HOMEBREW Digest #394 Mon 09 April 1990

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


Contents:
  Brewing shops  (Nick zentena)
  Spent grains and gardens (Ted Manahan)
  Responsible drug use (Re: Charlie's flames) (Mark.Leone)
  mead and bitterness (Pete Soper)
  honey aroma and SOME wierd barley wine (Doug Roberts)
  Oxygen in solution necessary for Fermentation? (John Mellby)
  these are drugs too ! ? (Ihor W. Slabicky)
  SG increasing during secondary (Mike Fertsch)
  Re: tip tip (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
  Re: Charlie's Flames (a.e.mossberg)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Apr 6 00:22:30 1990 From: contact!zen at uunet.UU.NET (Nick zentena) Subject: Brewing shops Subject:Toronto Area shops?&hops plants? Hi, I was wondering if anybody knew of a good Toronto area homebrew shop? Secondly does anybody know if Hops are viable this far North? And Finally is the AHA available to Canadian residents? Thanks Nick mnetor!becker!contact!zen at neat.cs.toronto.edu or zen%contact.uucp at udel.edu or uunet!utai!gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca!geac!becker!contact!zen at samsung.uucp Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 06:21:26 mdt From: Ted Manahan <hplabs!hpldola!tedm> Subject: Spent grains and gardens Full-Name: Ted Manahan >I don't have any cows, but I am trying to start a small garden in my small, >urban yard. Can/should I use the spent grains as a mulch? If so, do I first >have to let them compost? Like Cher, I don't see why not. The grains would be great for soil texture, and have some fertilizing effect. Composting first would be good, but if it isn't convenient don't worry about it. Soil makes an excellent compost medium for something as small as grains. At my house the garden doesn't get the benefit of spent grains; my chickens love to eat the stuff! Ted Manahan tedm at hpldola.hp.com Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 90 11:06:48 EDT From: Mark.Leone at F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Responsible drug use (Re: Charlie's flames) >I have mixed >feelings when children 'learn' their parents are drug abusers >for having an occasional beer. There is a lack of >discrimination here that alarms me. Are objectivity and >reality being distorted? Who is protecting whom? .... Yes, objectivity and reality were the first casualties of our country's glorious "War on Drugs." The *abuse* of drugs, whether legal or illegal, obviously costs our society dearly, but the hysterical restriction of responsbile drug *use* is clearly not a realistic solution. >Let people know how you feel. The War on Drugs is a war on *my* rights, and I'm not going to stand for it! - -- Mark R. Leone <mleone at cs.cmu.edu> Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 90 22:51:22 EDT From: Pete Soper <soper at maxzilla.encore.com> Subject: mead and bitterness >From: jmellby at ngstl1.csc.ti.com (John Mellby) >Amazingly the Best of Show was not the "Best Extract" or "Best All-Malt" >it was a sack-mead! The same thing happened to us at our "big" contest in this area (NC) last year. One theory was that the judges were so tired of tasting beer that the novelty of the mead caught their fancy. Just kidding. Still, it was disappointing to many of us to have a mead win best of show. The mead makers just smiled. (I put "big" in quotes to distinguish this from the use of the word in Texas.) Thanks, John, for a fascinating report about your conference. Take good care of that hand. >From: abvax!calvin.icd.ab.com!bwc at cwjcc.INS.CWRU.Edu (Barry Cunningham) >Depending of course on the alpha acid contents of the hops you used, I would >expect this beer to be quite bitter when it is young. The 1 1/2 hour boil >will get more bitterness out of the hops. Cutting back the boil to one hour >or just using a little bit less hops will reduce the bitterness. Remember that isomerization (the process whereby the hop bitterness can go into permanent solution in the wort) is very nonlinear. The difference between a 60 minute boil and a 90 minute boil is minimal - on the order of 10%. >Your brewing technique, which you did not specify, may also significantly >affect bitterness. In particular, forced cooling to get a good cold break >and racking the wort off the trub (particularly if you have a lot of goop >from pelletized hops) before fermentation gets going should reduce the >bitterness from the trub considerably. However, you should pay careful Is the real difference caused by reducing the time that the hops steep in hot wort or by prevention of prolonged contact with the cooled wort? Are there references to indicate any significant bitterness is contributed by hops in cool wort? Another factor to consider is the density of the wort in the boil. According to Terry Foster 5% more bittering hops are needed for each 10 specific gravity points over 1.050 to compensate for the fact that isomerization rates are lower with thicker worts. So, for example with a recipe that will have an eventual original gravity of 1.050 with 5 gallons, if only 2 gallons were boiled, you would have a boil gravity of 1.125 and expect to get ((1.125-1.050)/.010)*5= 37.5% less bitterness than if you boiled all 5 gallons. But you know what the real head banger is? Oxidation of hops in storage. Hops are harvested pretty much once a year around Fall. No matter what, depending upon the time of year, storage conditions and *a varying factor based on the type of hop*, a fraction of the potential bitterness of any given packet of hops that we use is lost. As homebrewers we don't know what the fraction is for any given situation, only that it is sometimes very significant. For instance, one study showed that a sample of Cascade pellets stored under refrigeration went from 7.6% to 4.6% alpha acid content in 12 months[1]. In the same study a sample of Hersbrucker pellets dropped from 7.4% to 4.7%. I'm not writing this to make everybody lose their level of relaxation, just to point out that there are major fudge factors that are not even under our control, so we shouldn't get too excited if a batch of beer comes out a bit too bitter or too sweet. [1] Peacock, V.E., Deinzer, M.L., "Chemistry of Hop Aroma in Beer", ASBC, Vol 39, No. 4, 1981. (attribution appeared in Fix, G., "Principles of Brewing Science", Brewers Publications, 1989.) Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 08:54:19 MDT From: roberts%studguppy at LANL.GOV (Doug Roberts) Subject: honey aroma and SOME wierd barley wine > the sg dropped to 1.025, then > climbed gradually up to 1.030 where it is holding constant at present. Can] > anyone speculate on how sg can dip and then climb up again under these > conditions? Can water evaporate out of an air-locked carboy? The only time I've seen this happen is when I forgot to give the hydrometer a good spin to shake off the bubbles that had stuck to it. I've seen an error of 5 associated with an extra buoyant hydrometer, especially with a sample that is still fairly active. - --Doug Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 10:51:30 CDT From: jmellby at ngstl1.csc.ti.com (John Mellby) Subject: Oxygen in solution necessary for Fermentation? Recently I was rereading Papazian's section in the Brewing Mead book and he said that the initial 12-14 hours of fermentation require lots of oxygen. He said this was typically ok, since there was lots of oxygen available in solution in cold tap water. But if this is the case, then when you boil the wort, wouldn't that drive the O2 out of the water, and leave the primary fermentation short of oxygen? In my case, since I don't have a wort chiller, I usually boil 2-3 gallons of water and put it in the refridgerator to cool ahead of time (this usually reduces the wort temperature to where I can add the yeast). However, would this not reduce the supply of oxygen as well? Is there really that much O2 in solution, or is the fermentation stealing O from the H2O itself? O.K. so I'm not a chemist. I'm still puzzled? Where does the O2 come from for the fermentation, if so much oxygen is needed? Surviving the American Dream John R. Mellby Texas Instruments jmellby%ngstl1.ti.com P.O.Box 660246, MS 3645 Dallas Texas, 75266 (214)517-5370 (214)343-7585 +--------------------------------------------------------+ | "Virtually no one's allowed to vote...women, servants, | | chimpanzees (gestures to Baldrick)...even lords." | | | | "That's not true, Lord Nelson's got a vote." | | | | "He's got a boat, Baldrick." | | -- BlackAdder | +--------------------------------------------------------+ Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 10:34:46 EDT From: iws at rayssdb.ssd.ray.com (Ihor W. Slabicky) Subject: these are drugs too ! ? Date: Thu, 5 Apr 90 12:15 EST Subject: Charlie's Flames The Reasonable Majority or Homedrug Making and the Berlin Wall Charlie Papazian In Michigan a child came home with a worksheet. Question number three instructed: "Circle the following pictures that are drugs." There were several pictures including a hypodermic needle, a pile of powder, pills, milk and a bottle of beer. He got that question wrong because he failed to circle the bottle of beer. IMHO, the test was incomplete - it did not show a cup of coffee, cigarettes, wine, tea, cola sodas, and other drugs. Maybe our children should be taught to recognise ALL drugs. Sen. Ted Kennedy recently introduced an amendment to the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, making reference to alcoholic beverages as a "gateway drug." I wonder how many times the Honorable Senator from the Commonwealth has himself crossed through that "gateway"? Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 14:12 EDT From: Mike Fertsch <FERTSCH at adc1.adc.ray.com> Subject: SG increasing during secondary Florian "the puzzled" comments about SOME wierd barley wine where the SG of a barley wine seemed to increase during secondary fermentation in a carboy. > Under nearly constant temperature (Delta T = 5 degrees at most), the sg > dropped to 1.025, then climbed gradually up to 1.030 where it is holding > constant at present. Can] anyone speculate on how sg can dip and then > climb up again under these conditions? Can water evaporate out of an > air-locked carboy? I've had this happen to me a few times. I ocassionally get brews where the SG at bottling is higher than that at racking. This distrubs me, but I never thought of a good physical explanation. I've assumed that SG readings are always an approximation; different portions of the wort have different densities, and readings can differ significantly from measurement to measurement. I guess that water can evaporate out of a carboy, and increasing the SG because of reduced volume. I doubt that Sg can rise from 1.025 to 1.030 because of evaporation. Wort volume would have to reduce 17 percent in the secondary to explain this 5 point increase in SG. We need to find another physical mechanism for SGs increasing during fermentation. Mike "the skeptic" Fertsch Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 14:10:50 mdt From: hplabs!hp-lsd.cos.hp.com!ihlpl!korz (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583) Subject: Re: tip tip >Here's a Q-tip cleaning tip: A Q-tip will fit nicely ... I don't know, I usually just use Q-tips once and then throw them out ;-). Al. TGIF! Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 90 20:30 MST From: BUZZY at rvax.ccit.arizona.edu Please put me on the homebrew digest list. Buzzy Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 90 03:06:12 GMT From: aem at mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU (a.e.mossberg) Subject: Re: Charlie's Flames >From Charlie Papazian's article, as submitted by <LLUG_JI%DENISON.BITNET at CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu>: >[...] >wrong because he failed to circle the bottle of beer. Sen. >Ted Kennedy recently introduced an amendment to the Drug-Free >Schools and Communities Act, making reference to alcoholic >beverages as a "gateway drug." Children are being taught that >beer can lead to cocaine and crack. So now we may be >considered homedrug makers. In a contemplative mood, I >[...] - --"Marijuana is an evil drug and it leads to heroin abuse" - --"Say what?" - --"Marijuana is addictive and evil." - --"It's less addictive and causes fewer problems than cigarettes or alcohol!" - --"Hmmm.." Perhaps attempts at marijuana legalization have come back to instead make alcohol and cigarettes less accepted. Drug use, and alcohol is a drug, has been around since before written history. What needs to be done is to encourage responsible drug use, and drug use in moderation. Instead, the pendulum swings against acceptance of any drug use, excepting of course what the medical community says we must have. :-) Freedom! Stop the new prohibitionists before it's too late! No innocuous drug should be illegal. Making *any* innocuous drug illegal makes it inevitable that other innocuous drugs will be made illegal. Charlie talks about sharing a beer with a friend, this being a part of the culture. The amount that the beverage industry contributes to the American economy, etc. These are beside the point. If drugs like tobacco, marijuna, peyote, etc are illegal, why should alcohol be legal? It's hypocritical to arbitrarily make any commonly used innocuous drug illegal and leave others legal. You can't look at alcohol use in a vacuum, so to write, but you must look at the way this culture views drug use in general. End of ramblings. aem - -- a.e.mossberg / aem at mthvax.cs.miami.edu / aem at umiami.BITNET / Pahayokee Bioregion We women begin the world with such limited prospects, and we surprise ourselves sometimes. - Lillie Langtry Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #394, 04/09/90 ************************************* -------
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