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HOMEBREW Digest #5127
HOMEBREW Digest #5127 Sun 14 January 2007
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
diacetyl (leavitdg)
Fermenter Heat ("A.J deLange")
RE: Can This Beer be Saved? ("denny@projectoneaudio.com")
Half coupler on my boil kettle (Andrew Tate)
Fermenting dextrins (Signalbox Brewery)
overflow ... ("steve.alexander")
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Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 08:21:34 -0500
From: leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu
Subject: diacetyl
Peter;
]Even more to the point are the brews from:
Sackett's Harbor.
- ----
P.S. If you can't get rid of the diacetyl, why not put a "Middle Ages"
label on it. Nobody will know the difference!
- ---
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Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:15:08 +0000
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Fermenter Heat
While the discussion of heat produced by fermentation was going on last
week I had a stout in progress. It is finished now and I dumped the
temperature profile data this morning. The fermenter is well insulated
(thermal time constant of about 45 hours) so a 1 degree Fahrenheit rise
in temperature can be attributed to (approximately) the evolution of 1
BTU per pound of fermenting wort. Applying that rule to this
fermentation, one of the most vigorous I have ever seen as I brewed the
beer on Monday and was able to drink it with dinner on Wednesday, I
found a peak heat evolution of 0.43 BTU/Hr/Lb at 66 F. Thus 5 gallons of
wort (approximately 42 lbs) could be expected to produce about 18
BTU/Hr. I would think that a glass carboy could easily dissipate that
amount of heat with even a drop of a couple of degrees or that at worst
the wet tee shirt trick might be required.
A.J.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 14:56:54 -0500
From: "denny at projectoneaudio.com" <denny@projectoneaudio.com>
Subject: RE: Can This Beer be Saved?
Pete, I think you're on the right track. I've done exactly that before
with great success. Besides, at this point, what else are ya gonna do?
Denny
Original Message:
I don't know whether this will work, but it took very little effort. It
would be very cool if it did save the beer. I have not seen anything posted
about this being tried before, though it surely has been. At any rate, I
will post my results to this list in a couple of weeks.
Cheers,
Pete Garofalo
Syracuse, NY (snowy, at last)
- --------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 18:16:35 -0800 (PST)
From: Andrew Tate <y1090r-hbd at yahoo.com>
Subject: Half coupler on my boil kettle
I recently purchased one of the new heavy duty kettles
from Morebeer.com and had them weld in a 1/2in female
NPT coupler for a ball valve. My intention was then
to screw a bazooka screen into the inside and boil
with whole hop flowers. The problem is, I suppose I
asked for the wrong type of coupler because it's only
threaded in one direction.
Does anyone have any creative solutions as to how I
could attach a bazooka screen to the outlet? The
coupler is flush with the inside of the kettle. I
considered a false bottom, but all ones I've seen for
boil kettles are pretty expensive.
Thanks!
Andrew Tate
Boston, MA
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 14:56:31 +0000
From: Signalbox Brewery <signalbox.brewery at ntlworld.com>
Subject: Fermenting dextrins
Chaps
In his book 'Home Brewing - the CAMRA Guide', Graham Wheeler
asserts that there is no need to prime 'properly brewed' bottled beers
as fermentation of residual dextrins will provide sufficient condition
after four to six weeks. (He is talking about British ale styles, of course).
My experience has been different. Beers that end up flat stay flat
if re-opened and yeast is added, but condition if opened and
primings are added. Can anyone definitively assert or deny the
fermentation of dextrins by yeast, and if so provide a reference?
I'm talking about modern homebrewing here; I'm aware that
Brettanomyces would ferment dextrins in old beers.
David Edge, Derby UK
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 20:32:10 -0500
From: "steve.alexander" <-s at adelphia.net>
Subject: overflow ...
I've never been a fan of "overflow hoses" in HB fermenters, but then
again I'm not the best improvisational brewery designer here.
I have and have used a large plastic "dish" (animal water dishes,
available from farm supply places) just in case of overflow, but I'm a
much happier camper when I plan ahead and avoid the problem and mess.
I don't like the seal available when you have a big plastic tube jammed
into a carboy. This sweet wort residue around the neck is a
lip-smacking invitation to infection. I have a clear recollection of an
early HB batch where the 5G of wort in a 5G carboy blew all the liquid
out of the S-bubbler several times. Apparently while unwatched the
foam filled the S-bubbler again, dried and coagulated there then in the
middle of the night the fermenter blew the now sealed ferementer
stopper into the basement ceiling with enough force to wake me. Foam
splatter on the basement rafters and gushing foam on the basement floor
- not a pretty sight in the middle of the night (but my beer wasn't ruined).
Anyway the key to *avoiding* overflow is to use a sufficiently large
*primary* fermenter. A 25L ( ~7G to the neck) acid carboy is almost
always sufficient for 5G of wort up to 16P. Often the higher grav
worts foam more. I was regularly brewing ~12-13G of normal gravity
(~11-13P) wort and fermenting using 15G plastic barrels. I have heard
good things about fermenting in quasi-open plastic buckets. Somehow
plastic primary fermenters have gotted an undeserved bad rep'.
First let's get past the big two problems with plastics in brewing.
First never use non-food grade plastics in any food processing. Most
people don't seem get the importance. I've seen statements attributing
the food-grade plastics problems to flavor, but that's the least of
it. The residual plasticisers in non-food-grade plastics can cause
cancer and some are mutagenic. I suspect that the ethanol & volatiles
in beer are a good way to extract the naughty chems from plastic.
Anyway food grade or FDA plastics cost a little more but are the only
way to go for beer buckets, bottles & tubing. The other shoe is that
plastics are soft and hard to keep clean. You can't scoure plastics
without also making them bacteria traps - the dow green scrubbies are
ideal at making 1 micron sized grooves (in plastic or metal) - perfect
for the creation of bacteria packed blisters. So do clean plastics
thoroughly, but take a note from the pro's and use chemicals, water
sprays, sponges and detergents rather than muscle & abrasives to remove
gunk. Also be aware that plastics age & crack and that bleach is very
competant at making plastics brittle. Iodine based sanitizers may
discolor plastics, but don't seem to induce brittleness.
Despite choosing a correct primary fermenter size, you must stil ltake
precautions wrt overflow. Somewhere I tripped across some old 1930s era
photos of Bass employees sweeping foam overflow out of the streets in
front of the plant. After a zillion brews of the same beer in the
same tanks Bass had a problem - so can you despite any reasonable
precautions. So first attempt to avoid overflow, but still be
prepared. Do the primary ferment in a place & way where an overflow
won't be a huge disaster.
-S
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5127, 01/14/07
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