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HOMEBREW Digest #5051
HOMEBREW Digest #5051 Tue 05 September 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Re: yeast starter step sizes (Hubert Hanghofer)
Trying to find Jever Pils in Richmond, VA (Scott Alfter)
Sweet stout - how much lactose (Signalbox Brewery)
Beer and Beer's Law (was: Color Extraction) (J A Stephen Viggiano)
Brewing with hemp seeds - use crushed or whole? ("Oisin Boydell")
Beer's law and linearity (Nathaniel Lansing)
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Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:09:26 +0200
From: Hubert Hanghofer <hubert at netbeer.org>
Subject: Re: yeast starter step sizes
Philip wrote:
> I have been thinking about the post below for several months,
> and have a question.
>
> Full post
> <http://hbd.org/hbd/archive/4965.html#4965-5>
>
>
> Given the last sentence from the excerpt, why don't we acidify
> starters to a pH of 4 or so?
>
Yeast will do that for you - it drops pH to equal or less than 4.5! I
think the key here is to keep yeast at exponential growth - hence 5 fold
(lager yeast) or 10 fold (ale yeast) dilution at the right timing (high
krausen). If you have a bacterial contamination (we always have) and IF
that bacteria are well adapted to your wort (...can take month, but if
you've the wrong hygiene procedures it WILL happen!!) then that bacteria
will multiply maybe 10 times faster than yeast during exponential
growth. BUT yeast is 1000 times bigger by volume & mass than the average
bacterial bug (assuming a diameter ratio of 10:1 - like 5um : 0.5um). So
with regard to growth in biomass bacteria have no chance! They'll
succeed eventually after yeast has reached stationary phase - IF the
conditions are still hospitable for their growth by then - wich is only
true maybe for a fraction of a percent compared to the bacterial variety
that can growth in virgin wort.
So my point: Keep yeast at exponential growth right from inoculation of
starter to primary.
But what I often do is acidifying harvested yeast to kill 99.99% of
bacterial contaminations.
30 grams of solid citric acid crystals per litre of yeast slurry (sorry,
I'm metric) will drop pH down to 2ish. Keep it cold (fridge temps),
stirr often and don't extend the treatment longer than 2 hours. If the
yeast is flocculant at low pH you can wash it by slurrying it repeatedly
in citric acid solution (30grams per litre water). Pitch immediately
after the treatment - don't store acid washed yeast! EBC's "Manual of
good practice" recommends not to wash out the acid prior to pitching - I
do, but my brain is damaged by reinheitsgebot - never had a bad result
though ;-)
I've learned this from a brewer in Scotland (Harviestoun - a few years
ago when the brewery still was located in an old byre). They maintain
their own yeast culture. After growing a fresh starter they repitch 15
times and acid wash each time (probably not with citric acid but with
sulfuric or phosphoric acid). Their beers are yummy - you've to taste
"Old Engine Oil" stout!
This is their yeast propagator:
http://album.bierig.org/showimg.php?file=/2003/Edinburgh/IMG0029.jpg
and this is 2 views of their former location in the "old byre":
http://album.bierig.org/showimg.php?file=/2003/Edinburgh/IMG0026.jpg
http://album.bierig.org/showimg.php?file=/2003/Edinburgh/IMG0028.jpg
Cheers
Hubert,
Salzburg, Austria - quite a few thousand miles east of Jeff Renner.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:48:07 -0700
From: Scott Alfter <scott at alfter.us>
Subject: Trying to find Jever Pils in Richmond, VA
It's my father's favorite, and he had heard from someone that there's a store
somewhere in the Richmond area that carries it, but he can't remember which
store and I didn't find anything in my searches. (The only place I've seen it
on this side of the pond is Chevy Chase Liquors in DC, but that's a fair bit up
the road.)
Does anyone know where one might find six-packs or cases of Jever Pils in or
near Richmond?
Scott Alfter
scott at alfter.us
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2006 13:13:57 +0100
From: Signalbox Brewery <signalbox.brewery at ntlworld.com>
Subject: Sweet stout - how much lactose
I made a sweet stout following the instructions in
Wheeler's "Homebrewing" - 125g/25-l - ie about
3 1/2 oz per 5 US gal and the sweetness was
barely noticeable. Daniels quotes this figure too
in Designing Great Beers.
Turning to Derek Walsh's Biertypengids, I find 9%
quoted. 650g/25l or 1lb/5US gal.
That figure ties up with Wheeler's later
book "Brew Classic European Beers at Home".
However Walsh gives that as a reference so maybe
he just took it from there.
So, my question is for those who have actually made
a sweet stout(!) How much do you use?
David Edge, Derby UK
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 15:27:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: J A Stephen Viggiano <jav9729 at cis.rit.edu>
Subject: Beer and Beer's Law (was: Color Extraction)
In archive 5046, on 19 August, A.J deLange asserted that "beer doesn't
follow Beer's law". Or, more precisely, I suppose he repeated this
assertion. So it's not my intention to single out A J; many people have
repeated what experimental evidence has shown to be an urban legend.
I had recently looked into this very question, and have determined that if
the beer is free of visible turbidity, it does indeed obey the
Bouguer-Lambert-Beer law (to give it its full name).
What I did ascertain was that if a beer had an absorbance greater than the
spectrophotometer was able to reliably measure, special procedures were
necessary. I used attenuation of the reference beam in Varian Cary 500
and Shimadzu UV-2100-series instruments, together with a slight increase
in the slit width and a reduction in scan speed (which, presumably, would
permit longer integration times).
If you're interested, I can post to my website an absorbance spectra plot
for Beamish Stout at five different concentrations: 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%,
and 100%. Aside from the very shorter (bluer) wavelengths, below 400
nanometers, where the absorbance of beers is highest and the signal level
was often exceeded by the noise, the absorbance spectra divided by
concentration all fall on top of each other, just as the Bouguer-Lambert-
Beer law says they should.
If someone tells you a liquid does not follow the Bouguer-Lambert-Beer
law, ask them (a) what is the maximum spectral absorbance they're
measuring; (b) what is the maximum spectral absorbance at this
wavelength for which a standard solution, such as potassium permanganate,
also appears to conform on their instrument; and (c) what does the
manufacturer's specifications say about maximum absorbance at this
wavelength for the slit size and scan speed they used. Also, if they seem
to be confused about the relationship between transmittance and absorbance
(A = -log_10 (T), not log_10 (100 * (1 - T)), as one famous beer author
seemed to imply), ask to see their numbers.
==John
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 09:15:19 +0100
From: "Oisin Boydell" <oisinboydell at gmail.com>
Subject: Brewing with hemp seeds - use crushed or whole?
Hi,
I'm going to brew a stout with hemp seeds based on a recipe in an old
issue of BYO magazine ("Brewing Hempen Ale" by Steve Nordahl, July
1999, p. 34.). I'm going to try the partial mash version and the
instructions for using the hemp seeds are:
"Place hemp seeds on a cookie sheet and roast in a 450 F (232 C)
oven for 30 minutes. Heat 1 1/8 gallons (4.3 L) of water to 167 F (75
C). Place crushed grains and hemp seeds in a steeping bag and
submerge bag in this water. Steep for 45 minutes, holding temperature
around 156 F (69 C)". The recipe calls for 1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) mild
hemp seed - the type you can buy in health food stores.
My question is do I crush the hemp seeds (after roasting), or just use
them whole? Its not clear from the instructions whether its just the
grains that are crushed or both. Does anyone have any experience
brewing with hemp seeds?
Thanks,
Oisin.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 09:03:44 -0400
From: Nathaniel Lansing <delbrew at compuserve.com>
Subject: Beer's law and linearity
OK, so now we have established that the measurements are
accurate and linear, how does this apply to perceived beer
color? Does a beer that measures 10 SRM appear twice
as dark as the beer that measures 5 SRM? or conversely
does the 5 SRM seem twice as clear as a 10 SRM? since
eyes respond to light rather than black.
I have found various statements saying eyes operate in a
logarithmic fashion to illumination, and other source say that eyes
operate to the 0.4 power to increasing illumination.
The original Lovibond method was a visual comparison method
for describing wort color. So the question comes up is it the problem
of applying a linear laboratory method to a nonlinear visual response
that causes the divergence between systems?
Lovibond made a system that if a malt rated 4 was used it created
wort that *appeared* twice as dark as wort that was a 2L; so how
would that have actually measured?
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5051, 09/05/06
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