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HOMEBREW Digest #4974
HOMEBREW Digest #4974 Thu 16 March 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
beer in Puerto Rico ("Peter A. Ensminger")
Lamarck ("steve.alexander")
Re: Oxygen absorbing caps (Fred L Johnson)
Beer in PR ("Spencer W. Thomas")
AHA Governing Committee Election ("Tumarkin ")
re: metallic flavors ("Mike Sharp")
Re: question ("A.J deLange")
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JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning,
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:43:52 -0500
From: "Peter A. Ensminger" <ensmingr at twcny.rr.com>
Subject: beer in Puerto Rico
Greetings!
I am traveling to Puerto Rico in a few months. Any beer recommendations
from the HBD collective? Or should I just stick with the rum?
Cheerio!
Peter A. Ensminger
Syracuse, NY
Apparent Rennerian: [394, 79.9]
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 06:43:25 -0500
From: "steve.alexander" <-s at adelphia.net>
Subject: Lamarck
Peter A. Ensminger posts some of the most amusing stuff lately ....
>"Lamarck, the Founder of the Theory of
>Evolution".
>
>What do the French know?
>
>
I laughed at this one, but there is a kernel of truth to it if you
distinguish evolution from inheritance.
Lamarck studied bivalves around Paris and proposed evolution
~50 years before Darwin. So if you are a Lamarck proponent
you can honestly call him a founder of evolution. To be fair
Darwin doesn't get the ridicule, but supported Lamarck's and
several other erroneous ideas about inheritance (see pangenesis).
They both get points for seeing the big picture, but were clueless
about the mechanism. The mechanism was partly revealed by
Gregor Mendel in a paper about 55yrs after Lamarck's and 5yrs
after Darwin's work, but Mendel's paper was ignored for 35 years.
Some HBers seem to believe in Lamarkism in the sense that
they believe that if they are brewing a big beer they think
the starter should be high gravity too. If they will ferment cold,
then they make the starter cold too. It's nonsense of course.
The only inheritable asset are the parts of the parent cell
passed to the daughter at division.
Now if you'd like to play "what do the americans know ?" in the
same arena I'm afraid the judgment against my fellow citizens
would be quite severe. A shocking number seem to believe that
a ~2600yo myth lifted from the Sumerians should be taught as
part of a science curriculum. At least La marck and Darwin could
plead ignorance of the facts.
==
Peter also brought to our attention an article from the UK about
how beer drinkers chose naughty-foods, lamb and sausage,
while wine drinkers selected happy-foods, fish, olives &low-fat
cheese. I think the article misses the point that food & drink are
culturally persistent in a rather surprising way. The sausage is
a special case, but deserves a note later.
-S
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 07:41:12 -0500
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: Oxygen absorbing caps
Thanks to those who responded to my question regarding oxygen
scavenging caps. I've been able to find the following regarding one
brand of crowns that some HBD readers have seen or used. Interestingly,
I couldn't find anything about these from the manufacturer's web site,
Crown (now Crown Cork and Seal). The following was found on another web
site--I think very dated--describing the product and the original
manufacturer, Crown.
Crown Beverage Packaging is also a leader in new technology as it
developed the Oxycap(R) in 1992. The Oxycap(R) is a special crown with
oxygen absorbing capabilities. The Oxycap(R) has a scavenger liner,
which incorporates a chemical that has a strong affinity for free
oxygen molecules. With Oxycap(R), both the oxygen ingressing through
the liner and the oxygen molecules trapped in the headspace during
bottling are absorbed. in layman's terms, this means that the liner
absorbs the oxygen from the beverage, and allows a much longer shelf
life for the bottled product and a fresher-tasting beverage.
I still don't know the mechanism or capacity of these caps. How can
these possibly be effective for any length of time if they are exposed
to air?
Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 07:52:45 -0500
From: "Spencer W. Thomas" <spencer at spencerwthomas.com>
Subject: Beer in PR
Stick with the rum.
At least, the beer selection I found was yellow and fizzy, for the most
part. Local beer is relatively cheap and very ordinary. You can pay a
premium for ordinary beer from the Dominican Republic (El Presidente) if
you wish.
My best tot of rum came to me when I asked the bartender at my hotel for
a recommendation. Here's the message I sent to the DBD upon my return
from a trip last year:
Just back from a week in Puerto Rico. Highly recommended as a cure for
the winter blahs. Sun, sand, water, great food, history, and nature.
No passport required.
But to bring it back on topic, there's also Rum, the "national drink" of
Puerto Rico. (PR is a "commonwealth" of the US, which means that
they're internally self-governing in all respects except for foreign
policy and military.) I did NOT take the big Bacardi distillery tour.
But I did try some local rum. My favorite was Barrilito "3 star". To
my taste, not educated in rum, it was excellent. It was golden in
color, with sweet notes of sugar cane, and very smooth. Definitely a
"sipping" rum, not something you'd blend in one of those slushy things
that seem to be all you can get most places. They call them "daiquiri"
or "pina colada" but they're really alcoholic slushies.
Sams in Chicago carries it, so it is available in at least some
locations outside the island. It was $13/750ml there, $20/750ml at Sams
(http://www.samswine.com).
=S
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:57:10 -0500
From: "Tumarkin " <Tumarkin at HogtownBrewers.org>
Subject: AHA Governing Committee Election
Hey y'all,
It's time again to vote for your AHA Governing Committee representatives.
Now, you have to be an AHA member to vote, but if you're not already you
should join. The reasons to be a member keep increasing, and not the least
of which is the annual AHA National Homebrewers Conference in June.
It's in Orlando this year, so come on down and have a beer with us.
You can register for the Conference at -
www.beertown.org/events/hbc/index.html
Sorry, that's not the point of this email, but I couldn't help myself.
To vote, you can photocopy the ballot in the March-April issue of Zymurgy,
or go to www.beertown.org/homebrewing/election.html and vote online.
In either case, voting ends April 1st - and no, that's not part of some
elaborate April Fools joke, but it is just a few weeks away. So go grab
a homebrew, read the candidates statements, and vote for the four of your
choice. We've got a great group of candidates again this year.
Choose the onesthat you think will help guide the AHA as you'd like.
There are two further reasons to vote now - you can then renew your
membership at a special discounted rate of $29 (a savings of $9), and you
will get an additional entry in the Lallamande Scholarship drawing for
the two-week Concise Course at theSiebel Institute. The drawing will be held
during the Awards Dinner at the National Homebrew Conference (June 22-24),
just had to mention that again.
thanks, and come on down,
Mark Tumarkin
Chairman AHA Governing Committee
Hogtown Brewers
Gainesville, FL
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:25:56 -0800
From: "Mike Sharp" <rdcpro at hotmail.com>
Subject: re: metallic flavors
Steve Laycock wonders what to use for dispensing liquids
"The only other thought is to use oxygen to charge the keg and dispense with
that. I do have a 10# oxygen bottle for charging my wort with O2."
Yikes, don't use O2. I use nitrogen for things (like wine) that I want to
dispense, but don't want carbonated. Nitrogen has very low solubility in
water. Get an old C02 fire extinguisher that needs to be hydroed, and have
them revalve it for nitrogen when they do the hydro test. They'll probably
only rate the tank for 1800 psi (I was told it probably wouldn't pass hydro
at a higher pressure), but that's probably ok. Or maybe you can trade it in
for a 3600 psi tank.
You'll need a regulator, and you do have to fill the nitrogen bottles more
often, because there isn't that much gas in it, but nitrogen is pretty
cheap. Sometimes you can get beer gas with a nitrogen and CO2 mixed, but
that will still tend to carbonate a bit.
Regards,
Mike Sharp
Kent, WA
[1891.3, 294deg] AR
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 18:31:47 +0000
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Re: question
Fred reminded me, off line, that I forgot to indicate what the numbers
in my post of yesterday mean. First 50 is the number of parts per
million of CaCO3 per milliequivalent per liter of anything. For example,
if calcium concentration is 40 mg/L that is 40/20 (where 20 is the
equivalent weight of calcium) = 2 milliequivalents/L (mEq/L) which is
2*50=100 ppm as CaCO3. The equivalent weight of magnesium is 12.15 so 25
mg/L magnesium is also 2 mEq/L and is also 100 ppm as CaCO3. How can
there be 100 ppm of magnesium as CaCO3? Don't ask-just accept that this
is the way it's done. There is a reason, of course, but it is really a
matter of convention to do it this way. In this same veign the
equivalent weight of bicarbonate ion is 61 so 61 mg/L bicarbonate is 1
mEq/L or 50 ppm as CaCO3. So the residual alkalinity formula takes the
equivalence of bicarbonate (alkalinity/50) and subtracts from it the
equivalence of calcium divided by 3.5 and also half the equivalence of
magnesium divided by 3.5. The result is residual alkalinity in mEq/L.
Multiplying this by 50 puts us back into the more familiar ppm asCaCO3.
A.J.
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #4974, 03/16/06
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