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HOMEBREW Digest #4963
HOMEBREW Digest #4963 Tue 28 February 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
BABBLE Brew-Off 2006 Results (val.dan.morey)
Re: Temperature regulation in chest freezer for lagering? ("Michael O'Donnell")
CARBOY Shamrock Open - March 18 ("Mike Dixon")
ok (leavitdg)
Re: Lagering (Randy Ricchi)
Re: Producing doped beer for taste comparison ("Jason Gross")
Re: temperature regulation in chest freezer for lagering? (Scott Alfter)
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Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:28:09 -0600
From: val.dan.morey at juno.com
Subject: BABBLE Brew-Off 2006 Results
Many thanks to the participants, judges, stewards, volunteers, and
sponsors that made the BABBLE Brew-Off 2006 a huge success. A 199
entries were received from 11 states coast to coast making this our
largest Brew-Off yet. We are very pleased to announce Dave Wohlfeil as
the winner of our Entrant Appreciation Drawing. Dave receives a one year
subscription to Brew Your Own. Best of show was as follows:
1st - Dan Schlosser - Doppelbock
2nd - Aaron Slocum - Sweet mead
3rd - Steve Pauling - Mild Ale
Full results can be found at the following link:
http://babblehomebrewers.com/brewoff/results.asp
Full list of sponsors can be found at:
http://babblehomebrewers.com/brewoff/sponsors.asp
Results are in the mail and you should receive them soon.
We hope that you will join us in 2007 for another Brew-Off! Thanks
again.
Prosit,
Dan Morey
BABBLE Brew-Off Organizer
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:42:41 -0800
From: "Michael O'Donnell" <mooseo at stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Temperature regulation in chest freezer for lagering?
>Gavin,
I've thought about the same thing a few times: you're right, it should
work. I don't remember what voltage home thermostats switch (maybe 24 V),
but you're then going to need a relay to control the fridge... add buying
the thermostat (~$25) a relay (~$5?) and a power supply ($5 if you can't
scrounge one) and you've got a bit of money invested. I was going to try it
for my lagering fridge, but $40 on eBay got me a temperature controller
that worked out of the box. I probably wouldn't use an old-school bi-metal
thermostat for this, only because lagering temps are right at the edge of
the temp range and they probably aren't very accurate there... the digital
ones are so cheap now... you might even find a heating installer who'd
trade you used one for beer.
cheers,
mike
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:16:55 -0500
From: "Mike Dixon" <mpdixon at ipass.net>
Subject: CARBOY Shamrock Open - March 18
The CARBOY Shamrock Open competition date will be March 18, with the event
held once again in Raleigh at the BB&Y Restaurant. The deadline for entry is
March 11.
Entrants, judges and stewards can sign up via the online entry form. Contact
information for the competition is given on the website.
http://hbd.org/carboy/shamrock.htm
Cheers,
Mike Dixon
Wake Forest, NC
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:57:49 -0500
From: leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu
Subject: ok
Thanks for all of the responses re: top up water. This makes sense.
I guess that I read too much lately, now here is another: In the same journal
there were several tear-out fliers/cards produced apparently by Coopers and
WhiteLabs. They have recipes and procedures for various styles. One is a
"James Brown Ale" (supposed Newcastle clone). It is a lot of malt extract
recipe, with some munich, crystal and chocolate steeped, and removed. Once the
grains are removed it says: 'mix in the extract, and FLAKED WHEAT (my emphasis),
bring to a boil, etc.' This is an error, is it not, ie, the flaked wheat should
be converted...and the starch will lead to haze, no?
Darrell
<doing too much reading, and not enough brewing!>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 09:19:56 -0500
From: Randy Ricchi <rricchi at houghton.k12.mi.us>
Subject: Re: Lagering
The question was asked:
"does a keg of cold fermented lager improve at all if it's conditioned
at room temps, albeit 18C / 64.4F? Think of it as a super sized diacetyl
rest!"
I'll throw my two cents in on this, and also bring you up to date on a
fun little experiment I've been doing this lager brewing season.
I've noticed that even very clean lagers eventually develop fruity,
ale-like flavors if stored warm for an extended period of time (at least
bottle conditioned lagers-I don't know if this would happen in the
absence of yeast). They might still be a tasty beer, but not what you
were shooting for.
I like to do a diacetyl rest at about 60F, regardless of whether or not
there is diacetyl present. The warmer temp speeds up the activity of the
yeast as it reduces some of the compounds (sulfur, diacetyl, etc.) it
created during fermentation. The warmer beer releases CO2 which I
believe also helps by "scrubbing out" some of these compounds.
I used to ferment real clean wort by letting the wort sit for 45 min or
so after chilling and then racking off only the clean wort. This
resulted in very few nucleation sites for CO2 release, and my ferments
took longer and I ended up with real strong sulfur character in the
finished beer which took many, many weeks to go away unless I did a
"diacetyl" rest for a week or so.
This year I threw conventional wisdom out the window and decided to
ferment "dirty" with all the hot and cold break, and hop pellets still
in the wort.
I remembered when I first started brewing and didn't know any better, I
never seperated the wort from all the gunk and I had nice strong
fermentations, and nice beers. I don't know - maybe my palate was too
unsophisticated to notice any flavor problems back then, but so far this
year my young lagers taste very nice (with one exception-I'll go into
that later), and they finished fermenting in less than a week, and with
only minor sulfur. I racked off of all the sludge while there was only 2
gravity points or so left to go until terminal gravity.
One of my 6 batches of lager may end up fruity. I was caught off guard
by how rapidly the beer was fermenting and it must have warmed itself up
a little too much during primary. It was fruity when I racked it. I had
a half gallon or so of headspace in the 6.5 gallon secondary, so I
kraeusened it with freshly fermenting beer a couple of days later to top
off the carboy. I don't know if this will help with the fruity
character, but it surely can't hurt.
The following beers were fermented colder to avoid this problem.
My first batch, which was pitched with fresh liquid yeast culture built
up first with a pint of wort, and later with a quart of wort the day
before pitching, was fermented at around 52F, and was done in one week.
Pitching temp was 58F. This beer is very clean tasting, and it was a
very quick ferment for a lager.
The next batch was fermented with approximately one cup of slurry from
the previous batch, and the slurry was full of hop particles and trub -
real pretty stuff. This stuff, pitched into "dirty" wort at around 58
degrees and put into a chest freezer set at 48 degrees, fermented out in
4 days. It turns out this was too fast, resulting in a fruity character.
Further batches were handled the same way, but fermented a little
colder, between 42 and 45 degrees and finished clean, in about 5 to 6
days.
By racking to secondary when there are a couple, three gravity points
left to ferment, I'm getting the beer off of the old yeast cells and all
the trub, and there is still enough activity to fill any headspace in
the secondary with CO2.
The beers had no diacetyl that I could detect, and only a very slight
note of sulfur, and except for the one fruity one, taste quite clean.
All the beers are held in the same chest freezer (it's a big'un), and
after the final batch was done with primary and racked to secondary I
allowed the temp to rise over a couple, three days to 57 degrees. Last
night I set the thermostat at 52 degrees. I'll dial it down to 47
tonight, and keep dropping it 5 degrees per day until I get to 32F,
which is what I'll hold the beers at for as long as I can wait before
kegging and drinking. Since my storing and serving chamber is one and
the same, when I keg the first one, I'll be pretty much done with very
cold storage since I don't want to drink my beer at 32 degrees. I'll
generally store at 45 or 46 degrees from there on out.
One thing I really liked about my "dirty" brewing technique is I don't
have to sanitize a carboy and racking hose and cane, or clean a brewpot
on brew day. I use an immersion chiller and just chill the beer in the
brewpot, pitch the yeast in, oxygenate, cover, and throw it in the
fridge. Simple methods for a simpleton. Perfect for me!
If I discover later that this whole thing was a huge mistake, I'll
surely let you know.
Randy
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:22:25 -0700
From: "Jason Gross" <jrgross at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Producing doped beer for taste comparison
Randy Mosher lists some good DIY methods in "Radical Brewing". Although, he
recommends them for aroma only and not taste. Nail Polish Remover Lager or
freshly rasped Biere de Circuit Board anyone? How about some Packing Tape
Porter? Yum...
Cheers,
Jason Gross
Mandan, ND
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:25:23 -0800
From: Scott Alfter <scott at alfter.us>
Subject: Re: temperature regulation in chest freezer for lagering?
Gavin Last wrote:
> Hi, I'm looking for some advice. I want to create a device for controlled
> temperature lagering using an old chest freezer and a home thermostat.
I did this for a short time, and it got the job done. In addition to the
thermostat, you'll need a relay, a power supply, some wire, and a plug and
outlet (like you'd use to fix an extension cord). I'd use a 12V DC power
supply and a relay that uses a 12V DC coil. (A transformer and an AC-coil
relay would also work, and I think you can pass up to 24V through the typical
thermostat. DC components were what I had on hand at the time.) The relay
contacts should be DPST or DPDT, rated for somewhere around 5-10 amps at 120V
AC. Wire the plug and outlet to the relay contacts so they'll be connected
when the relay is energized (connect live through one set, neutral through the
other, and connect ground directly). Connect the negative output from the
power supply to one side of the relay coil. Connect the positive output to the
common terminal on the thermostat, and run a wire from the A/C terminal on the
thermostat to the other side of the relay coil.
I put the thermostat (a cheap digital model) inside the fridge, with some Cat3
exiting through a hole in the side to go down below. The relay and power
supply were taped to the bottom frame near the compressor. The fridge's power
cord was then plugged into the outlet connected to the relay, and the plug
connected to the relay (through a suitable length of cord) was plugged into the
wall, along with the power supply.
The thermostat I had could be cranked down to maybe 40 degrees, IIRC. That
should be good enough for any fermentation, and it's borderline passable for
lagering. I ended up replacing the thermostat with an Apple II and some custom
hardware for temperature sensing and relay control, which lets me set a lower
temperature and do some other nifty things (like slowly ramp temperatures up
for the diacetyl rest and back down for lagering), but one of these days, I'll
replace that with a microcontroller-based system that'll be smaller and more
reliable. (I've burned through a couple of Apple II power supplies, and you
can't just run down to Fry's and buy another one.)
_/_ Scott Alfter
/ v \ Visit the SNAFU website today!
(IIGS( http://snafu.alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #4963, 02/28/06
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