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HOMEBREW Digest #4965
HOMEBREW Digest #4965 Thu 02 March 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
A2, MI local suppliers ("Michael M. McClatchey")
More well water analysis (Calvin Perilloux)
Re: Brewing Coppers (Glyn)
RE: Brew Shops in MI (Mike LaCour)
yeast starter step sizes and gravity (ALAN K MEEKER)
re: Yeast starters (RI_homebrewer)
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Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 06:37:17 -0700
From: "Michael M. McClatchey" <mmm at promail.com>
Subject: A2, MI local suppliers
The Beer Depot on William downtown has almost everything. Home Winery
Supply in Dundee is fairly close, and once a month they sell all-grain
wort in a distinctive style for $25 for five gallons. There's a shop in
Dearborn I've never been to.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 07:11:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Calvin Perilloux <calvinperilloux at yahoo.com>
Subject: More well water analysis
David Jones asks for opinions on his well water, which
has these significant (brewing-edited) components :
Sodium 7 ppm
Calcium 77
Magnesium 23
TotHrd CaCO3 288
Sulfate 29
Chloride 22
Bicarbonate 220
Nice midrange water, David. Your chalk content
is rather high for some styles (especially the
notorious soft-water Bohemian Pilsner), but it's
not too bad for many styles.
For some pale brews (e.g. BohPils) requiring low-
mineral-content water, consider removing some of
the carbonate via the "boil+aerate chill and decant"
method. Or use distilled water dilutions. Note that
if you do this, you are also removing calcium, so you
might be interested in an acid rest during mash or
perhaps a (small) shot of "5.2" or other treatment.
I've been tending lately toward using more distilled
water dilutions rather than the boil+aerate method.
Distilled water costs me money, but I've found that
my propane bill does as well. With the last batch
I used this on, when I included this and the usual
propane usage for mash/sparge water and a long boil,
I ripped through half a 20-lb tank for one 5-gallon
batch of beer. Ouch.
As is often the case, you might want to add gypsum
for Burtonising your water. In fact, your water is
well suited for such treatment, and you can come
reasonably close with the addition (per 5 gallons
of your water as it is out of the tap) of 15g gypsum
and 7.5 grams Epsom salts. That's 1 ounce and half
an ounce for unmetrified folk.
> Bicarbonate is closest to Dortmund or Edinburgh
Note that Dortmund and some other places with carbonate-
containing water are pros at pre-treatment of their water.
That means that the water they are brewing with might vary
from the water that comes out of the ground/tap. In the
case of Dortmund especially, I have read that emulating
their beers does not mean emulating their water.
Calvin Perilloux
Middletown, Maryland, USA
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Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 08:21:43 -0800 (PST)
From: Glyn <graininfuser at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Brewing Coppers
When I was growing up in the hills of East TN, we made
our own. Find ya a tree of the right diameter, log it
off leaving a semi-high stump. Round off the top of
the stump, should be easier now with them there
new-fangled saws. Take your sheet of copper and form
it around the stump. Care should be taken to do this
out site as you don't want any revenuers poking
around.
Glyn
Born and raised back in an East TN holler
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 09:15:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike LaCour <mblacour at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: Brew Shops in MI
Brian,
I'm right down the road from you in Brighton. I've
found the best brew shop in the area is Things Beer in
Webberville, MI. After getting your homebrew supplies
stop by Michigan Brewing Co. for a pint.
Mike
mblacour at yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 13:00:46 -0500
From: ALAN K MEEKER <ameeker at mail.jhmi.edu>
Subject: yeast starter step sizes and gravity
Fred asked about yeast starters - why the recommendations for
modest gravity starter wort and incremental step sizes not
exceeding 10-fold steps? Fred, I don't believe these limitations
are driven by concern over adequate oxygen supply. The advice
to use moderate gravities makes sense in that high gravity
(which mostly means high sugar concentration) represents a
stressful situation for the yeast which could compromise the
vitality and viability of the resulting starter - you don't want to be
pitching highly stressed-out yeast into your wort as this can
obviously lead to all kinds of problems including poor or
inconsistent performance and stuck ferments. HIgh gravity is
osmoticaly stressful from the high sugar content, may be
relatively low in non-sugar nutrients, particularly nitrogen-
based (also stressful), and can lead to higher final levels of
toxic yeast metabolites (e.g. ethanol).
To make a perhaps not so great analogy, think of the starter as
an entry-level work force that you are training to conduct a very
large job. If you push them too hard during training then when
it comes time to tackle the big job they will be going into it
exhausted, burnt-out, sleep-deprived wrecks. This won't give
you optimal performance.
The common advice to expand starter volume in stages, with
each step being no more than about a 10-fold dilution stems
more from worries about allowing bacterial contamination to
multiply to levels that will have detrimental effects in the final
fermentation. The idea here is that bacteria can multiply much
faster than yeast (bacterial generation times can be as fast as
15-20 minutes, while yeast take a couple of hours to multiply),
Thus, if allowed to grow unchecked, a bacterial contamination
could grow to high enough density in the starter to produce
negative flavor effects in the finished beer. The key here is the
bit about bacteria growing /unchecked/. What hapens is that
if you have significant yeast growth they will quickly make the
environment inhospitable for the growth of most bacteria.
They accomplish this in a number of ways including
acidification, nutrient/oxygen depletion, and ethanol production.
Thus, if you innoculate each step of the starter with sufficient
yeast they will quickly squelch the growth of any competing
bacteria that are also present (and in the homebrew setting
there will almost always be some bacteria around). This is
why folks recommend stepping up in dilutions of 10-fold or
even less. If you dilute a saturated yeast culture 10-fold it only
takes a little more than 3 divisions to get back to saturation.
If the yeast are growing as fast as they can this will only take
about an hour or two. However, even more quickly they will
make conditions bad for any bacteria present, so you will
rapidly get suppression of bacterial growth. Now take an
extreme example where you do the maximum dilution step
possible, that is, start with only a single yeast cell, it will take
this single cell many many divisions to create a yeast
population of sufficiently high density to start conditioning
the wort against bacteria, something on the order of 20+
divisions for a volume of about 1 liter. That's 20 divisions
at 2 hours per division, or about 40 hours. Now, let's say
there was also a single bacterium present at the beginning.
This bacteria can divide every 20 minutes, thus over the
same 40 hours can divide a whopping 120 times. This
would produce something like a million kilograms of
bacteria if growth was unrestricted. Obviously the 1 liter
culture would run out of nutrients LONG before that
could ever happen, but the point is clear - without
the yeast's attenuating influence, even a small bacterial
presence could easily gain a foothold leading to
problems later on down the line.
Alan Meeker
Baltimore, MD
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 16:34:59 -0800 (PST)
From: RI_homebrewer <ri_homebrewer at yahoo.com>
Subject: re: Yeast starters
Hi All,
In HBD #4964 Fred Johnson from Apex, NC asked about the 10 fold step
up rule-of-thumb for yeast starters.
My understanding is that this rule-of-thumb is used to prevent the
yeast cells from being too dilute when pitching into the starter.
Supposedly, this increase step size keeps the cell count near the
suggested level (1E6 cells per ml per degree plato?). If it's more
dilute, then it's less likely the yeast will out compete the other
organisms that are inevitably in the starter wort.
I would also imagine that if the yeast were more concentrated, they
may run out of sugars or nutrients before dividing the desired number
of times.
Jeff McNally
Tiverton, RI
(652.2 miles, 90.0 deg) A.R.
South Shore Brew Club
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #4965, 03/02/06
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