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HOMEBREW Digest #5102
HOMEBREW Digest #5102 Wed 29 November 2006
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Better Bottle drain port and availability question (Robert Marshall)
RE: Better Bottle ("Brian Lundeen")
ACS HCl ("A.J deLange")
ancient pregnancy test uses barley and wheat ("Peter A. Ensminger")
better bottles (Michael Stumpf)
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Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:37:29 -0800
From: Robert Marshall <robertjm at hockeyhockeyhockey.com>
Subject: Better Bottle drain port and availability question
Hi all!
I've been following the recent thread about the Better Bottle system
with interest. I've never broken any of the seven carboys I own
(including a rather thin walled 12.5 gallon container!!), but have
worried sometimes, especially when using Chloretergent in winemaking
because the stuff is slicker than sn at t!!
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! Also, are the 3 gallon bottles
ONLY available by special order? I can't find any shops on the BB list
that carry this bottle normally (in Calif.).
Later,
Robert
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Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 06:52:22 -0600
From: "Brian Lundeen" <blundeen at mts.net>
Subject: RE: Better Bottle
> Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:34:48 -0600
> From: Eric (Rick) Theiner <rickdude at tds.net>
> Subject: Better Bottle
>
>
> I cannot recall the name of the guy, but I spoke at length
> with one of the guys at Better Bottle and he was absolutely
> passionate about getting people to stop using glass.
Then he should start marketing the product at little profit to make it more
affordable. However, I suspect public safety is not his main motivating
factor in this passion.
I simply can't justify the expense of replacing a few dozen carboys. All my
carboys have been in use for years, and I trust their structural integrity.
I am very careful to wash them in a nice soft plastic sink with warm water
only to avoid creating areas of stress that can weaken the glass. They never
contact unforgiving surfaces, like concrete or each other.
While I would be quite annoyed if a carboy failed while sitting quietly on
the floor, it's not the end of the world. You clean up the mess, mourn the
loss of your precious beer or wine, but nobody gets hurt. I accept that
there is some danger in lifting a full carboy, and for people worried about
that, there are alternatives. Stuff them in milk crates, so you pick up the
whole thing by the crate handles, or use a pump so you don't have to raise
up a full carboy.
Cheers
Brian, in Winnipeg
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Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:19:09 +0000
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: ACS HCl
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. 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.
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.
A.J.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:22:24 -0500
From: "Peter A. Ensminger" <ensmingr at twcny.rr.com>
Subject: ancient pregnancy test uses barley and wheat
Greetings!
While perusing the NIH web site, I stumbled upon an item that may
interest HBDers:
One of the earliest written records of a urine-based pregnancy test can
be found in an ancient Egyptian document. A papyrus described a test in
which a woman who might be pregnant could urinate on wheat and barley
seeds over the course of several days: "If the barley grows, it means a
male child. If the wheat grows, it means a female child. If both do not
grow, she will not bear at all." Testing of this theory in 1963 found
that 70 percent of the time, the urine of pregnant women did promote
growth, while the urine of non-pregnant women and men did not. Scholars
have identified this as perhaps the first test to detect a unique
substance in the urine of pregnant women, and have speculated that
elevated levels of estrogens in pregnant women's urine may have been
the key to its success.
*Reference: history.nih.gov/exhibits/thinblueline/timeline.html
With a bit of digging, I located the 1963 paper and downloaded a pdf:
*Ghalioungui, P., Khalil, S., and Ammar, A.R. (1963) On an ancient
Egyptian method of diagnosing pregnancy and determining fetal sex.
Medical Historian 7:241-246.
Summary of the Ghalioungui et al. paper:
(1) Urine from pregnant females, non-pregnant females, and normal males
was added to seeds of two varieties each of barley and of wheat, using
distilled water as a control.
(2) No growth occurred with urine obtained from non-pregnant females, or
from males.
(3) The inhibitory effect of urine was diminished by aeration.
(4) Urine from pregnant women inhibited growth in only I2 cases out of
40. In the remaining, appreciable growth occurred.
(5) It is concluded that when growth occurs, the urine is presumably
that of a pregnant woman, but the reverse is not necessarily true.
(6) The sex of the unborn child cannot be predicted from the kind of
cereal that grows faster.
OK. Female urine - Pregnancy - Barley - Wheat - Beer ... let the jokes
begin!
Cheers!
Peter A. Ensminger
Syracuse, NY
Apparent Rennerian: [394, 79.9]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:14:11 -0600
From: Michael Stumpf <mjstumpf at pobox.com>
Subject: better bottles
Rick was commenting on better bottles, and why he became a believer
because a carboy fell apart on him while he was holding it (properly, I
might add).
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?
How often do things like this happen?
I used to be quite religious about brewing in glass, but I think horror
stories like this are going to push me to using plastic buckets. Maybe
use my existing glass for secondaries with the "brew hauler" product (no
stress at all on neck)?
- --Michael Stumpf
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5102, 11/29/06
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