HOMEBREW Digest #1761 Wed 21 June 1995

Digest #1760 Digest #1762


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


Contents:
  all-grain brewing times (Steve Peters)
  Water Synthesis Part 1 (A. J. deLange)
  Water Synthesis Part 2 (A. J. deLange)
  Re: #2(2) Homebrew Digest #1759 (June 19, 1995) (TimFunn)
  How to decompress FAQs at ftc.stanford.com (MZemenick)
  Re-using yeast sediment ("Kevin A. Kutskill")
  rollermills/dry versus liquid yeasts/slow Wyeast package/water woes (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
  New brewer. (GOLDBERG_DAVID)
  Christoffel Blond (Robert Lauriston/Patricia Bennett)
  Melvico Pressure Bottler (MR RON PETERSON)
  Gott , Igloo, Coleman coolers (Rich Hampo)
  MEAD USING FRUIT (Arthur_S_Ward.henr801h)
  Kirk's Quirks ("Dave Ebert")
  Rye Ale Wanted (Joseph.Fleming)
  Rogue Nut Brown Ale (Barry M Wertheimer)
  Oktoberfest (Gary Plank)
  Propane Cookers / All Grain (Gary Plank)
  great new gadget on the way! (SPEAKER.CURTIS)
  Primary -> Secondary (larry.carden)
  Open decoction efficiency acquired. (Russell Mast)
  Pale Ale (Jeff Stampes)
  RE:Verb - Collapsing Foam (Don Rudolph)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 14:14:57 -0700 From: stevep at pcx.ncd.com (Steve Peters) Subject: all-grain brewing times >:FWIW, I believe the time commitment associated with all-grain brewing has been >:severely underestimated in the late thread on that subject----either that or > > > Earlier this week I cooked up a batch of oatmeal/chocolate/coffeee stout >and kept my eye on the clock to see just how long it took: one hour the night >before to crack the grain, cook the oatmeal, and boil the water, and five hours >in the morning to mash, sparge, boil, chill, and pitch. The yeast ranching and >stepping up of the starter to 3qt took a couple of minutes over the course of Regarding brewing times: Two weeks ago I brewed my first balls-out how-much-can-I-crank-through-this-baby all-grain batch in my new system. Total time from heating the water & grinding the grains until the last cleaning step was eleven (11) hours. Of course, I did get 15 gallons of beer, which, for the volume of beer compares favorably with the time I would spend making 3 5-gallon batches of extract in my old system - approx 12 hrs or so. Also, I ran out of propane in the middle, which slowed me down, and I suspect the JS Easymasher I'm currently just doesn't have sufficient throughput for a batch that size. For over two years I did 5 gallon extract batches on the stove top. That worked pretty well, and I got good at it. Then I slowly worked my way into stove-top 5 gallon all-grain. I learned quite a bit about what can go wrong with brewing beer this way and found myself making extracts again because it was simply too much effort with the equipment I had. Then a breakthrough! I managed to move to a place with a garage/basement I could dedicate to brewing. At the same time I met someone selling his brewing equipment. Between him & some scrounging in other places I have assembled the following: two 30,000BTU propane burners, two firestone (the ones with the bung in the side) kegs converted to kettles with drains installed (one for boiling, one for sparge water), one picnic cooler/mash/lauter tun, a counter-flow wort chiller, a motorized malt mill, and a kegging system with a number of kegs. Add to this my old equipment and a bunch of hoses and connectors and suddenly we're Big Time! I've brewed three batches so far and I find the biggest change is that brewing is far less stressful. Spilled water or beer is no longer a problem, and the whole process is no longer in my long-suffering girlfriend's way. Also, while I still have to clean, there is no setup/teardown, and if it's a sunny day while I brew I can step two feet to the left and be outside instead of locked inside the house. Yeast isn't a big deal since I repitch from the last batch providing plenty good yeast for a strong ferment. Also, I have three 50-lb bags of malt so I don't waste much time at the homebrew store ;-) and even less once my hop plants get going! It has taken me three years to get to this point and I have probably spent $400-500 dollars on equipment total. I don't always make beer as good as the stuff you can buy, and it hasn't always been cheaper, but darn if that homebrewed stuff doesn't make me feel better than any commercial beer I can get, and it sure is a nice ego boost to take a pile of grain and turn it into something my close pals say tastes great! >two weeks, and is a joy in itself. But then, "consuming passion" is a deep >understatement in my case. hear, hear Steve "Am I obsessed yet?" Peters - -- Steve Peters Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 14:15:39 -0500 From: ajdel at interramp.com (A. J. deLange) Subject: Water Synthesis Part 1 This is kind of long but as the Digest has been rather thin recently I thought it might help to get the page count up. Gregory Egle in # 1759 asked about how to synthesize water with a given ion profile and wondered why there isn't much in the literature about how to compute the salt additions required to do this. The reason is that it's a fairly tough (or at least complex) problem. I'll enumerate some of the reasons why this is so and then talk a bit about an approach to solving it. 1. The chemistry gets a little involved. It's nothing beyond college freshman level stuff but that is further than most homebrewing books/magazines are willing to go. 2. Given that the chemistry is understood it is easy to model the problem (a system of linear equations) to be solved for the amounts of each type of salts to give the desired concetrations of ions but the solution is difficult to obtain because it is constrained: all answers must be positive; no permissible answer must require the addition of more of a salt than can be dissolved; the pH of the resultant water must be controlled. 3. As the salts contain ions in fixed ratios (e.g. 40% calcium, 60% carbonate in calcium carbonate) one cannot expect to get exactly the solution which matches the desired profile. 4. To get around 3 to some extent we use a lot of different salts but this makes the problem one of solving n (the number of ions of interest) equations in m (the number of salts) unknows where m > n. This pushes the math still further out of reach. 5. Because of 3 and 4 there are literally an infinite number of solutions which are about equally good. How do we pick one and what is the critertion of goodness? 6. In most water specifications the target pH is not given. It is impossible to solve the problem without knowing what the pH of, say, the Burton water we are trying to duplicate should be (so we usually use 7 or the first pK for carbonate). 7. Water specifications don't tell us what other ions may be involved (for example potassium or phosphate). As you will see from one of the examples below I cannot synthesize Munich water without adding some acid (necessary to get all the carbonate to dissolve). 8. Having gone to the trouble of synthesizing water which resembles that of a famous brewing city will you then undo it? For example I give the "formula" for a water which is close that of Burton below. All ion contents are within 20% of those specified for Burton water. The alkalinity is 100 ppm as CaCO3 which is about twice the desired level. Will I boil this water to remove the carbonate I just put in or should I just not put it in in the first place? The point I'm trying to make here is that you need to understand what the Burton brewers are doing to the water they use so you can do the same. 9. Some of the salts are hard to come by and are difficult to use e.g. calcium carbonate is extremely deliquescent. Put it in the weigh boat on a humid day and you'll have soup in a few minutes. How much of the weight is water and how much CaCl2 at this point? You can make it up from chalk and hydrochloric acid but that's an additional complication. There are concerns about untrained people handling the acids required. I've been thinking about this problem ever since Dave Draper published that tidy list of water profiles earlier this year. Wouldn't it be neat to have a matching table of salt additions to get these profiles? I'm not sure that I will ever get that far but I've made some progress (and perhaps others are or will work on this problem). The table below gives a synthesis of Burton1 (his designation) from distilled water. It is based on some software I'm experimenting with. IT IS NOT FULLY DEBUGGED so I don't guarantee that all is perfect yet but preliminary checks seem OK. Treat these examples as examples and let me know if you see anything fishy. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Burton1 pH: 6.38 ION DESIRED REALIZED ERR, % SALTS AMOUNT Ca 268.000 217.485 -18.85 NaCl 45.828 Mg 62.000 58.889 -5.02 Na2CO3.10H2O 144.972 Na 54.000 51.561 -4.52 CaCL2 0.000 K 0.000 0.867 0.87 CaSO4.2H2O 336.931 CO3 275.000 254.839 -7.33 CaCO3 347.254 SO4 638.000 712.612 11.69 MgCL2 6.268 CL 36.000 35.581 -1.16 MgCO3 22.699 H 6.367 6.367 0.00 KCl 1.653 0.000 0.000 0.00 Na2SO4 31.643 0.000 0.000 0.00 MgSO4.7H2O 514.312 0.000 0.000 0.00 H2SO4 309.031 0.000 0.000 0.00 HCl 2.401 Carbonic: 2.1306 Bicarbonate: 2.1306 Carbonate: 0.000245 mM Total Required Hydronium: 6.3919 Sulfuric Hydronium: 6.2856 Hydrochloric Hydronium: 0.1063 mEq Solubility Products - CaCO3: 8.70E-09 MgCO3: 2.60E-05 Ion Products - CaCO3: 1.32E-09 MgCO3: 4.89E-10 Alkalinity: 2.09 mEq; 104.35 ppm as CaCO3. Temporary hardness: 15.70 mEq; 784.77 ppm as CaCO3 Permanent hardness: 7.17 mEq; 358.62 ppm as CaCO3 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- All salt amounts are in mg/l and ion concentrations are in ppm as the ion (e.g. mg/l of the species). The ERR% column indicates the error in the realized concentration as a percentage of the desired concentration with the exception of potassium which is never (it seems) specified and is generally OK up to about 10 ppm. One ppm potassium is treated the same way as 1% error in any other ion. The algorithm used makes a mad stab at a solution and calculates the square root of the sum of the squares of the percentage errors (called the "rms error".) It then randomly tweaks the solution to get a new one. Hydrochloric acid is not tweaked. It is computed to maintain the pH of the resultant water at the desired value (pH = 6.38 in this example).If the new solution requires more carbonate than will dissolve, it is dis- carded. If not, the rms percent error is again computed. If it is less than before this solution is a better one than the original and is retained. If it is more maybe the solution is retained and maybe it isn't. (I don't want to get into the details here. Readers who would understand probably already recognize the Metropolis algorithm.) The process is repeated using the new solution if retained and the old if not. These results are pleasing but as we have said, this is not the only synthesis of about this quality. The quality here is based on the rms % error which is about 10%. There are an infinite number of other solutions about this good. The algorithm finally settles out rambling among these solutions. It is probably (and that word has special meaning here) not possible to find better solutions using rms % error as a measure of goodness. -MORE- A.J. deLange Numquam in dubio, saepe in errore! ajdel at interramp.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 14:16:08 -0500 From: ajdel at interramp.com (A. J. deLange) Subject: Water Synthesis Part 2 Here's another solution for Burton1 which has about 11% rms error: pH: 6.38 ION DESIRED REALIZED ERR, % SALTS AMOUNT Ca 268.000 261.196 -2.54 NaCl 3.745 Mg 62.000 53.618 -13.52 Na2CO3.10H2O 159.278 Na 54.000 51.907 -3.88 CaCL2 5.935 K 0.000 0.706 0.71 CaSO4.2H2O 541.259 CO3 275.000 284.932 3.61 CaCO3 332.281 SO4 638.000 782.740 22.69 MgCL2 39.596 CL 36.000 37.286 3.57 MgCO3 73.374 H 7.119 7.119 0.00 KCl 1.346 0.000 0.000 0.00 Na2SO4 76.750 0.000 0.000 0.00 MgSO4.7H2O 226.487 0.000 0.000 0.00 H2SO4 347.607 0.000 0.000 0.00 HCl 1.134 Carbonic: 2.3731 Bicarbonate: 2.3731 Carbonate: 0.000272 mM Total Required Hydronium: 7.1193 Sulfuric Hydronium: 7.0882 Hydrochloric Hydronium: 0.0311 mEq Solubility Products - CaCO3: 8.70E-09 MgCO3: 2.60E-05 Ion Products - CaCO3: 1.78E-09 MgCO3: 5.45E-10 Alkalinity: 2.32 mEq; 116.22 ppm as CaCO3. Temporary hardness: 17.44 mEq; 872.15 ppm as CaCO3 Permanent hardness: 7.95 mEq; 397.50 ppm as CaCO3 Here we have decided (arbitrarily) that what we really care about is calcium, so we made each percent error in the amount of calcium count as 10% in computing the total error. The result is that the algorithm accepts tweaks which suppress calcium error at the expense of allowing more error in other ion concentrations (sulfate in this case). Thus we have two solutions for the synthesis of Burton1 one of which just tries to be all-around best and the other of which tries to be best with emphasis on calcium. Here now is an example where the algorithm as given above does not work at all well. It is for Munich water (and is taken from "Water Treatment: Philosophy, Approach and Calculations" by Karl King in Sept/Oct. '93 Brewing Techniques. pH: 7.50 ION DESIRED REALIZED ERR, % SALTS AMOUNT Ca 75.000 11.140 -85.15 NaCl 1.160 Mg 18.000 0.820 -95.44 Na2CO3.10H2O 0.000 Na 2.000 2.346 17.29 CaCL2 1.964 K 0.000 1.234 1.23 CaSO4.2H2O 6.569 CO3 150.000 13.333 -91.11 CaCO3 22.231 SO4 10.000 21.565 115.65 MgCL2 0.000 CL 2.000 3.589 79.46 MgCO3 0.000 H 0.237 0.237 0.00 KCl 2.353 0.000 0.000 0.00 Na2SO4 5.837 0.000 0.000 0.00 MgSO4.7H2O 8.311 0.000 0.000 0.00 H2SO4 10.935 0.000 0.000 0.00 HCl 0.527 Carbonic: 0.0156 Bicarbonate: 0.2062 Carbonate: 0.000312 mM Total Required Hydronium: 0.2374 Sulfuric Hydronium: 0.2230 Hydrochloric Hydronium: 0.0144 mEq Solubility Products - CaCO3: 8.70E-09 MgCO3: 2.60E-05 Ion Products - CaCO3: 8.67E-11 MgCO3: 0.00E+00 Alkalinity: 0.20 mEq; 10.22 ppm as CaCO3. Temporary hardness: 0.62 mEq; 31.17 ppm as CaCO3 Permanent hardness: 0.18 mEq; 8.96 ppm as CaCO3 Why is the result so dismal (79 % rms)? The answer is because you CAN'T MAKE MUNICH WATER WITH THE SALTS AND ACIDS LISTED. But Mother Nature makes Munich water. True, but she doesn't make it with the salts and acids on our list. So what does she use? I don't know but let's suppose she used phosphoric acid. For brief illustration, let us focus on calcium again as it is probably the most important mash ion. We need 64 ppm more calcium to get the desired 75 ppm. As CaCO3 is 40% calcium let's add 64/0.4 = 160 mg/l CaCO3. When you add 160 mg/l CaCO3 you add 160*0.6 = 96 mg/l carbonate. As you can see from looking at the relative concentrations of the carbonyl species nearly all the added carbonate is converted to bicarbonate IF THE pH IS TO BE MAINTAINED at 7.5 (the value for this example). If this carbonate is NOT converted it will NOT dissolve. The author of the article from which this example was taken was aware of this and recommended that the chalk be added to the mash because it wouldn't dissolve in the water. One can accept or reject this approach as desired (if done right the end result should be the same) but it is clear that this approach does not synthesize Munich water and that is what we are trying to do here. 160ppm CaCO3 is 160/100 = 1.6 millimoles of CaCO3 which contain 1.6 millimoles of CO3-- ion which, as most of it is converted to bicarbonate at pH 7.5 and very little to carbonic, requires about 1.6 mEq of hydronium ion. This must come from an acid other than hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid (the ones on the list) because addition of more of those will drive up chlorides and sulfate both of which are already about double what we want. The algorithm added as much of these as it could, trading off error in sulfate and chloride for error in calcium. The compromise listed above is the probably the best that can be done. Thus, if we add 1.6 mEq phosphoric acid (1.6*32.7 = 52 ppm) we could get our calcium up to 75 ppm, carbonate would go up to 13.33 + 96 = 109.33, the pH would stay at 7.5 and we would have a phosphate ion concentration of 51 ppm. It should also be clear that we could get the sulfate and chloride down by reducing HCl and H2SO4 and making up the lost hydronium with more H3PO4 which would allow more epsom salts to get the magnesium up and etc. The proper approach to this problem is to modify the algorithm to float HCl and adjust pH with H3PO4 and perhaps one day soon I'll do just that. If anyone is still with me I hope I have acheived the following: - Conveyed a feel for the nature and complexity of the water synthesis problem. - Shown that it does not have a correct solution but rather an infinity of approximately correct solutions. - Illustrated that getting these solutions is tricky in some ways but that it can be done. - Shown that within a set of solutions of approximately equal quality there may be reasons for picking one over another. -END- A.J. deLange Numquam in dubio, saepe in errore! ajdel at interramp.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 18:49:31 -0400 From: TimFunn at aol.com Subject: Re: #2(2) Homebrew Digest #1759 (June 19, 1995) Getting ready to brew my second batch and looking for the Ultimate "Newcastle Brown Ale" recipe. If you have something good, please feel free to E-mail at Tim Funn at aol.com. Thanks. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 21:21:58 -0400 From: MZemenick at aol.com Subject: How to decompress FAQs at ftc.stanford.com Fellow brewers, I have been able to download many FAQs that I am interested in; Yeast, Hops, Grain... I do not know how to uncode a .Z file. I tried Winzip but apparently these are not Zip files?. Is there a shareware product I need? What is it's name & how do I use it. Private E-Mail is welcome. I brew much better than I operate the computer. Thanks, Mike Z from GP MI Return to table of contents
Date: 19 Jun 95 22:10:25 EDT From: "Kevin A. Kutskill" <75233.500 at compuserve.com> Subject: Re-using yeast sediment Here is a question that has to be answered quickly (I need to get another brew going in a couple of days). I have read about the technique of using the yeast sediment from the last batch of beer to inoculate the wort for the next batch of beer, and I want to try this myself. Here's the problem: I just fined the finished beer with gelatin. Will the gelatin in the yeast sediment keep the yeast from suspending in the new wort, thereby preventing the fermentation from proceeding as it should? I know my beer is not ruined <g>, but what about the yeast cake? TIA, Kevin A. Kutskill ("Dr. Rottguts") Clinton Township, MI "A homebrew a day keeps the doctor happy" Return to table of contents
Date: 19 Jun 95 11:42:00 -0500 From: korz at iepubj.att.com (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583) Subject: rollermills/dry versus liquid yeasts/slow Wyeast package/water woes Sorry about the lateness of this reponse, but I just got back from the AHA Conference in Baltimore. Rob writes: >Terence Tegner(tegbrew at iaccess.za) >Yep, this is the guy from Africa. Terence engineered a 2 roller mill >that will handle 10kg/min. <WOW!> Obviously motor driven it has 2 >unknurled 6" diam X 10" length rollers made of mild steel. It spins one >roller at 350rpm while using a different sized pulley (driven by the back >of the same round pulley belt) to give the second roller a slightly diferent >speed. This rolls/turns the grain as it is being crushed. While I have not made any tests on a rollermill where the rollers turn at slightly different speeds, I have tried crushing grain with an UNmodified Marcado mill which is actually made for breadmaking. This mill has two diagonally knurled rollers which seem to turn at the same rate, but the knurling twists the grain as it is pulled through the mill. I found that this twisting shredded the husks much more than I felt appropriate for brewing. Therefore, I personally feel that minimizing any twisting that occurs would be desired. Subsequently, I believe that having the rollers turn at the same speed would be better than having them turn at different speeds. Terence-- have you tried turning them at the same speed and was this abandonded due to an inferior crush to the current design. Remember (take a look at George Fix's article in Zymurgy on malt crushing criteria) that what we would like to do is to have the husks mostly intact and the insides (starchy part) broken into many small pieces (flour, ideally). *** troussos writes: >Will somebody please clearly explain the benefits of liquid vs. dry yeast? >I've been hearing for sometime how great liquid is. However, I haven't heard >what it does that is different than dry. Are the benefits real or is liquid >yeast just marketing hype ?? The biggest benefits, I personally feel, are that the liquid yeasts (slants, Wyeast packages, etc.) are that you get a much wider variety of yeast strains from which to choose. Dry yeasts cannot be made from all strains. The yeast strain has a much bigger effect on the flavour of your finished beer than most people think. Other than adding dark malts to a pale recipe, changing your yeast strain (IMO) will have the biggest impact on your beer flavour. Go to a handful of brewpubs. Ask them how many yeasts they use. I'll bet that those that say they use only one or two strains will have much less variety in their beers than those who use 4 or 5 yeast strains. 10 years ago, dry brewing yeasts were made using the same equipment as that used to make dry breadmaking yeasts and the conditions were not quite sanitary enough for brewing purposes. Infected batches of beer were the norm and you could not make commercial quality beer from those yeasts. You may have noticed that Red Star Ale yeast reappeared for a year or two and then suddenly disappeared. I was very happy with their new yeast and felt that great beer could be made with it. My sources tell me the reason that it suddenly disappeared was because quality assurance caught a problem and pulled the plug on a batch. If indeed this is the case, I'm sure that we can be confident of the quality of Red Star if and when it does hit the shelves again. In more recent years, most of the dry brewing yeast makers have cleaned up their acts and are making yeast that will give you great-tasting beer. I have not tried all the dried yeasts, but I know of several that will make very clean beer. These are Nottingham, Windsor, Coopers and Pasteur (Champagne yeast). If I have not mentioned a yeast, it mearly means that I have not tried it and NOT that it is a lousy yeast. While there still may be some bad yeasts on the market, there are quite a few good ones and you can get decent variety in your beers just using dry yeasts, but if you are trying to make Anchor Steam, for example, you will get a lot closer with Wyeast #2112 than you will using dry yeast. In a word, yes, I believe that the benefits are real and NOT just marketing hype. *** >Yesterday, after 6 weeks, I noticed that the yeast >packet was swollen. Has anyone else ever experienced this, and, more >importantly, do you feel it is salvagable? While you may be able to find a few million live yeasts in there, most of them have expired. It seems to me that a very low viability ratio means a potentially high mutant-to-nonmutant yeast ratio. Comments? George? *** Chris writes: >What arrives at the house is still hard and high pH. I have a water softener >and have heard softened water is unsuitable for brewing. What does the >water softener do to the water? It replaces Calcium ions with Sodium ions. The explaination for why we would want Calcium in our brewing water is not a short one -- it depends a lot on whether you have permanent hardness (from Sulphates) or temporary hardness (from Carbonates). Check back issues of HBD and hopefully it will be clear. If not, post your water analysis and somone will probably be able to walk you through the things you need to do to your water. There is a good chance (except for the iron, which can be removed in other ways) that although your water may be very hard and rather high in pH (mine is medium hard and higher pH than yours) it still may be great water for brewing. Consider how hard Burton-upon-Trent water is! You may still have to use bottled water for some styles (like Bohemian Pilsner). Al. Return to table of contents
Date: 19 Jun 95 23:50:00 +1700 From: GOLDBERG_DAVID at Tandem.COM Subject: New brewer. All, I am wanting to start brewing my own beer. What are your suggestions for an inexpensive, easy to use brewing kit for a novice. Also, I live in Austin, Texas, if anyone knows where the do-it-yourself shops are here I would appreciate any information on them. Thanks in advance, David Goldberg Tandem Computers Phone: 512/432-8770 14231 Tandem Blvd Fax: 512/432-8247 Austin Tx 78728-6699 E-Mail: GOLDBERG_DAVID at Tandem.COM Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 95 01:44:31 -0700 From: robtrish at noif.ncp.bc.ca (Robert Lauriston/Patricia Bennett) Subject: Christoffel Blond Derek Elde wrote: > Picked up a beer called 'Christoffel Blond' yesterday, and found it quite good! > What kind (style) of beer is this? (my brewing buddy thinks that it may be a Pilsner) > Does anyone have an extract recipe for this (or a similiar) beer? Your buddy wins a beer! Michael Jackson's Beer Companion has a blurb about the beer in the pilsener section. "all-malt, firm-bodied, extremely dry, a truly assertive Pilsener" Jackson quotes the brewmaster as saying, "Some people say the beer is too bitter for them, but I am not trying to brew for everyone. Plenty of brewers already do that." Hopping is given as Perle and Hersbruck, 43-44 IBU. I don't know what you have available in the way of extract, so I can't make any recommendations there. (Did Al K. mention recently that Laaglander extract had lots of unfermentables? That might give the body). If you were mashing, I'd suggest a decoction. What might give a similar effect with extract is to do a small mash in a pot on the side. A few cupfuls of ground pale malt in water at 65'C for 15 minutes or more, then brought to a boil. You could separate the liquid from the grain with any clean strainer. I wouldn't worry about it being cloudy, since the usual drawbacks of cloudy wort wouldn't apply here. (The Christoffel I had was quite cloudy in the bottle). I think I'd put a fair number of hops in the middle of the boil to get lots of hop flavour without overpowering bitterness. This isn't a recipe, but I hope it helps you make one up. I had this beer on a honeymoon cycling trip through Holland in 1989. I too liked it with the (then) dominant flavour of noble-type hops. Some other brewers scorned it because (what was available then and there) was bottled unfiltered at what they thought was a very young age, meaning that there was lots of stuff on the bottom of the bottle. I got a couple of good Dutch homebrew books, but since the brewery only began in 1986, and the books were from '87 and '88, they don't mention it, so no recipe. The recipes they give for Dutch pilseners are for products from larger breweries with 20% adjunct. -- Rob. Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 05:07:09 EDT From: EAJB74A at prodigy.com (MR RON PETERSON) Subject: Melvico Pressure Bottler - -- [ From: Ron Peterson * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] -- Has anyone ever heard of/used/owned the Melvico Pressure Bottler? It's a bit expensive (~$300) to consider purchasing blind. Regular email would be fine. Cheers, Ron Peterson P.S. Thanks to the many comments/suggestions from my previous posting on yeast pitching rates. Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 07:36:09 -0400 From: captain at vulcan.srl.ford.com (Rich Hampo) Subject: Gott , Igloo, Coleman coolers Howdy! I am looking to make a lauter tun from a gott-type cooler. So far, I have only found Igloo (round) and Coleman (kind of square) brand coolers, and both of those say to use to keep cold, not hot. I recall discussion sometime back that Gott was the only one that was OK for hot stuff too. Is this correct? Anyone have good experience with the Igloo or Coleman brands? Now a local question: Anyone know where I can find the Gott brand cooler in the suburban Detroit area? The local mega-sporting goods store had only the igloo and coleman. TIA, Richard Hampo Ford Research Lab and H & H Brewing Ltd. Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 05:58:51 PDT From: Arthur_S_Ward.henr801h at xerox.com Subject: MEAD USING FRUIT I will be making a mead using fruit, most likely raspberries. I would like to know the BEST way, and time to add the fruit to the MEAD to get more of a fruit taste. Please respond by private E-mail to. Arthur_S_Ward.henr801h%xerox.com at vmsmail:SMTP Thanks, Art. Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 07:13:29 MST-0700 From: "Dave Ebert" <DNE at Data.HSC.Colorado.edu> Subject: Kirk's Quirks Hey Kirk! I hope you took the time to photograph your triangles. That picture would make great graphics for bottle labels. A little like the Korean Ying/Yang circle. Your could name your brew Kirk's Quirks. Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 95 09:33:54 est From: Joseph.Fleming at gsa.gov Subject: Rye Ale Wanted Hey All- Yes it's another dreaded recipe request. I'm looking for a good (no bad ones, please!) all-grain rye ale recipe. I found one in the Cat's Meow, but was hoping the luminaries of the HBD could provide others with their comments. BTW, the one I found was like 8# pale ale malt, 4# rye malt (a lot, no?), Cascades & Hallertau, California Common yeast. Was thinking about dry hopping, subbing 2# of wheat and adding some lemon (Rick Gontarek's got me on this lemon kick now). TIA. A.J. deLange on 3068: |I have never observed a lull with this strain... There was mention a bit ago about the lull by myself and other folks; start off fine, lulls, explodes into your airlock. |I've been working it at about 64F... From the Wyeast fact sheet: "Best results are achieved when fermentations are held around 68F. Flocculation - low; apparent attenuation - 73-77% (64-70F)" Don't know, but the slight temperature difference could be a factor in the performance. My ferment was at a constant 68F, Venturi/Bernoulli tube aeration (I'm more confused than ever on this nomenclature!), starter used. The beer is *fantastic*. Phenolics and esters are perfectly in balance resulting in a spicy taste & aroma with the clove and hint of bannana. I'd like to credit my brewing acumen, but as Mars Beermon says, "It's gotta be the yeast!" Rich Hill: |..the battle of the bulge is beginning...Is there something we can do |about it? Sit-ups maybe? Place a bottle of homebrew on a table in front of you for incentive. Joe - joseph.fleming at gsa.gov Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 10:04:11 -0400 (EDT) From: Barry M Wertheimer <wertheim at UTKVX.UTCC.UTK.EDU> Subject: Rogue Nut Brown Ale Had the good fortune to taste some of Rogue's Nut Brown Ale while traveling through a neighboring state. Very nice nutty, chocalate flavor, plus something else that was very familiar, but I could not place. Any comments on this brew or speculation as to its ingredients? Barry, who wishes you could find such things in Tennessee Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 09:05:29 -0500 From: plankg at dgabby.mfldclin.edu (Gary Plank) Subject: Oktoberfest From: plankg Tue Jun 20, 1995 -- 09:02:06 AM To: homebrew at hpfcmi.fc.hp.com~ at I've never tried my hand at decoction mashing but will be giving it a try with this year's rendition of Oktoberfest which for various reasons needs to be in the fridge by July 1. Wondering if anybody has words of wisdom and / or recipes they're willing to share....thanks in advance. -=gsp=- Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 09:05:23 -0500 From: plankg at dgabby.mfldclin.edu (Gary Plank) Subject: Propane Cookers / All Grain From: plankg Tue Jun 20, 1995 -- 08:34:15 AM To: homebrew at hpfcmi.fc.hp.com~ at There has recently been a fair amount of traffic re/ time required for all grain brewing and recommendations for propane cookers.....I found the two to be related this past weekend. We're enjoying a quite unseasonably warm June up here in Wisconsin. This past Saturday (95F) my loving wife DEMANDED that I go buy an outdoor cooker if I was going to brew that day....she reasoned that we'd spend almost as much as the cost of the cooker trying to cool down the house during the brew session....needless to say I didn't argue the point, in fact I added that it would be PERFECT for canning later in the season as well as blackening all year long....her response was that I should quit sucking up and go get the cooker before "the guys" came over.....what a woman!! Got a Masterbuilt Outdoor Gas Cooker from Masterbuilt Manufacturing Inc., Columbus GA. This is a 160,000BTU cooker with a fully adjustable regulator and an adjustable air shutter for the venturi (much less soot). IMO, this addition has had the biggest impact on my brewing since my first wort chiller. Went from sparge to rolling boil in just under 10 minutes and had no scortching....was able to hit mash temps with relative ease due to range of adjustment at regulator....and the BEST news....cost was ~ $45.00 at my local Fleet Farm......(no affiliation with manufacturer...blah blah) We also decided to time this batch (a brown ale) with the following results: Step infustion mash from dough in to beginning of sparge.....90 min Sparge.......................................................50 min Lag Time to Boil.............................................10 min Boil.........................................................60 min Chill........................................................15 min Transfer to Primary, Aerate, Pitch...........................20 min Final clean up (things not cleaned as we went)...............20 min -------------------------------------------------------------------- TOTAL TIME...................................................265 min The cooker knocked at least 30 minutes off the total time required to brew this batch and will add years of life to the calrods in the kitchen.....YMMV, but I'm one happy camper. -=gsp=- Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 10:24 EDT From: CSS2 at OAS.PSU.EDU (SPEAKER.CURTIS) Subject: great new gadget on the way! I saw a great new gadget at Planet Beer that should be on the market in a few months. It comes to us from the folks who brought you the PhilMill, Phils Phalse Bottom, etc. (BTW, Phil is a kid who hates beer). It is a rediculously simple idea. They took a standard racking cane and attached a check valve to the bottom of it. You attach the hose to the short arm of the racking cane and stick the long end into your fermenter. By gently shaking the cane up and down in the wort/beer, the cane fills with liquid and starts the siphon on its own. Neat! Should sell for $3-4. I have no vested interest in the Phil<tm> line of products, but I will order this one as soon as it's available. No more sucking on the hose ... Finally, many thanks to Charlie Papazian, Karen Barela and the rest of the AOB/AHA staff for a wonderful time in Baltimore. It was my first Homebrewers Conference, but definitely not my last! Reentering the Earth's atmosphere after orbiting Planet Beer :-) Curt css2 at oas.psu.edu Return to table of contents
Date: 20 Jun 95 08:18:00 -0500 From: larry.carden at pscmail.ps.net Subject: Primary -> Secondary > I'm brewing my third batch of beer. The first two were single-stage > ferments, but I'm going with a two-stage this time, as it's a fruit beer. > What I'd like to do is this: siphon the wort from the primary into a > sanitized bucket, clean the primary (a 6 1/2 g carboy), and pour the wort > back into the sanitized carboy, using it as my secondary. So, 3 questions: > > 1) Can I just pour the wort through a funnel back into the carboy, or do I > have to siphon it? > > 2) Can I leave the wort in the bucket and use that as my secondary? > > 3) Should I just buy another carboy ($)? 1) Wouldn't pour it, which causes aeration/oxidation and adversely affects flavor. Siphoning is the appropriate technique. 2) Plastic buckets are not recommended for secondary fermentation. Your intention to clean the primary 6.5 carboy and reuse it as the secondary is a good approach. Especially since you are putting fruit in the secondary. That will add to the volume, and will also cause a mild reactivation of fermentation activity (the 6.5 allows you to "seal" with a fermentation lock, due to extra room for fruit and yeast krausening). I use a 6.5 gal. carboy for both the primary and secondary (after cleaning) fermentation of fruit beers, with a fermentation lock all the way. Made a great amber beer with raspberries. 3) You don't need to buy another carboy, if you don't mind siphoning to the bucket temporarily, cleaning the primary, and reusing it as the secondary. Larry Carden Englewood, CO Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 09:54:55 -0500 From: Russell Mast <rmast at fnbc.com> Subject: Open decoction efficiency acquired. > From: "RUCKER, WILLIAM G." <ruckewg at naesco.com> > Subject: Comments on Open Fermentation > A little while back I asked for some personal experiences from those > who had tried open fermentation. I think I was skimming the thread. I've heard that open fermentation is easier than closed and make beer "just as good" but I haven't heard that it can make beer better. Can it? ANyone have pet theories about why and how? btw, I tried "dropping" a stout recently. I did the whole batch rather than split for a controlled study, but I will say the batch is great. > From: "RUCKER, WILLIAM G." <ruckewg at naesco.com> > Subject: Decoction mashing > the temperature increase was not what I expected There's always the possibility of temperature change of the rest of the mash while you're heating the decoction. What do you do to maintain temp? I use a Gott and it works okay, but I don't generally do a decoction unless the thing is full and I can't just add more hot water. (5-gallon Gott does get a bit small for high-gravity batches, but no horror-stories yet.) > From: jds at equinox.shaysnet.com (John Shearer) > Subject: efficiency/storage > First - Concerning lautering efficiency. How do I determine it? Hydrometer. > What is considered good? Interesting question. Some of my very tastiest beers have been made with really poor extraction rates. Of course, there wasn't much alcohol in them, but they were quite the yum. > If it's bad, what are the common problems? My extraction rate went WAY up when I started using a Gott cooler as my mash/lauter tun. Basically, my mashes always cooled way down during my multi-hour sparges. > Third - Regarding dirty deep frier grease... IMBR? Taste it. I'd bet it'll taste fine and have no head whatsoever. Domenick Venezia: > >Also, I ran across a product called "Marmite" > Oh NO!! This sounds suspiciously like Vegamite It's the same basic product. A couple of the Brits had some in the office the day of the post, but the fart lost my post on it. They were trying to get yanks to eat the stuff. I fell for that one once already, thank you. > It must be a continent-wide Aussie practical joke played on > the rest of the world, and actually no natives eat the stuff, but by law > every household must have a jar for visitors. Nope, it's an acquired taste. They get real weird if they go for a few weeks without it, and start trying to find substitutes. The best thing one chap found was used chewing gum on subway seats. -R Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 95 10:37:53 MDT From: stampes at neocad.com (Jeff Stampes) Subject: Pale Ale To all that responded to my request for the ULTIMATE pale ale recipe, I say THANK YOU! I was rather astounded at the quantity of recipes I received, and the amazing variety among these recipes. After reading through them all, and doing some calculations on my own, I think I have nailed down what I'm going to try. I'm using the concept from Bob Talkiewicz of doing a large mash/extract brew that I can dilute into a 10 gallon batch...one keg for the wedding, one for me! I've also incorporated a lot of suggestions from others to arrive at the following: 10 lbs. Pale Malt .5 lb Cara-Pils Dextrine .5 Lbs Crystal - 20L .5 Lbs Wheat Malt 1.25 lbs Munich Light Malt .66 lbs Flaked Barley 1 Lb. Rice I intend to boil the rice with enough water to gelatanize it prior to the mash. Protein Rest for 30, 155F for 90 in a THICK mash. To the boil, I'll add: 4 lb. Honey 3.3 Lb M&F extra light extract 1 oz. Chinook - 60 minutes 1 oz. Tettnang - 20 minutes 1 oz. Tettnang - 1 minute Dry Hop with 1 oz. Hallertau Use Wyeast English Ale Yeast This seems like it would result in a pretty universally acceptable brew, both for the homebrew/microbrew snobs among us, as well as the BudMilloors swilling crew. Please feel free to comment, criticize, or abuse this recipe via e-mail...Although, I did receive MANY requests from hbd readers to forward this recipe when I was done, so I think it's a good thread to bat around. Related topic: Bridgeport Extra Pale Ale! I love this stuff! It's the closest thing to a Bass Ale on the American Microbrew Market (IMNSHO). Anyone have any suggestions on nailing this recipe at home? Return to table of contents
Date: 20 Jun 95 13:06:30 EDT From: Don Rudolph <DON at nova.mhs.compuserve.com> Subject: RE:Verb - Collapsing Foam Dan Listermann, Cinci OH <72723.1707 at compuserve.com> posits: >I am trying to find the correct scientific term for collapsing foam. I am sure >it is out there and this august forum will find it. I think the correct term is FOOP POOP. Don Rudolph Seattle, WA don at nova.mhs.compuserve.com Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #1761, 06/21/95