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HOMEBREW Digest #5365
HOMEBREW Digest #5365 Wed 09 July 2008
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Oxidation of Frozen Liquid? (Robert Tower)
New to Homebrewing (Thomas Rohner)
re: New to Homebrewing (Joseph M Labeck Jr)
Sankey Kegs ("A.J deLange")
Deoxygenating water (Thomas Wilberding)
Re: Software and Equipment ("Dave Larsen")
souring (Matt)
Product Design,Reverse Engineering & Manufacturing from China ("yada")
RE: New Brewer information ("David Houseman")
A Trick for the Conical ("LANCE HARBISON")
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Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:43:45 -0700
From: Robert Tower <roberttower at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Oxidation of Frozen Liquid?
I've been doing some experimentation priming with frozen apple juice
concentrate. The concentrate comes in 12 oz. cans but to prime 5 gallons
at the normal rate I've determined 8 oz. to be correct rate. If I'm
priming 10 gallons I'll have to use 2 cans and have 8 oz. leftover. I
was thinking I could sanitize a 12 oz. beer bottle and fill it with the
8 oz. of leftover concentrate, cap and refreeze. Then the thought
occurred to me regarding that 4 oz. of head space and oxidation. Will
the oxygen in the head space be able to oxidize the frozen concentrate
to a significant degree? My gut tells me the concentrate isn't going to
oxidize under these conditions but then my gut has been known to be
wrong occasionally! I figured I would get some expert feedback from the
resident chemistry experts.
Thanks!
Bob Tower / Los Angeles, CA
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:56:30 +0200
From: Thomas Rohner <t.rohner at bluewin.ch>
Subject: New to Homebrewing
Hi Daniel
I started out with a 7gal pot and a HDPE fermenter (not conical) and a
cheap capper. I did a couple of extract 5gal batches this way. I didn't
have to invest a fortune.
Soon i found out that i want to go all grain and a larger batch size. I
started with building a counterflow chiller, a 3 tier brew tower (all
pots heatable with 10kW propane burners) with converted 50l(12.5gal)
kegs. I used "Phil's phittings" for the chiller and "Easy masher" for my
mash/lauter tun. I'm still happy with that after more than 250 batches.
Bottling a 12.5gal batch was a PITA, actually it wasn't the filling, but
the cleaning/sanitizing of the bottles. 2 years ago, we got a commercial
dishwasher from my brew-buddies brother.(He works at a company building
them...) If bought new, it has a 30 grand price tag.
With this beauty, we bottle a 100 bottles in under 1 hour.
We have a kegging setup with more than 10 corny kegs and some sankey
types, we have a double head flow-through cooling dispenser to hook up
warm beer and dispense it chilled.
But we seldom use it. Hooking up, cleaning the beer lines is just more
of a hassle to us than opening a bottle. Before we got our bottle
washer, we thought about putting some beer taps into the wall of our
walk-in cooler. This way the kegs and the beer lines stay cooled. If you
intend to keg, think of building or buying a beer fridge with taps as
well, but to start out i'd definitely bottle.
We use our HDPE fermenters 60l 17gal for 10 years now, we never had a
infection. We can lift them into our converted freezer to ferment. I
think temperature controlled fermentation is more important, than a
SS-conical.
I got 3 100l 27gal SS pots from a fellow brewer for free. They just
stand there and look good at the moment. We intend to enlarge our batch
size one more(the last?) time. The actual brew tower will go to my other
brew buddies vacation home in Greece... He want's to spend his vacations
frugally...
Daniel, i advise you to start out with a cheap setup. You will find out
what fancy equipement you need, when you brew. I makes a big difference,
if you brew extract or all grain.
My next thingies to build for the new 100l setup include a motorized
mash mixer and a fixed motor on the grain mill.(we used a power drill
for several tons of barley up til now)
What would Nike say?
Just Brew it!
Cheers Thomas
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:49:30 -0400
From: Joseph M Labeck Jr <jmlabeck at joesjokearchive.ws>
Subject: re: New to Homebrewing
Hi, Daniel;
First, welcome to the hobby. Homebrewers, as a group, are some of the
nicest, most helpful people on the planet.
I've been brewing for around 15 years. I use extracts and specialty
grains, and I've always bottled.
I've always said, except for sanitizing, it's all personal choice. Do
what makes you happy. I happily brew at the low end of the start-up cost
scale. I use a plastic water bottle ($9 at Target) as my fermenter, and
bottles donated from friends ($0).
However, I would say, if you have more to spend, by all means spend it.
Having a hobby is all about enjoying your time doing it. A little extra
money for a little extra enjoyment makes perfect sense to me.
Happy Brewing
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:48:15 -0400
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Sankey Kegs
RE:
>I recently went to using commercial sankey kegs and they are much
nicer to work with but not very cheap. Finding a
source for them is another problem altogether since I know of no one
selling them to homebrewers.<
Sabco used to be distributors for Franke but Franke now sells direct.
They will sell to homebreweres and
apparantly intend to go after that market upon completion of a plant
they are building in the US. At the
current time you can get kegs from them but you may have to wait for a
couple of months until a run is
complete in Germany and the lot crosses the pond. Prices are hideous
because of the demand for stainless.
In a year or so the price jumped about $100 (half barrel). Even so the
price of a 1/4 barrel sankey is
about the same as a new 5 gal soda keg (and you can squeeze in an extra
2.5 gal of beer). The nicest thing
about Sankey is dispense parts are available anywhere (any bar supply
store, Rapids, Micromatic etc) and
you can hook them up to any dispense system that takes commercial kegs
(and which has the proper
coupler).
The downside is that you can't open them up for cleaning without some
difficulty (or a special spring compressor
tool) which means that they must be cleaned by chemical means in the
blind. The real issue is beerstone.
Once that stuff starts to form scrubbing (you obviously have to take the
spear out to do this) with acid is
about the only way to get it out and rinsing with acid after every few
cleanings is the only way to prevent it
(that I know about).
A.J.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 10:19:29 -0400
From: Thomas Wilberding <tom at wilberding.com>
Subject: Deoxygenating water
It is my understanding that in addition to reacting with the dissolved
oxygen, that metabisulphites will also reduce chlorine and chloramine
to chlorides and sulfate ions.
http://byo.com/mrwizard/1211.html
So in addition to removing oxygen, you are also removing chloramines
from your municipal supplied water. A nice two for one benefit!
Anyone have the detailed chemistry on the proper dosage of potassium
metabisulphite to use to effectively accomplish both tasks?
It seems that A.J.'s experiment was empirically measuring how much to
use to effectively lower the oxygen levels (thanks AJ!), but I wonder
if all of the chlorine or chloramine was also reduced?
Thanks,
Tom Wilberding
Midland, MI
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 08:31:40 -0700
From: "Dave Larsen" <hunahpu at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Software and Equipment
> RE: Software - I'm a Linux guy, so I use qbrew, and it has Windows
> ports for XP and Vista.
> http://www.usermode.org/code.html
>
Promash will run on Linux using Wine, a Windows emulator. I think
that is great because I rarely get anything to work under Wine. The
only issue I've had with Promash on Linux is that the fonts aren't
quite right, so some of the text labels for fields wrap, making some
of the screens look ugly. They are functional, however.
Dave
Tucson, AZ
http://hunahpu.blogspot.com/
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 08:41:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com>
Subject: souring
How to consistently and effectively perform "natural" souring of a
beer with lactobacillus remains a mystery that homebrewers have
yet to crack. (If I am wrong about that I would love to be
corrected...)
The most common available lacto strain (Wyeast) has, for me, not
been an effective souring agent when added either post- or during
fermentation in the quantity sold and fermented below 80 degrees
F, even after a month or two. There have been some recent reports
of better secondary souring activity when the ferment temp is raised
above 85F. On the other hand I failed to get any significant
souring when pitching the lacto slurry directly into 50 mL of fresh
wort in a sealed test tube held at about 30C.
I personally believe that lacto strains that can effectively sour
already-fermented beer are rather difficult to come by. On the
other hand they certainly do seem to exist. More experimentation
is probably called for and hopefully someone will find a readily
available culture that is effective (and then we can turn our
attention to the subject of control). Ideas include acidophilus
capsules and Bulgarian yogurt.
Some people have had success by not boiling at least some of
the wort after mashout--an old Berliner Weisse trick that
presumably introduces only the desirable thermophilic
homofermentive lactobacillus (other significant bacteria having
been eliminated by the heat). By the way a ridiculous amount of
accurate (translated primary source) information on Berliner Weisse
is available on Ron Pattinson's blog "Shut Up About Barclay
Perkins."
Pediococcus will sour beer pretty predictably I believe, but you
may need brett or some other mechanism to remove the diacetyl it
produces, and at that point I think you're talking about something
other than simple souring.
Adding refined lactic acid is almost a "perfect" solution other
than the aesthetics of it. I do not believe lactic acid from a
bottle is different from lactic acid from lactobacillus. (This
is really to say that I do not believe lactobacillus generally
perform some function beyond just producing the acid, a function
that somehow "rounds out" the flavor. Brett do, if that's what
you are after.) But that is a different discussion.
Matt
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:59:32 +0800
From: "yada" <kxhakh at tom.com>
Subject: Product Design,Reverse Engineering & Manufacturing from China
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:08:24 -0400
From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net>
Subject: RE: New Brewer information
Dave Harsh said:
> Just remember that none of the cool toys that lots of us have are
> required to brew great beer. Many swear by their fancy gadgets, but
> the biggest step in quality in most people's beers are from a wort
> chiller and swearing off dry yeast.
I agree with most of what Dave said except the part about dry yeast. While
dry yeast of the 90's and before, and perhaps that which comes with the
canned kits, are not what one wants to use, modern dry yeasts, Lallamand for
example, is excellent. It has much more to do with the procedures in using
any yeast than dry or liquid. Nottingham for example is an excellent yeast.
The Safale and Saflager yeasts are excellent. But learn how to use them
properly for best results.
David Houseman
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:22:59 -0500
From: "LANCE HARBISON" <harbison65 at verizon.net>
Subject: A Trick for the Conical
I've recently been reading on the HBD some opinions about whether a conical
is good to have. A couple issues brought up is the difficulty in extracting
the yeast from the bottom and cleaning in place. Yeast extraction is an art
form. It is a finesse operation. The best way, IMO, is to suspend an 8
inch, or so, piece of plastic tubing from the bottom dump valve. The bigger
the better. At the end of the tubing is a second stop valve. During
fermentation the upper valve is wide open and the lower valve is closed.
This allows one to see first the trub (if any) then the yeast collect in the
tube. When it becomes time to drain, simply open the bottom valve and go to
it. At time, however, the first drainings may be quite sluggish like peanut
butter. This is where the tubing comes in handy. With the bottom closed
and top open squeeze the tubing like milking a cow. This forces yeast in
the tube upward into the upper valve, thus helping to break up the peanut
butter. If that doesn't work, you can always take the lid off and poke
around with a piece of welding rod (or coat hanger) to break up the sludge.
Once that is accomplished, slowly begin draining. Draining slow prevents
too much beer from escaping. If beer does come out, which is likely towards
the final draining, just place the collection vessel in the fridge and after
the beer rises to the top drink it (it will be yeasty, but still good).
As far as cleaning a conical, I've yet to get my arm into a carboy. Ha ha.
Lance Harbison
Pittsburgh
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5365, 07/09/08
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