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HOMEBREW Digest #5103
HOMEBREW Digest #5103 Thu 30 November 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Re: Better Bottle drain port and availability question (Bob Tower)
Re: Sparkalloid & Carbonation (Bob Tower)
Re: Better Bottle (Nate Wahl)
Better Bottles again ("Dave Draper")
Broken Carboy (Rick) Theiner <rickdude@tds.net>
A Dutch home brewer advises ("martin hofhuis")
Re: Better bottles (Joe Gerteis)
Mash mixing ("Doug Moyer")
Carboy thread ("Stevens, Jonathan C")
Better Bottles vs. Glass Carboys ("Alexandre Enkerli")
Wassail Recipe ("Brian Dougan")
Smartgroups is Dead . . . . But UK Homebrew lives On!! (UK Homebrew Administrator)
Re: ACS HCl ("Greg 'groggy' Lehey")
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Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:29:29 -0800
From: Bob Tower <bob at constructotower.com>
Subject: Re: Better Bottle drain port and availability question
Robert Marshall asks about installation of spigots on Better
Bottles . . . .
-snip-
One question I have though. Does anyone sell the bottle WITH the side
port drain already installed? I checked out morebeer.com, which is a
stone's throw from where I work, but I didn't seem to find an option to
buy it installed? If it isn't available that way, is it easy to install
yourself? My imagination is that its akin to building the ship in the
bottle, where you've got to use long appliances to get it right, which
is something I don't really appreciate! Al
-snip-
As far as I know they are not available pre-installed. However, they
are extremely simple to install. The trick is to use something to
hold the inside portion through the port while you thread the outside
half of the spigot onto it. I believe the Better Bottle web site
recommends using a 2-3 foot piece of 1/4" rod (available at hardware
stores) slipped into the racking arm on the spigot to lower it into
the bottle and hold it in place while the outside portion gets
attached. I just use a 3/8" racking cane which works great. The
installation is extremely simple once you go to do it. To explain it
makes it seem complicated. Really, if you are clever and handy enough
to home brew then you can do this with ease. Good luck!
Bob Tower / Los Angeles, CA
P.S. Careful though when you go to purchase the spigot, you may fall
over and hurt your head when you see the price. It's as much or more
than the bottle itself!
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 23:11:18 -0800
From: Bob Tower <bob at constructotower.com>
Subject: Re: Sparkalloid & Carbonation
Fred Johnson made a post concerning the use of Sparkolloid to clarify
beer and was concerned about it stripping out yeast for bottle
conditioning.
I feel that it does strip out a considerable amount of yeast, whether
it strips it ALL out is debatable. I've never tried it on beer
because somewhere a long time ago I read that it was not recommended
for beer as it tends to pull out hop character (not sure if they
meant bitterness or aroma) plus I rarely have problems with yeast
clarity for the beer I brew. However, I do use it quite regularly for
cider. I ferment cider for two weeks on the fruit then rack and treat
with Sparkolloid and allow it to settle for two more weeks. Then I
rack to kegs and force carbonate. I sweeten a certain amount of the
batch that I give to friends (they DEMAND that it's sweet!) and then
counter pressure bottle the sweetened cider. To avoid any yeast that
still might be hanging around from going to work in the bottles I
treat the sweetened portion with potassium sorbate. However, I add it
at HALF the rate prescribed and I've yet to have a bottle bomb (I've
probably done 10-15 batches like this over the years). Just for a
little quality assurance, I'll keep a sweetened bottle or two from
each batch at room temperature for a few months and then drink it.
The carbonation level has never increased nor have I gotten yeast
sediment in a bottle. It could be that 4 weeks (2 with Sparkolloid)
with a flocculent strain (Lalvin K1V-1116), chilling for a few days
(for forced carbonation) and the half dose of sorbate is enough to
keep whatever remaining yeast down for the count. But my gut feeling
is that not a lot of yeast are making it through the Sparkolloid
treatment. Rather than adding the dregs from the fermenter (which has
got trub and other substances better left out) to ensure yeast
activity for bottle conditioning why not just add a neutral strain of
dry yeast (like Nottingham) at bottling time? That way you are only
adding yeast and it's strong and healthy yeast at that. Plus the dry
yeast is cheap.
For my beer, I occasionally use Polyclar and I have found that it
tends to strip out yeast too. The first time I used it my beer
carbonated eventually, but it took much longer than usual (6-8 weeks
vs. 1-2 weeks). Now I always add a little dry yeast before bottling
or cask conditioning and it brings the conditioning time back to
normal. Others who've used Polyclar and not had any bottle
conditioning problems may not be using enough Polyclar. I've found
that the dosage recommendations on the Polyclar available at HB shops
(which are almost always bought in bulk and repackaged either by the
store itself or the vendors they buy from) are notoriously low. I
obtained instructions from the manufacturer (they are not easy to
follow!) and worked it out for myself and came up with much higher
dosages. The dosage does vary with starting gravity and wort make up
(adjuncts or all malt) so there's no "one size fits all" dosing rate
like the instructions on the repackaged bags and jars of Polyclar
you're likely to encounter at your LHBS would have you believe. The
same goes for kettle finings (Breakbright, Whirlfloc, etc.) and yeast
nutrients: low or misleading dosage rates on the package.
Bob Tower / Los Angeles, CA
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:16:04 -0500
From: Nate Wahl <oogiewawa at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Better Bottle
Here's a link to some plans to build wood carriers for carboys that
several of us around here have made, and they work really great.
http://mysite.verizon.net/cruiser570/Carboy/carboy.html
No stress on the neck, they make the things one heck of a lot easier and
safer to handle, you can sit them upside-down to dry, on their sides for
cleaning, and even stack them when empty. Sorry that the construction
photo link doesn't work, I haven't had time to fix it yet since
switching providers, but if you FTP around you might be able to find the
photos.
However, that said, I've switched to the Better Bottles and am glad I
did. The convenience, performance and safety/peace of mind, seemed
worthwhile enough that I got another pair despite what I thought was a
rather high price. I still use the glass ones, but only for long term
storage of meads and such, and I've built a carrier for each one..
As an aside, Brian's posting got me really fired up; a while back I
really wanted to try to have some of these carriers made up and sell
them as kits, because I know how dangerous it is throwing glass around
like a lot of homebrewers do. I had a near miss that convinced me so,
hence coming up with the idea for them in the first place. I really
wanted to get them out there to help people. I even researched what it
would take to get the top and bottom plates made out of injection molded
plastic. Getting stuff done like that is very expensive, incredibly so
for small runs, and I would have had to charge way too much to have made
it worthwhile. Sorry, please build your own, its not that hard and its
cheaper anyway.
I'd bet coming up with a relatively tiny run of these specialty plastic
bottles, labelled, packaged and distributed, along with developing all
the racking connections and stuff was similar. Advertising to get them
out there isn't cheap either. Probably not a whole lot of profit
there. I sure didn't expect to make a killing and retire from the few
piddly bucks profit I might have made from a couple of dozen homebrewers
for all my efforts, that's just rediculous. I dissagree and suspect
that safety really would have been a big factor in his passion, but
that's just a take on it; you gotta know someone to know what motivates
them.
Cheers,
Nate Wahl
Oak Harbor, OH
64.3, 145.8
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:29:22 -0700
From: "Dave Draper" <david at draper.name>
Subject: Better Bottles again
Dear Friends,
Robert Marshall asks about the installation of the drain port in a
Better Bottle. Robert, it's a snap, takes two minutes. You get a
length of PVC pipe that has an ID that fits over the intake tube (I
don't have that dimension handy, it's on their site), turn the bottle
upside down, insert, and the pipe holds the works in place while you
hand-tighten.
I won't rehash my preference for plastic fermentors-- you can Google
the HBD if you're really interested-- but I will restate my
conviction that there is zero evidence that beer fermented in glass
can be distinguished from that produced from properly cared for
plastic. If glass works for you and you don't have safety issues,
like I do with tile, hard wood, and concrete everywhere my beers go
during my process, rock on, more power to ya. Given these
constraints in my home and the fact there is no difference in the
end, it's a no-brainer for me and worth the extra thirty bucks to
never have to worry about needing the ER to sew my hands back on. :-)
Cheers, Dave in ABQ
David S. Draper, david at draper.name
Institute of Meteoritics, 1 Univ New Mexico,
MSC03-2050, Albuquerque, NM 87131
Lab: http://epswww.unm.edu/highp
Homepage: http://www.unm.edu/~draper
Commercial email unwelcome.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 9:16:46 -0600
From: Eric (Rick) Theiner <rickdude at tds.net>
Subject: Broken Carboy
Mike Stumpf asked about the events leading up to my sudden
carboy failure, and I'd say they're good questions that
perhaps we can all learn from in handling glass carboys.
>I'd guess stress and microfractures that built up over
>time caused something that is unlikely, but given a large
>enough sample size is far from impossible. Could you
>elaborate a bit on what happened? Had you ever misused the
>carboy (hauling by its neck)? Did you ever temperature-
>shock it? Can you in any way account for what happened?
The unnamed guy at Better Bottle that I referenced also
brought up the glass microfracture phenomenon. Because
glass is amorphous, I didn't think that stress was
something that accumulated... of course, I'm not a
materials scientist, so I probably have flawed reasoning on
that. Anyway, the point is that glass does accumulate
microfractures which can lead to weak spots over time.
In my case, I can't point to any one incident, but here are
my former glass carboy handling habits. Oh, and I can only
guess at the age of the carboy, but I think it may have
been 3-4 years old. It was of a type that I first
purchased in 1995, so it could have conceivably been 8
years old.
First off, my former brewhouse had a brick walk leading to
it and the brewing area itself was under an overhang that
had a pea gravel surface. The brick walk was often used
to "stage" carboys on brewing days when we could clean them
and sanitize them. So setting the carboys on both the
gravel and the bricks could have had a cumulative effect.
My method of lifting a full carboy was to push the neck
away from me to create a groove between the ground and the
carboy that I would fit my fingers into. I would then lift
primarily from the bottom, although I'm sure I exerted some
lifting force on the neck as well. (Incidentally, my
current method involves me giving the carboy a bear hug and
simply pulling it up.) I'm guessing that let to the
eventual failure.
I did have a carboy handle, but I only carry via a handle
when the carboy is empty. Maybe even that can produce some
weakness.<shrug>
But I am at a loss to say whether or not there was a
significant event that led to the break.
Rick Theiner
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:33:05 +0100
From: "martin hofhuis" <martinhofhuis at home.nl>
Subject: A Dutch home brewer advises
Hallo Bob Tower,
I am a Dutch homebrewer, who red about your quest for home brew organization
in the Netherlands.
When you are searching for homebrew club's in the Netherlands in the
Neighbourhood of Utrecht than there
Are 2 club 's to consider.
1. 't Wort Wat; in Hoofddorp. The place is on the other site of Amsterdam,
nearby the airport Schiphol.
2. De Amervallei; in Amersfoort. Amersfoort is a place jus ton the other
site of Utrecht than Amsterdam.
The addresses can be found on the site of Jacques Bertens on
www.hobbybrouwen.nl.
Succes with your stay in Holland.
Martin Hofhuis, a Dutch homebrewer in Tilburg, member of De Roerstok the
Netherlands.
- --
Mijn Postvak In wordt beschermd door SPAMfighter.
75 spam-mails zijn er tot op heden geblokkeerd.
Download de gratis SPAMfighter via deze link: http://www.spamfighter.com/pro
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:13:00 +0000
From: joe_gerteis at comcast.net (Joe Gerteis)
Subject: Re: Better bottles
For what it's worth -- you do not need the port on the
better bottles. To me, that's a needless expense
that I can't justify and it makes it more complex --
I like using the same system for the plastic and the
glass carboys.
The secret is that the regular carboy caps fit on the
Better Bottles. The orange ones fit, though a little
loosely. The purple ones (6.5 gallon) fit better.
You need to force them, but once on they are snug.
I just push a regular S-shaped airlock in the larger
hole for fermentation. For racking, I use the cap
with a racking cane and push the beer through
with CO2 top pressure in the other hole of the cap.
Works great, and no worries about the carboy
breaking.
For the record, I am not a Better Bottle evangelist.
I like them and have had good luck with them, but
I'm not giving up my glass ones. I got mine initially
because I needed more fermenters and with I
started to get nervous with 2 kids running around
my house and in reach of some of the carboys. For
that, it's worth the extra expense to me. (Extra
expense since I don't expect them to last as long
as glass.)
Just my two cents.
Joe G
St Paul MN
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:35:50 -0500
From: "Doug Moyer" <shyzaboy at yahoo.com>
Subject: Mash mixing
Jay sez:
==================================
Bazooka screens are tough little buggers, so if you're deforming them it
sounds like you're running waaay too much flow. As an aside, I see a grant
as a useless introduction of air (at least in my system). Just throttle the
flow back and see if that helps.
==================================
Yep. An obvious solution. Unfortunately, it is a solution that doesn't
apply. I barely crack the ball valve.
I ordered fifty pounds of rice hulls. We'll see if that helps.
I think the only thing I've changed recently was trying to mash-in at a
lower temp to avoild flour balls. I wonder if that is causing the mash to be
pastier or something...
This is what my double Bazooka setup looks like:
http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/6864/dscf0041vy9.jpg
Brew on!
Doug Moyer
Troutville, VA
Star City Brewers Guild: http://www.starcitybrewers.org
Beer, brewing, travel & kids: http://shyzaboy.blogsome.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:36:00 -0500
From: "Stevens, Jonathan C" <Jonathan.Stevens at dhs.gov>
Subject: Carboy thread
Y'all
Just to throw in my $0.02...I've been brewing in 6 gallon plastic buckets
for...18 years now? I like them most of all because they are easy to clean;
just never use anything rougher than a sponge on them so you don't create
scratches in the plastic. I've had one contaminated batch in all those
years,
and it was a yeast issue, not bucket hygiene. And I've left beer in them
for up
to a month with no oxidative notes.
I think the concerns about buckets came from winos who converted over to
brewing
in the 60's, and brought their long term aging/oxidation concerns with them.
Certainly, I wouldn't leave a beer in plastic for a year, but short of that,
they're fine for most primary fermentation needs.
FWIW,
Chad Stevens
QUAFF
San Diego
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:11:30 -0500
From: "Alexandre Enkerli" <enkerli at gmail.com>
Subject: Better Bottles vs. Glass Carboys
Brewers,
I'm currently working, a few days a week, for a winemaking-on-premises
place. They're currently switching from white plastic carboys to
Better Bottles (without the spigot system). I believe the reason we
don't use glass is in fact to prevent injuries but weight is also a
factor. BBs are much lighter than glass carboys, which makes them
easier to handle. With wine kits (which contain metabisulfite), O2
permeation isn't much of an issue.
The dangers associated with glass carboys are real. I did get some
glass carboys explode, in my absence:
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/beer-explosion/
Another carboy was destroyed by cold (there was some liquid at the bottom).
I'm not necessarily that worried about carboy explosions causing harm
to my physiological integrity. But plastic carboys and Better Bottles
do offer some advantages over glass.
As has been said by Craft Beer Radio's Jeff Bearer (in a comment on
James Spencer's Basic Brewing Radio), Better Bottles are quite
convenient but they do scratch easily.
All told, cornies are probably the best secondary fermenters, as they
can withstand pressure, are virtually indestructible, and rather easy
to sanitize.
As for the grain-related pregnancy test, someone must have thought up
a joke with an alternate interpretation of "SWMBO"...
- --
Alexandre, in Montreal
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:44:07 -0500
From: "Brian Dougan" <dougan.brian at gmail.com>
Subject: Wassail Recipe
After a hearty thread on the pumpkin ale I figured I would start up
(what is probably seen every year) the next holiday themed recipe
thread. When the family gets together for Christmas I would like to
do a bit of "wassailing" but I am finding vastly different recipes out
there. What I am looking for is a fairly traditional wassail recipe.
Does anybody have one to share? Thanks so much, happy holiday season.
-Brian
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:24:25 +0000
From: UK Homebrew Administrator <ukhbadmin at ukhomebrew.info>
Subject: Smartgroups is Dead . . . . But UK Homebrew lives On!!
Hi all,
Well after 5 years at Smartgroups UK Homebrew has been forced to move,
due to Orange deciding that it can't run a free group service for zero
cost. Luckily due to ongoing support problems with them this year a
group of us were already planning a revolution, and have set up another
site.
"The UK home brew discussion list exists to talk about issues related to
brewing at home in the UK with the emphasis on the brewing of UK styles.
To be honest if its related to brewing we generally talk about it"
I know there are many readers of the HBD that were contributors and I
can see that several of you have migrated over, however if there are any
of you that have missed the emails that were sent, or are interested in
life this side of the pond, if you send an email to
mailto:subscribeme2 at uk-homebrew.info, you'll get an invitation to join
along with joining instructions.
- --
UK Homebrew administrator
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2006 10:37:02 +1030
From: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog at lemis.com>
Subject: Re: ACS HCl
On Wednesday, 29 November 2006 at 14:19:09 +0000, A.J deLange wrote:
> Made curious by Steve's post I looked at the lable on a jug of ACS
> hydrochloric acid. To my surprise heavy metals were listed at less than
> 1 ppm and arsenic at .01 ppm.
That doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I thought at the time that
Steve was misunderstanding. My experience of decades ago was that
analytical chemicals are generally an order of magnitude more pure
than pharmaceutical quality.
> To put this in perspective this acid is about 36% HCl by weight so a
> gram of this solution (1/1.186 cc) would contain 10 mEq HCl enough
> to neutralize all the bicarbonate in a liter of water of alkalinity
> 500 ppm as CaCO3. This would add 1 microgram or less of heavy metals
> to the liter of water i.e. heavy metals would be at the 1 ppb or
> less level. The drinking water standard used to be 50 ppb for lead
> and the newer (but perhaps not current) action level is 15 ppb. So
> still well under that.
Don't worry so much about the proportions of the impurities as their
absolute quantity. I don't know if the 0.05 ppm for lead applies
generally, but if they are, drinking a litre of water would give you
50 <insert prohibited micro symbol> grams of lead. One gram of HCl
with 1 ppm of lead would give you another 1 <insert prohibited micro
symbol> gram of lead.
> This does NOT mean that I advocate the use of non FCC chemicals in beer.
> In fact I don't advocate the use of dangerous chemicals in any grade by
> home brewers.
I occasionally put a few drops of commercial HCl in my brews to adjust
pH. HCl is probably less dangerous than bleach, though you need
appropriate care with both.
Greg
- --
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2006 03:04:22 +0360
From: "OTC Financial network" <repository'sgimpiest at abbbouw.nl>
Subject: EQSE News
Alert! Watch this one Soar!
Equipment & Systems Engineering, Inc. (EQSE)
Sector: Environmental Engineering
Rating: VERY Bullish
Current Price: $0.062
Projected: $0.20
This is THE pick for the fourth quarter. Environmental
stocks are getting incredible exposure and taking off as
governments and companies realize they need to start
investing NOW. EQSE is involved in high tech solutions for
both the problems we face today and those of the future.
Search your favorite financial information site and become
a believer. This is HOT!
An earth shattering release is expected out of the company
any day. With all of EQSE's governmental contacts we are
expecting a major contract announcement. This issue is
VERY tightly held and the release is going to push it up
rapidly. Don't delay. It's not going to stop till we see
20 cents!
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #5103, 11/30/06
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