be cloudy,
> and can also cause a problem with infection on down the road, as
> many of the nasties that infect beer love to latch on to starches.
I'd like to see a definitive answer on what the starch gelatinization
temperature is. Greg Noonan claims that it's 149F in New Brewing
Lager Beer, and the MBAA claims that it's approximately 140F in the
latest issue of New Brewer (based on 1970s research at Heriot-Watt
University; the New Brewer article is "MBAA Text Targets Specialty
Brewers"). However, I believe (but may be wrong) that some 90% of the
barley starches are rendered soluble during the malting process
anyway.
If the MBAA is right, then Dave's problem may due to slow Alpha
Amylase activity (also a result of the low temperature). Dave, you
could compensate for that by holding your mash temperature for a
longer period of time, say 90 minutes. An iodine test near the end of
the mash will reveal if you have any large starches in solution.
Joe
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:49:44 -0400
From: stencil <etcs.ret at verizon.net>
Subject: the weird beer issue
Referring to Homebrew Digest #4866 (October 10, 2005)
Boris Mesones's Korean brewing video clip was fascinating, especially the
bronze cobra-shaped beerpull in the establishing shot. That, and Brad's Cock
Ale query, and the report on synthetic beer-like behavior in Japan, makes me
wonder, does snake wine still trickle through the border? Would it be
possible, Boris, to get a recipe for, say, a two-snake barleywine?
stencil sends
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:19:05 -0500
From: Bill Velek <billvelek at alltel.net>
Subject: Comments re HBD 4866
Boris: One word -- "TinyURL" :-)
Instead of posting a long link and asking people to patch it together,
it would be better to change it, as I have now done for your link, into
this: http://tinyurl.com/96twz . I use TinyUrl so often that I have a
direct link to it on my browser's menu bar. It is especially good to
use shorter urls in any messages which are likely to be quoted again and
again. Just a friendly suggestion for something you might not have
heard about yet.
As for the link, it was interesting. Sounds almost like 'county music'
to start out with. And are _you_ in the film? Also, since I can't read
Korean, is that just a pilot brewery setup, or for a pub-brew, or what?
It looks like pretty small equipment for a commercial venture.
***
Christian: Shame on you for spamming us, as if he'll ever read this :(
***
Brad: I've read about real oysters being added to an "Oyster Stout"
(IIRC it was from Michael Jackson), and I've also read about an old
recipe which added eggs to the beer, but never heard the one about
making "Fowl Beer", or is that "Foul Beer". :) Heh, heh, ... your
post fits right into this most recent digest, which is pretty weird,
including my post about the new 'no-malt beer-like' patent.
***
Kevin: Could you humor us and define "Advection-dispersion-sorption" or
what it involves, etc.? You sound like an engineer (which I'm not), so
I'd enjoy hearing your take on the issue of batch vs. fly. I'm afraid
that looking into "soil mechanics/chemical transport" is going to be
well beyond my abilities, but I might just spend a night at the 'Holiday
Inn Express'. :-) If you don't get the joke, it's a take off on a
series of TV commercials, i.e., I'm a genius because I stayed there.
***
Bill: Quit posting crap like that patent info. And get off the sauce;
the next thing you know, you'll be talking to yourself.
***
Nathaniel: Re the beer gun vs. CPF. I'm assuming that the beer gun
allows the bottle to be filled with minimal foaming. If the bottle is
first purged of oxygen and then filled with no foam, what's the
difference if it is counterpressure filled or not? I'm wondering if
this uses a technique like "TurboTap". I don't remember if the link was
posted here or not, but it is http://www.turbotap.com -- and it works
remarkably well from what I can see on the video. Now, the only concern
that I can possibly see is that any foaming is due to the release of
CO2, which might cause the bottled beer to be undercarbonated -- which
might be your whole point. My question is: if there is _practically_ no
foaming at all, won't the resulting bottled beer continue to be
sufficiently carbonated? Someone might think that the unpressurized
space in the bottle's neck will remove some carbonation from the beer,
but don't you face the same problem when you remove the CPF from the rim
of the bottle?
Thanks to everyone for all the great info. I love this craft.
Cheers.
Bill Velek
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 17:08:12 -0400
From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net>
Subject: The: Beer gun
There's been several postings asking about The Beer Gun. I down loaded
the product descriptions and read these to see if it was worth
purchasing. As has been stated, this is not a counter pressure filler.
It does allow the bottle to be flushed with CO2 then filled. Aren't
commercial bottle fillers simply filled the same way, without counter
pressure? The key design elements seem to be the use of ten feet of
tubing that reduces the pressure and smooth finishes that reduce turbulence
in the flow of the
beer thus helping to keep CO2 in solution. It would seem that much of
The Beer Gun's functionality could be done by using an existing CPBFer
but just don't pressurize the bottle. Flush with CO2 with the gas valve
and then fill with the beer valve. If ten feet of tubing makes a big
difference, one can lengthen the run from you keg. The only question
then is the values we use; do they provide smooth enough flow? If you
saturate the beer in your keg with sufficient CO2 so that at the end of
a long run that reduces pressure, there is still sufficient CO2 in the
beer to provide adequate carbonation upon opening the bottle, then the
work of The Beer Gun could be done with a picnic faucet or an existing
CPBFer. I can see an experiment forming......It would be good to have
one to do a side-by-side experiment.
David Houseman
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:55:54 -0600
From: "eric" <zeee1 at nebonet.com>
Subject: Dry yeast / Nottingham
Hello
I am commenting on a question regarding dry Nottingham yeast. I have always
used dry yeast and my beers are "drinkable", but then I still use DME or
extract too.
I tried Nottingham for the first time, in a first braggot about a month
ago. Fermented quite strong, I let go 10 days, then added sparkolliod for
clarifier to primary for 5 days, then bottled. Crystal clear after 2 days in
bottle. Finished at 1.010 with 6 lbs extract and 6 lbs honey. Very sweet
taste, minimal bite compared to EC1118 and 15 lbs honey.
I am going to try this again in beer, have been using Coopers.
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #4867, 10/11/05
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