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HOMEBREW Digest #4970
HOMEBREW Digest #4970 Fri 10 March 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
loss of hop aroma, staling/oxidation ("Steve Dale-Johnson")
RIMS Controller Schematic ("evan kraus")
Remembering George Fix (Jeff Renner)
Fred's anti-oxidation plan ("Peed, John")
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Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 20:45:01 -0800
From: "Steve Dale-Johnson" <sdalejohnson at hotmail.com>
Subject: loss of hop aroma, staling/oxidation
The post today from Jeff Renner to Fred Johnson's question, and response
from Fred have brought something to the surface that has been troubling me
of late, hadn't found a way to put my finger on it until now.
I haven't brewed in awhile, something about work, 2 and 4 year old kids and
all that. Still love beer, so I have been drinking (on tap, Sankey kegs) a
nice, subtle honey pilsner by a local BC brewery (Tree brewing Honeycomb
pilsner), really nice european style lager with a fine lacy white head like
stella, a nice crisp bittering just in balance and a *fantastic* fresh hop
aroma ...when the keg is first tapped. I just killed one after a period of
about 2 weeks (I had help) and by the end the beer was decidedly less
dynamic, almost off (not sour, just not as clean and crisp) and had lost all
hop aroma as well as the initial slight sulfur nose of a european style
pilsner. Thought I might not have cleaned my keg rig thoroughly enough in
my usual obsessive compulsive anal retentive cleaning regimen. I realize
now in retrospect that it was oxidative staling. If I ever had similar
changes with my homebrewed beers, I thought it may have been HSA or an
infection or whatever, but with 2 kegs in a row of stable (unpasteurzed,
mind you), well made commercial brew????
I can only figure that this is coming from my beer gas, "pure" Co2. Filled
at the fire extinguisher place and not by BevGas, if that makes a
difference. How can you make sure that the Co2 that you buy isn't impure
and adding oxygen to the keg??? It's the only thing I can think of that
could have staled the beer this fast, certainly not my hoses the way it's
been used up .... driving me nuts
Anyone care to enlighten??
Steve Dale-Johnson
Not Brewing, but still drinking at 1918 miles, 298 degrees Rennerian
Delta (Vancouver), BC, Canada.
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 05:54:19 -0500
From: "evan kraus" <ekraus50 at hotmail.com>
Subject: RIMS Controller Schematic
Anyone got a copy of the original Rodney Morris RIMS Temperature control
board schematic?
If you do can you send it to me?
ekraus50 at hotmail.com
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:34:34 -0500
From: Jeff Renner <jsrenner at umich.edu>
Subject: Remembering George Fix
Brewers
Today, March 10, is the fourth anniversary of the death of one of the
great pioneers of homebrewing, George Fix.
I hope you will all raise a glass of your finest to his memory.
See http://byo.com/departments/904.html and http://
www.math.clemson.edu/history/fix.html
Here's to you, George! We miss you. As Louis Bonham wrote above, we
don't worry that "in heaven there is no beer." We know you have gone
before us and are tipping one for us, waiting until we follow to join
you.
Jeff
- ---
Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA, jsrenner at umich.edu
"One never knows, do one?" Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943
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Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:10:22 -0800
From: "Peed, John" <jpeed at elotouch.com>
Subject: Fred's anti-oxidation plan
Fred's anti-oxidation plan sounds good, but I have a few things to add.
First, I would think it would be better to have a mash/lautering system
that doesn't require transferring the mash from the mash vessel to a
lauter vessel. Second, while many people think that RIMS recirculating
systems increase oxidation, I would argue that they decrease oxidation.
If you prime the pump properly, you will ensure that the lines and pump
are filled with liquid and no air. Now, assuming that your inlet
manifold sits atop the grain bed and under the surface of the wort in
the mash tun, you can recirculate wort with no oxidation at all. And
assuming that your mash and lauter tun are combined (as in a picnic
cooler), you can dough-in with minimal mixing, recirculate to clarity
with no disturbance or splashing, then quietly run off the liquid to the
boil kettle. Add the typical RIMS heater and some temperature control
and you can mash out using the RIMS system without disturbing the mash
bed (if you wanted, you could control heat with a simple on-off switch,
although it would require a lot of diligence). Contrast a closed-loop
RIMS system with a manual system using separate mash and lauter tuns and
you see that with the latter you have to scoop the mash out of one
vessel and put it into another, as well as having to manually draw off
wort and pour it back into the lauter tun to achieve a fraction of the
clarity with a lot more chance for oxidation; to me, the RIMS system
looks a lot better from a standpoint of oxidation. As for RIMS designs,
I don't think you can beat Dennis Collins':
http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/System.html
I'm not at all convinced that hot side aeration is the problem, but it's
pretty much impossible to prove or disprove it.
As for the cold side, I try to purge all kegs, carboys and yeast starter
vessels with CO2 before filling. A carboy cap, racking cane and hose
barb allow CO2 pressure-transfer of wort and yeast from carboys to kegs.
Obviously, the pressure must be kept low (I stay in the 1 to 2 psi range
for the most part, never exceeding 5 psi). If you follow this strategy,
your wort and beer will never contact air from the time you rack it out
of the boil kettle. I do this more for sanitation than for
anti-oxidation.
For bottling, I think it really helps to purge the bottles with CO2. A
simple hose and racking cane can connect directly to a CO2 regulator set
to a psi or two. Put it in the bottle, open the valve, flow for 5
seconds or so while withdrawing the racking cane. Blichmann's BeerGun
makes purging and filling really easy, although I haven't used one
enough to know if it makes for better bottled beer.
Don't have a CO2 setup? Watch e-bay.
John Peed
Oak Ridge, TN
"Theory and practice are the same in theory, but not in practice."
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #4970, 03/10/06
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