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HOMEBREW Digest #5086
HOMEBREW Digest #5086 Mon 06 November 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Oxygen Connections ("A.J deLange")
re: medical O2 regulators (Steve Piatz)
Eighth Annual Palmetto State Brewers Open ("H. Dowda")
Pumpkins and Candi sugar (jbryant)
re: Beer too thin ("steve.alexander")
Am I batch sparging? ("Dave Draper")
Re: Pumpkin Ale ("Steve Jones")
beer aging ("steve.alexander")
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Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:41:46 +0000
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Oxygen Connections
There seem to be two types of oxyen connections: CGA 540 and CGA 870
(CGA = Compressed Gas Association). The industrial bottles use the 540
which is similar to the threaded connector on a CO2 bottle but of
different size. The older medical regulators used this thread. The newer
bottles use the 870 which is a clamp on similar to the SCUBA tank
connection. I can imagine adapting a 870 bottle to a 540 regulator using
the CGA/NPT adapters that are available for filling but not the other
way around. If trying to obtain a medical regulator for brewing
applications be sure to get one which fits the CGA 540 ports.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 11:26:18 -0600
From: Steve Piatz <piatz at cray.com>
Subject: re: medical O2 regulators
Dave Houseman mentioned having several medical-type O2 regulators but
not having the tanks since that requires a perscription.
Several years ago I bought some O2 equipment from a former club member. It
was all medical-type, I got the regulator with the liters per minutes
stuff, a cart for the tank, 2 empty tanks, and 2 full tanks. As of now
I still have a tank full of O2 but one day I'll need a new tank.
Recently I was swapping my CO2 tank at my local welding supply shop
(Minneapolis Oxygen Supply in Bloomington, MN) and asked the guy at the
counter if in the future I could reconfigure a medical regulator to fit
on a welding type tank and if I could swap medical tanks for a welding
tank - he said we could work something out when I bring the stuff in.
I also asked about swapping my (out of hydrostatic test) Luxfer aluminum
SCUBA tank around to being a CO2 tank. Aside from paying for the hydro
test I would need to buy the CO2 valve.
BTW - the setting for liters per minute is calibrated for with a standard
O2 mask on a patient's face not for the scintered stone I have on the
end of the hose.
- --
Steve Piatz piatz at cray.com
Cray Inc. 651-605-9049
1340 Mendota Heights Road cell: 651-428-1417
Mendota Heights, MN 55120
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Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 10:11:30 -0800 (PST)
From: "H. Dowda" <hdowda at yahoo.com>
Subject: Eighth Annual Palmetto State Brewers Open
Palmetto State Brewers is proud to announce their 8th
Annual December 2, in Columbia, SC. Complete
information:
http://www.sagecat.com/psbo8/psbo8.htm
On-line entry and judge and steward sign-up.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 14:59:28 -0500
From: <jbryant at wrsystems.com>
Subject: Pumpkins and Candi sugar
I was just considering making a Westy 12 clone using the recipe in Beer
Captured. It calls for a bunch of Belgian Candi sugar and the HB store
charges an arm and a leg for that stuff. So, I too am interested in
making some from scratch. I've read some conflicting info on the web
about making the stuff. One site said to use invert sugar while another
said that, "the Belgians don't mess around with invert sugar." I'm not
really concerned about how the Belgians do it, just whether or not the
beer will taste good. Some have said that they used cane sugar and the
beer tasted "cheap". So, my question for the HBDers is what have you
tried and what works?
As far as Steve's comments on pumpkin beer... I thought he was just
being funny. But, Steve, pumpkin is a fruit. Fruit beers are
legitimate, right? I'll let you know how my cucumber beer turns out.
Jason in Norfolk, VA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:24:11 -0500
From: "steve.alexander" <-s at adelphia.net>
Subject: re: Beer too thin
Third try, A bit tardy, but I'm switching mailers and ... the
line-length monster bit.
==
Chad writes ...
>> Now, one thing that has been a constant in my all grain experience
>is that my beers have all been rather thin and dry.
..
>> I think that I am possibly getting temps in the 115-130 F range for
>too long, thus making my beer insipid (maybe a harsh word, it's not
>THAT bad).
The problem is likely excessive proteolysis on the "thin" part and
perhaps excessive starch hydrolysis on the "dry" part.
The proteins in beer are a major source of mouthfeel and body. In
recent decades virtually all commercial malts produced have been made
so that the proteins are just about as far degraded as anyone would
want. This saves the commercial brewers time/energy=money by
requiring less mashing. So YES you can make thin insipid beers quite
easily by lingering in the region around 50C(122F). BUT enzymes do
not turn on&off at some magical temperature. Long rests even near
60C(140F) may lead to thin body. IMO you should use experience and
*PLAN* any time and temp excursions below 145F(63C) for the purpose of
reducing haze only (all malt grist). As an indicator, overly
protealyse beers often (not always) has very poor head foam, and/or
very short lasting foam. "Dry" mouthfeel & taste is a result
excessive attenuation, and radical attenuation can also lead to thin
watery mouthfeel similar to the lack of protein body mentioned above.
You can (and should) judge the dryness by considering the apparent
attenuation. To put this in perspective - a lot of HB beer and many
commercial beers have apparent attenuation around 75-80%. This means
a real attenuation around 61-65% of extract. Around 92+% of wort
extract is carbohydrate, so in a finished HB there a residual 27-31+%
of the original carbohydrate extract remains ! This contrasts with
whisk[e]y production (the mash & ferment is similar to beer
production) where they mash for an extremely dry result, and achieve a
final gravity between 0.995-1.000SG ! This means they ferment
something closer to 81-83% of the extract(real atten) and leave only
around 10% of the original extract as carbos - extremely dry by beer
standards. The residual dextrins add little or sweetness to beer, but
do impact mou! thfeel significantly.
To avoid excessive dextrin reduction you should mash-in at a higher
temp, or avoid the range below 150F altogether. In my experience the
attenuation doesn't drop radically until the mash-in or first rest is
around 158F(70C)[again - all malt]. G.Fix seems to have mashed-in at
a lower temp with a very limited amount of water, then added a
measured bolus of boiling water to hit the first rest. Note that it
is a very bad idea to add hot water (much above ~140F) to dry grist,
as the grist immediately gelatinizes and then "balls". This is the
"lumpy gravy" effect on a larger scale. It's best to modestly hydrate
the grist at some modest temp, then heat rapidly by a boiling water
infusion, as Fix does.
I've done some very high attenuation beers in the past couple years and
IMO the dextrin mouthfeel impact is secondary to the protein mouthfeel,
but still quite prominant.
One other thing - don't expect decent accuracy from a <$25 <30cm
hydrometer !
-S
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 17:14:08 -0700
From: "Dave Draper" <david at draper.name>
Subject: Am I batch sparging?
Dear Friends,
I've been reading about no-sparge and batch-sparge mashing the past
couple days as part of gearing up to brew a Marzen here in a few
weeks. Yes, I know it's not the right time of year. :-) But it got
me wondering about my process, which is a little different from the
standard techniques described in most homebrewing writeups, and I
wonder what the collective might conclude. Mind you, I get
consistently good results so I don't much care what it's called, but
I'm just curious. So here's my usual procedure:
I mash in a sankey keg that was converted to a wonderful mash tun for
me many years ago by the supremely handy and very generous Eric
Schoville. It has a ring of slotted copper tubing at the bottom as
its manifold, attached to a standard ball valve (my beer page has a
set of photos of the hardware if you're curious). For the past
several years I have been doing almost exclusively single-step
infusions. I typically mash somewhere between 64 and 67 C (147 to
153 F) at grain to water mass ratios of 2.4 to 2.6 (about 1.15 to 1.2
quarts per pound). I then mashout by adding boiling water (water
boils at 95 C at my elevation) to bring the goods to 75-77 C (167-170
F). Then I recirculate about 5-6 L of wort until it gets as clear as
it's gonna, and begin collecting into my kettle. So far quite
ordinary. Immediately thereafter, I add my entire volume of sparge
water, typically about 15 L (4 gal), about 1.5L at a time (the size
of my plastic pitcher) in as much time as it takes to pour in one
pitcherful after another, usually just a few minutes. The grain bed
is thus covered by a substantial depth of water, as opposed to the
"fly sparging" procedure of keeping the water just a little over the
grain, and adding sparge water more gradually. I then let everything
drain out into my kettle over a period of about 40 minutes usually (I
don't open it up full bore) and proceed as usual from there.
So is this batch sparging? No-sparging? Sorta-sparging? I don't let
the mash liquor drain all the way out before adding the sparge water,
and so don't stir everything back up and recirculate again after
doing so. But I also don't add the entire lot of water I'm using all
in one go either (not convenient for me to heat more than about 15L
at a time). I've never had a single stuck mash, even with 50- 60%
wheat malt, in more than 100 batches using this rig, and I routinely
get 29-31 pts/lb/gal efficiency, sometimes as high as 33, so it
clearly ain't broke and don't need fixing. I guess what I should do
is experiment by doing the "traditional" batch- or no-sparge
procedure of letting the main liquor drain out before adding the
second load of water and do the re-stirring thing, then compare the
results. Or not. :-)
Any input welcome,
Dave in ABQ
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
David S. Draper, Institute of Meteoritics, Univ New Mexico
David at Draper dot Name
Beer page: http://www.unm.edu/~draper/beer.html
...we are usually at the mercy of gravity. ---A.J. deLange
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 19:59:41 -0500
From: "Steve Jones" <stjones1 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Pumpkin Ale
Bwwaahahahaha - I nearly shot beer out of my nose when I read Steve's
suggestion for using pumpkin in beers.
However, Steve, I'd suggest that you add a smiley at the end when you
post something like that so that the original poster realizes you're
not really trying to insult anyone.
But it really was funny
Steve Jones
Johnson City, TN
www.franklinbrew.org
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:34:05 -0500
From: "steve.alexander" <-s at adelphia.net>
Subject: beer aging
2nd try, line length ...
I want to thank /Fredrik, both for his original post in #5077 and for
drawing attention to it again this week so that I might see it.
His conclusions wrt esters is more detailed than I have performed and
also implies a greater lability in the ester/fusel levels - yet still
far short of enough change to impact flavor significantly. After
reviewing his peper and numbers I an still convinced that the conversion
of fusels to esters (and the reversre if a NON-EVENT in beer reasonable
stored.
The paper he referenced is yet another great brewing paper from the
guys at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, wherein they measure
beer component level changes over time under various conditions. The
beer was a freshly top-fermented 7.5% ABV one.
Normally bottled beer, held at 0C for 6 months had an ~10% decrease in
ethyl hexanoate, a ~30% increase in diacetyl, and a ~20% increase on
furfuryl ethyl ether(a main topic of the paper). All other compounds
either had negligible changes or the compounds were far below the
flavor threshold to begin with. Under other condition (air in
headspace, 40C(104F) storage for 6 months, things changed moreso.
I selected out all the beer compounds from their list which either
traversed the flavor threshold as these aged, and also those, that
with some variation in level (approx a factor of 2) might possibly
traverse the flavor threshold. These are:
ethyl acetate -- T H
isoamyl acetate -- T
ethyl-3-methylbutyrate ++ T
ethyl-2-methylbutyrate ++ T
ethyl-butanoate -- T
ethyl-hexanoate -- T H
ethyl-octanoate -- T H
diacetyl ++
trans-2-nonenal ++
furanic ethers(several) ++ T
(--) indicates decrease with age, (++) indicated increase with age
(T) indicates rate of change mostly dependent on temperature
(H) indicates my*opinion these these could potentially be harsh in quantity.
- --
Of this subset, only diacetyl rate of formation was significantly
increased with oxygen addition. The trans-2-nonenal increased to the
same level in all cases except the 0C no air storage condition,
perhaps a limiting value.
Sorry - but I still can't see how harshness is substantially reduced
in any of these chems due to *reasonable* amounts of time given good
handling & storage procedures. Now if you store a beer at 40C for 6
months, then there are some obvious possibilities on the list.
Decreasing the ethyl-acetate by 20%, might do it. The isoamyl-acetate
drops by ~60%, but is still unlikely to improve any harshness. The
higher ethyl-esters decline substantially too, and these could be part
of the story, *BUT* their breakdown products aren't nice tasting
either.
My original "guess" was that the "de-harshening" beer storage occurs
at 10C or below for a few months. In that case it's very hard to see
how the chems in this analysis are likely to have any impact on
"harshness".
My money/guess is still on some carbonyl that is reduced in the
bottle, or else something that complexes and/or falls as sediment as
the cause of any reduced harshness due to age.
Would someone who has actually had a beer turn from harsh to better
please comment on the storage temps & times to accomplish this. Rob M?
-S
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5086, 11/06/06
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