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HOMEBREW Digest #5360
HOMEBREW Digest #5360 Wed 02 July 2008
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Beer in San Jose (Dean)
Water Chemistry ("A.J deLange")
Looking to upgrade equipment. (Christopher Bartlett)
HBD reading and writing.... (rgriller)
Re: Yeast Performance Versus Pressure (Kai Troester)
Cooling Wort In Hot Weather ("Dave Larsen")
Re: Yeast Performance Versus Pressure ("Mark Prior")
Re: Water Chemistry ("Dennis Lewis")
Water Chemistry ("A.J deLange")
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Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:04:11 -0500
From: Dean <dean at brewsession.com>
Subject: Beer in San Jose
Thomas Rohner asks about bars in the SF bay area. I lived in downtown San Jose
for a few years and miss walking over to San Pedro square for a drink. I will
let other people talk about SF bars like Magnolia, Rogue Alehouse, City Beer
Store, Toronado, Monk's Kettle, and Lucky 13.
Starting in downtown, my favorite place is a British pub called Trials. Nearly
next door to Trials is Teske's German bar. Good beer and expensive food.
O'flaherty's Irish Pub is also close by in San Pedro Square. Although somewhat
mass-produced, I should not neglect to mention Gordon Biersch since they do
make good beer. I would skip the Tied House; while a small brewery, I don't
think their beer is very good.
trialspub.com
www.teskes-germania.com
www.oflahertyspub.com
www.gordonbiersch.com
Getting farther away, there is a decent Rock Bottom in The Pruneyard (ask
anybody where that is). Better than that is the Duke of Edinburgh Pub in
Cupertino, another British bar with a great atmosphere. If you can not get
enough British-pub-feel, there is also The King's Head in Campbell.
theduke.com
www.thekingshead.us
There is a new-ish microbrewery in Sunnyvale, the Firehouse Grill & Brewery. I
visited it when it was new about 18 months ago. Food was not worth the money,
and the beer didn't quite make up for that. A better choice in S'vale is
Faultline Brewery.
www.faultlinebrewing.com
Since you are closer, I would recommend going over the hill to Santa Cruz
instead of Napa/Sonoma. There are at least three breweries over there,
Seabright, Santa Cruz Mountain, and Coastline Brewery. A google search will
reveal a few more in the surrounding area. I have only had Seabright in the
bottle and it was pretty good. 99 Bottles in downtown Santa Cruz is also a
good bar to see.
www.seabrightbrewery.com
www.santacruzmountainbrewing.com
www.coastlinebrewery.com
www.99bottles.com
I know even less about the East Bay, but mentionables over there are Triple
Rock in Berkley and The Bistro in Hayward. If you had six months to drink beer
in the Bay Area you would have a pretty packed schedule.
Would like to be there to have a drink with you, however I live in Texas now.
Regards,
- --Dean
- --
Take your time, take your chances
[1709.5 km, 224.8 deg] Apparent Rennerian
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of people
who try to.
- H. Mumford Jones
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:17:41 -0400
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Water Chemistry
pH 10.67 is way higher than WHO recomendations and the fact that any
municipality in the US is supplying its customers with water that high
is a bit of a surprise. Nevertheless the total alkakinity is very low
and the residual alkalinity is actually negative (-17 mgL as CaCO3).
Thus you should be able to brew base malt beers with this water without
strange pH effects. If you are reading below 5 in the mash tun at room
temperature in a beer that does not contain fair amounts of
black/patent/roast malt I'd be suspicious of the pH meter. If the high
pH is bothersome then let the water stand exposed to air for several
days or better yet bubble air through the water with an aquarium pump
and airstone. The pH will drop back down to the middle 8's or 9ish. The
process can be sped up by pushing CO2 through the airstone. That's what
your water plant should be doing.
A.J.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:08:40 -0700
From: Christopher Bartlett <bridgeweaver at khanfusion.net>
Subject: Looking to upgrade equipment.
My wife and I agree that it's time to upgrade our brewing
equipment. We'd like to move to a nice, multi-tiered system. Our
wish list includes:
* ability to mash, sparge and boil in the same system without having
to do any hand-transfers, so plumbing is key,
* Integrated heating with automatic temperature control,
* easy to maintain and clean,
* something that either doesn't have a huge horizontal footprint, or
is capable of being broken down for storage between brewing sessions,
* something whose price will come in at $1,500 or less,
* something that doesn't require complex assembly; we want to brew,
not weld or commit plumbing.
Given this wish list, do HBD-ers have any recommendations for systems
we could purchase that would fit our goals? Oh, we're not looking to
brew anything beyond ten gallons, or at most a half barrel. Your
thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Christopher Bartlett
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 10:00:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: rgriller at chass.utoronto.ca
Subject: HBD reading and writing....
It's a bit of a coincidence for me that this topic comes up now. For a few
years I've kept my subscription to HBD going, but have only rarely read
it. A couple of months ago, I started reading again and was shocked by how
it had declined over time.....glad to see people back up and energetic for
the moment, let's hope we can keep it going!
So, how many people are growing their own hops due to the shortages?
I've just picked up a couple of plants, but don't think, I'll get anything
out of them for a year or two....
Robin
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:41:30 -0400
From: Kai Troester <kai at braukaiser.com>
Subject: Re: Yeast Performance Versus Pressure
> This is from memory, since I do not have the book in front of me, but
> I remember Noonan had something to say about this in New Brewing Lager
> Beer. If I recall correctly, he said that lagering should not be
> done over 5 lbs of pressure. He did not say why, however. I remember
> this because I was lagering a Marzen in a corny keg at the time, and
> was worried about the pressure.
I checked Noonan's New Brewing Lager Beer, because I would have been surprised
if that was stated there, and couldn't find this in the sections where
he talks
about lagering.
5psi (or 0.34 bar) seems a little low. At 0 C (32F) beer temp this would only
amount to about 4.1 g/l CO2 (~ 2 volumes). But German and other commercial
brewers carbonate their beer during lagering. Many of them ever overcarbonate
to be able to adjust the carbonation by degassing before bottling or kegging.
I'm a proponent of natural carbonation for kegged beers. Not because
it complies
with the purity law, but b/c it makes my life a little easier. When a
keg is pressurized, the seals will stay sealed, I can easily pull a
sample w/o hooking up CO2 and the beer is carbonated as soon as I
transfer to a serving keg.
Having a automatic pressure relieve valve makes that process easier. You don't
have to worry about precise sugar amounts. If you are in a rush, you can even
rack to that keg before the fermentation is fully complete (make sure you get
enough yeast though) and let it complete in the secondary keg while dryhopping
and carbonating at the same time.
But there is certainly a limit to the amount of pressure that yeast can take.
But even at 30psi, there shouldn't be a significant problem yet.
Kai
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 10:55:44 -0700
From: "Dave Larsen" <hunahpu at gmail.com>
Subject: Cooling Wort In Hot Weather
I live in the desert. It can reach 112 degrees F pretty easily. As
a result, I don't brew much in the summer. When I do brew, one of the
issues I have is cooling the wort down after the boil. I use an
immersion chiller, and my tap water is well above 80 degrees. Because
of this, I cannot cool things down to the 68 degrees F or so I need to
pitch. Right now, the way I cool things down is to cool the wort as
far as I can with tap water, and then to use a cold liquor tank, which
is basically a big blue plastic tub filled with ice water. I gravity
feed the ice water, which basically moves at a trickle, through my
immersion chiller and it _slowly_ cools the wort down. It takes
longer than I like, well over an hour, and much of that time is spent
in the danger zone, above 80 degrees F.
What solutions do others use? Keep in mind that I do not have a pump
(though I guess I could buy one).
Dave
Tucson, AZ
http://hunahpu.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 16:21:03 -0400
From: "Mark Prior" <priormc at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Yeast Performance Versus Pressure
Kai Troester <kai at braukaiser.com> writes:
"Pressure does affect the yeast, in particular its growth. Like
alcohol, CO2 is toxic for the yeast and they rather not be in a CO2
environment."
Kai: Sounds like this would impact the capacity to harvest and
repitch yeast. Do you know at what PSI, the yeast is impacted.
I know it is the standard practice in many micro's and brew pubs
to cap fermenters near the end of fermentation. Also, isn't that the
standard in Germany? I thought the German's prefered to carbonate
their beer naturally instead of force carbonating post fermentation.
Dave Larsen" <hunahpu at gmail.com> asks:
"Wouldn't it be easier to finish fermentation normally,
and then add some corn sugar to the keg to prime, like you would if
you were bottling? That way you could control the amount of CO2
easier, and would not have to have a pressure relief valve. Isn't
there a formula for corn sugar to volumes of CO2?"
Priming with sugar is an option, but not my preference. It's more
complex and slower for me. All I have to do is attach
the pressure relief valve to my corny gas out towards the end of fermentation
and my beer finishes and carbonates simultaneously.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 17:47:30 -0400
From: "Dennis Lewis" <dblewis at dblewis.com>
Subject: Re: Water Chemistry
AJ,
A genuflecting thanks for the quick reply and advice. I'm planning on
brewing this weekend and I'm trying to get a handle on my corrections
instead of blind trial and error.
At first I too thought my pH meter was screwed up. But I tested with
an old test strip that immediately went off-scale high in color
change. Then I used our test kit for the fish tank that has an upper
range of 8. That went off-scale in color too. Now it had me
wondering... I have an Oakton temp correcting pH meter that was
reading my plain water at 10.1 from the tap. I calibrated the meter at
4 and 7 since I have tablets for those ranges, and it still read 10+.
That's when I called the local dept and they faxed me the water
analysis. the 10.67 is their number.
I brewed a Fat-Tire clone that is darker than the original, maybe 25
SRM, and that was where I hit the upper 4's in the mash. I added chalk
and bicarb to get it back up to 5.4. Of course, my calcium and sodium
levels are all high at this point!
The water source is a local lake/reservoir (Meander in Ohio) and I'm
reasonably sure that it's not that high in pH naturally. Surface water
is generally softer than well. The web site says that they're treating
it with lime to precipitate stuff out. So I'm thinking that they're
treating it to that level then not correcting it back. I'm going to
call to get a new analysis Wed.
Thanks also to Britt Taylor-Burton who recommended a program called
"brewater" by Ken Schwartz. I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.
Dennis Lewis
Warren, OH
> On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 9:17 AM, A.J deLange <ajdel at cox.net> wrote:
> pH 10.67 is way higher than WHO recomendations and the fact that any
> municipality in the US is supplying its customers with water that high is a
> bit of a surprise. Nevertheless the total alkakinity is very low and the
> residual alkalinity is actually negative (-17 mgL as CaCO3). Thus you should
> be able to brew base malt beers with this water without strange pH effects.
> If you are reading below 5 in the mash tun at room temperature in a beer
> that does not contain fair amounts of black/patent/roast malt I'd be
> suspicious of the pH meter. If the high pH is bothersome then let the water
> stand exposed to air for several days or better yet bubble air through the
> water with an aquarium pump and airstone. The pH will drop back down to the
middle 8's or 9ish. The process can be sped up by pushing CO2 through the
> airstone. That's what your water plant should be doing.
>
> A.J.
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:26:22 -0400
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Water Chemistry
RE:
The web site says that they're treating it with lime to precipitate
stuff out. So I'm thinking that they're treating it to that
level then not correcting it back.
I hesitated to mention this as a possibility because the water is still
so hard but then the low alkalinity should have been
my clue: they've precipitated about as much of the temporary hardness as
they can get out (taking the bulk of the
bicarb/carb with it). This water must have been incredibly hard befor
treatment. After lime treatment it is customary to add
carbon dioxide back in to get the pH into a more reasonable range. Maybe
they are in arrears on their Liquid Carbonic bill.
------------------------------
End of HOMEBREW Digest #5360, 07/02/08
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