HOMEBREW Digest #1126 Fri 23 April 1993

Digest #1125 Digest #1127


	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator


Contents:
  RE: Stinky Yeast (""Robert C. Santore"")
  Wyeast 1214 (Rob Bradley)
  End of the season looming (Rob Bradley)
  Beer with body (Tim Anderson)
  Yeast and Tin ("Manning, Martin P")
  soda keg prices (Mark Wells Wilson)
  Parallel immersion chillers (korz)
  Carbonation w/ Dry Ice (February 24, 1993) (sslovac)
  5 litre kegs and N2O (Stephen Brent Peters)
  CA Festival of Beers Reply (RDG3)
  Growing Hops Horizontally (Alan Edwards)
  CHIMAY YEAST ("CURLEY::SOLVIBILEB")
  New version of THREAD program for searching HBD (Tom Kaltenbach)
  Un-suscribe (CIS309137)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 10:27:24 -0400 From: ""Robert C. Santore"" <rsantore at mailbox.syr.edu> Subject: RE: Stinky Yeast In HBD 1125, Mark Rich writes: > 1.078 !! (yikes). Anyhow here's the thing the yeast in the warm water REALLY > smelled, BIG TIME! Being our first experience with Edme... in it went. The I have brewed several batches with Edme dry ale yeast. My notes describe all of these batches as stinky. The sediment in the primary smelled of vomit. However, the smell was not evident in the final beer. Bob Santore rsantore at mailbox.syr.edu Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 10:41:01 -0400 From: bradley at adx.adelphi.edu (Rob Bradley) Subject: Wyeast 1214 Just a Wyeast data point: I cracked a packet of Belgian (1214) last week that was dated September 30, 1992. That means 6.5 months old. Within 48 hours, it was fully puffed and I made a happy, healthy starter which I pitched about 40 hours later. The beer is bubbling meerily as I write. Admittedly, I bought the yeast 4 days old, brought it straight home and kept it in the fridge throughout the whole period. Nevertheless, I'm pretty impressed at the keeping properties of this stuff. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 10:56:40 -0400 From: bradley at adx.adelphi.edu (Rob Bradley) Subject: End of the season looming It's a typical spring day on Long Island (mild and rainy) and I'm already contemplating the end of the brewing season :-( :-( :-( A Belgian dubbel will occupy the secondary for a few weeks and a late-May trip out of town makes it hard to schedule another batch before the hot days of June-July-August. With neither a basement nor AC, it's hard to brew anything except possibly high-temperature Belgian-style stuff. Has anybody had any REAL success brewing quality ale using the "wet t-shirt" method when the ambient is above 80F? (Disclaimer: this is not a sexist joke. The idea is to place a carboy in a shallow pan of water and drape a t-shirt on it. The shirt acts as a wick, drawing up water. The water evaporates, alledgedly cooling the carboy to ale temperatures.) Looking back over a successful season (11 5-gallon batches plus a 2-gallon barley wine and various apple and honey potions) my major regret is that so many good bottles of beer aged past their prime. I don't drink fast enough!!! I don't want to increase my alcohol consumption. Brewing a 3-gallon batch is just as much work as a 5-gallon batch. If I brewed less frequently, I would suffer from decreased variety. Perhaps the answer is to get find a brewing partner, so that I get only a case or so from each brew and cut the work down accordingly. Any other recommendations? Any thoughts as to whether the HBD is a suitable forum to post a "personal ad" sseking a brewing partner? Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 08:15:02 PDT From: tima at wv.MENTORG.COM (Tim Anderson) Subject: Beer with body Last night, as I was drinking one of the last few bottles of my "Mincemeat" Christmas beer, I was thinking how it really belonged in a crust with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This got me to thinking about various ways this could be accomplished. One idea was to make beer jello. Another is to use a bunch of apples in the brew, go ahead and boil 'em and let the pectin set. In the particular beer I was drinking, the recipe was based on a mincemeat recipe in The Joy of Cooking, but I left the apples out because of the pectin. Perhaps I should have left them in. Anyway, I had a packet of Knox unflavored gelatin, so I made a cup of beer jello. I didn't want to waste a cup of precious homebrew, so I opened a bottle of Rogue Ale I had in the fridge. I just followed the microwave directions on the packet, substituting beer for fruit juice. (The microwave method has you warm a quarter of the "juice" and use the rest cold. I don't think I lost any alcohol at all). The result was less disgusting than I expected. In fact, I'm convinced that in the hands of a trained professional, good things could be done with this. I was thinking of adding, in place of the traditional sliced bananas and fruit cocktail, maybe sliced polish sausage, pretzels and pickled eggs? Back to the pectin, would gelatinized wort ferment ok? Would the consistency prevent fermentation? Would fermentation prevent gelling? I can picture a magma-like glob working its way up the blowoff tube. I suppose bottling would be out of the question. Maybe wide-mouth canning jars. Then you could serve it with an ice cream scoop. On a related note: Since apple cider is just apple juice allowed to ferment, and apple jelly is just (sweetened) boiled apple juice allowed to set, why not hard cider jelly? Boil, chill, pitch yeast, spread on toast. tim "I'll have another slice of beer, please." Return to table of contents
Date: 23 Apr 1993 00:05:41 -0600 From: "Manning, Martin P" <manning#m#_martin_p at mcst.ae.ge.com> Subject: Yeast and Tin Like others, I have some equipment with (lead-free) soldered joints. A comment made by Randy Mosher in the recent Zymurgy gadget special indicated that there is a potential problem with tin and yeast. Being new to this forum, I don't know if this issue has been resolved or not, but a quick calculation tells me that it takes 2.6 cubic millimeters (mm3) of tin to give 1 ppm in 5 gallons. My trusty counterflow wort chiller has two joints (3/8" copper tube) in the wort flow path, each of which I estimate used 16 mm3 of solder. It seems that if even 1 ppm of tin were being dissolved into the wort, the device would soon fall apart. It hasn't. I am interested in finding out just how toxic tin is to yeast. Does anybody have any documented info on the concentration level which would adversely affect yeast performance? Martin Manning Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 13:55:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Mark Wells Wilson <mw4w+ at andrew.cmu.edu> Subject: soda keg prices Just wondering: How much do other homebrewers usually pay for soda kegs? Mark Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 13:34 CDT From: korz at iepubj.att.com Subject: Parallel immersion chillers Guess I'll have to build myself a parallel immersion chiller... ... just to keep up with the Joneses ;^). Sorry, I couldn't resist. But seriously, I've got a 50-foot, 1/4" OD immersion chiller (about 1/4 of which is not even in the wort on a 5 gallon batch) and it cools my boiling wort to 70F in about 15 minutes. All this math and physics may indeed give me a chiller that is 20% more efficient, but all that means is that it will cut my 15 minutes down to 12 minutes. Is it really worth it? Let's not lose touch with reality, eh? Al. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu Apr 22 12:01:34 PDT 1993 From: sslovac at atss.calstatela.edu Subject: Carbonation w/ Dry Ice (February 24, 1993) Carbonation with Dry Ice Carbonation with dry ice can be done - we did it for years when I lived in Ithaca and had a ready supply. However, we used CO*2 tank, removed the valve, broke the ice into smaller pieces, filled the tank about 1/4 full, recapped and connected tubes to the regulator. It worked fine and never imparted an off taste. Of course, we were carbonating kegs of beer, not bottles, but if you have a kegging system then you can buy (or make) a counter pressure bottle filler for $15 - $20 to bottle carbonated beer from the keg. Concerning the proposal to use pieces of dry ice in each bottle, I would worry about the potential for explosion and wildly fluctuating pressure in the bottles owing to the expansion ratio of CO*2 ice to gas: I seem to remember that water is roughly 1:17,000 so CO*2 can't be too far away. So I don't recommend trying individual bottling with dry ice, unless you can safely and precisely experiment with measured amounts of (probably tiny)chips. Also, individual bottle carbonation is highly labor intensive - much like priming each bottle with a 1/2 tsp of sugar. sslovac at atss.calstatela.edu ;^) Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 16:45:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Brent Peters <sp2q+ at andrew.cmu.edu> Subject: 5 litre kegs and N2O I recently purchaced a tap for 5 litre cans operated by those little N2O cannisters you can use to make whipped cream (among other uses). This little device is mighty keen, but I have already run out of N2O. Does anybody know where I could purchase these little things at a decent price? I currently live in Pittsburgh, but I'd be willing to mail-order. I love the 5 litre keg thing, it is great! A very convenient size, and easy to use. If anyone else is interested in trying this, Randy at Brew Ha-Ha will sell you everything you need to keg and tap 5 gal batches for 40$, or just the tap for $20. Email me for his address (I don't have it with me) Also, here's a question: I noticed in the instructions he gave me that the kegs are lined with plastic and they explicitely state that chlorine should not come in contact with it. I have been brewing for over a year and have never used anything other than chlorine and use it to sanitize my plastic bottling bucket. Is this just a cheap pitch to sell more b-brite, or is there a good reason behind this? -steve Steve Peters = sp2q at andrew.cmu.edu *Oxnar demands a _Sacrifice!_* Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 16:01:19 PDT From: RDG3%SysEng%DCPP at cts27.cs.pge.com Subject: CA Festival of Beers Reply For advance tickets for the California Festival of Beers, held in San Luis Obispo, Ca. you can send your request (and check) to: Hospice of San Luis Obispo 1432 Higuera San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 The tickets are cheaper if you buy them in advance, $22.50. The Festival is a fund raiser for the Hospice and if you have any questions you can call them at (805) 544-2266. Here's to the Irish ..... Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 16:30:43 PDT From: rush at xanadu.llnl.gov (Alan Edwards) Subject: Growing Hops Horizontally GROWING HOPS Last year, when I started growing hops, I mentioned my setup and that I would give a report on how it worked. I grow the hops up 8 feet, then horizontally about 16 feet. My setup works really well. I run the vines up some nylon twine to a galvanized steel wire, that is stretched across two posts, and then across to the eaves of my house. The first year, only two varieties made it most of the way across to my house, for a total of about 20 feet--Chinook and Nugget. This year, I expect more growth, and may even find some of the vines wanting more line. As I write, three of the varieties have already reached 8 feet. You only need to twist the new growth around the horizontal part of the twine about every couple of days. It's not that big of a deal to get them to grow horizontally. And it makes picking MUCH easier. I don't need to take the vine down OR use a ladder; I usually stand on a chair-- a step-ladder will do nicely. DETAILS - I have seven hop plants of different varieties about 3.5 feet apart. The whole garden is about 24 feet by three feet. - The garden is along my North fence, for maximum sun. - Two 8 foot 2x4's are nailed to the wooden fence (at the corner and at a 4x4 post, for support), with a galvanized steel wire stretched across the tops (with a turnbuckle for tightening). - Nylon twine is hung from the steel wire and staked into the ground near the hops. I would advise against using jute (natural fiber) twine. I used jute twine last year and after weathering, some of them snapped. Also, they stretch out over time, requiring retightening every so often (plan for this). - The horizontal twines are tied to the steel wire and fastened to the eaves of the roof with screw-eyes. - Some vines are not aligned with the house. And in those cases, the twine goes to a second steel wire stretched between the North-East corner of the house and an 8 foot 2x4 attached to the East fence. That wire forms an extension to the North side of the roof, where the other twines are attached. - The garden is fenced in with a simple 2x4 frame and some chicken wire. If you have pets, you must fence it off. Don't trust your dog. I did two years ago, and he wrecked the garden. I had to start all over again. CHANGES This year, instead of training three vines from each plant up one twine, I am training four vines from each plant up TWO twines. All twines are equally spaced. This gives the appearance of having twice as many vines and should make harvesting much easier. Last year's crop got pretty bushy and hard to pick on the more prolific varieties. I also hope that the horizontal part will create some nice shade on my back yard, since the vines will be 1.75 feet apart. I seriously doubt that they will grow together and cause me to misidentify the varieties. I also expect a bigger harvest from this configuration, since I can let more vines grow without worrying about clutter. GROWING TIPS Keep new shoots pruned until you see hop cones, then let a couple of vines emerge and wind around the existing vines. You'll have another harvest a few weeks after the first. Keep doing this and you can have several harvests in one season. If you have some varieties that aren't doing too well (less that 6 vines emerge), go ahead and train them all--it may be your only chance. I had a pretty poor first harvest from my Willamette and Mount Hood last year. Tettnanger didn't do too well either. Some varieties just don't do as well as others. If you are growing Nugget, Cascades or Chinook, expect to trim them regularly. They grow very well. If you don't keep cutting shoots, things can get hairy quickly. The same goes for the long runners that you get coming out of the sides of the vine. Also, if you have the choice, put the least prolific varieties in the part of the garden that gets the most sun--they need all the help they can get. If at all possible, water the hops with some kind of automatic system. They need much water, and often. I've got mine on a timer that waters them twice a day. Good luck, and most of all HAVE FUN! -Alan .------------------------------------. | Alan Edwards: rush at xanadu.llnl.gov | Member: The Hoppy Cappers | or: Alan-Edwards at llnl.gov | homebrew club, Modesto, CA `------------------------------------' Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 20:17:50 -0400 (EDT) From: "CURLEY::SOLVIBILEB" at JOE.ALB.EDU Subject: CHIMAY YEAST THERE IS ACTIVE YEAST IN THE CHIMAY BOTTLES. WE FILTERED IT OUT AND ATTEMTED TO CULTURE IT. WE THOUGHT WE WERE SUCESSFUL, BUT OUR BEER WAS NO CHIMAY. I THINK GOD MUST SAVE THE GOOD BEER FOR THE MUNKS. THERE IS A "BEER HUNTER" EPISODE THAT FEATURES CHIMAY. MAYBE YOU SHOULD CHECK IT OUT. GOOD HEALTH AND GOOD BEER, BILL SOLVIBILE Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 93 20:40 EDT From: tom at kalten.bach1.sai.com (Tom Kaltenbach) Subject: New version of THREAD program for searching HBD - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Announcing Version 2.1 of THREAD for MS-DOS computers, by Tom Kaltenbach - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've just completed a new version of my THREAD program, which is designed to search the back issues of the Homebrew Digest and extract those messages that follow a certain "thread" of conversation. The new version is a much-enhanced program, now faster (w/multitasking!), neater, and easier to use. This program, like earlier versions, is released to the public domain: no licensing fees or donations are required. The only restriction is that the program may not be sold or otherwise used for commercial purposes. THREAD searches for conversation threads by extracting all messages that contain specified key words; as a consequence, the program also functions as a general subject-searching program. For example, if you wanted to search for all messages related to kegging, you might use "kegging" as a key word. Logical combinations are also possible; for example, if you wanted all of the references to Jack Schmidling's MALT MILL, you could search for "malt" AND "mill" NOT "miller" (the NOT "miller" excludes the many references to Dave Miller's books). The key words are not limited to a single word, for example, you can search for messages mentioning "dave miller" OR "dave line". Up to 10 key word specifiers are allowed. Each matching message is displayed, with all key words highlighted, for the user to view, save, skip, etc. An automatic mode allows non-interactive searches to be performed. THREAD operates on IBM PC or compatible 8088/80286/80386/80486 microcomputers running MS-DOS, so it does require that the digests are stored as ASCII text files in a directory on the PC hard disk. The program has been uploaded to the archives at sierra.stanford.edu, where it can be found in the /pub/homebrew directory. The files are as follows: thread21.exe ver 2.1 binary file, MS-DOS program executable thread21.pas ver 2.1 source code, written in Turbo Pascal 5.5/6.0 thread21.uue uuencoded version of thread21.exe, for those without ftp thread21.xxe xxencoded version of thread21.exe, for those without ftp thread21.doc documentation and program description thread21.new list of new features and enhancements in version 2.1 NOTE: the "thread21.exe" file is a binary file and cannot be requested using the listserver. The uuencoded and xxencoded versions are included for use with the listserv archive server, which sends files via mail. The uuencoding format is more popular, but fails with some IBM mainframe mail nodes. Xxencoding is required in these cases. An xxencode/decode program for MS-DOS computers is available from the Simtel-20 archives. A note to those not using MS-DOS: version 2.1 of THREAD is highly customized for MS-DOS computers. Consequently, version 2.1 probably will not be translated to "C" for porting to other platforms. I recommend that any non-DOS users of THREAD version 1.2 continue to use that version, which, for the most part, is functionally equivalent to the new version. Any comments, questions, or suggestions can be sent to me at the email address below. Tom Kaltenbach Upstate New York Homebrewers Association tom at kalten.bach1.sai.com Rochester, New York USA Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 20:31 PST From: CIS309137 at axe.humboldt.edu Subject: Un-suscribe Please remove me from the homebrew digest list Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #1126, 04/23/93