HOMEBREW Digest #4823 Fri 12 August 2005


[Prev HBD] [Index] [Next HBD] [Back]


	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


***************************************************************
       THIS YEAR'S HOME BREW DIGEST BROUGHT TO YOU BY: 

          Northern  Brewer, Ltd. Home Brew Supplies
Visit http://www.northernbrewer.com  to show your appreciation!
               Or call them at 1-800-681-2739

    Support those who support you! Visit our sponsor's site!
********** Also visit http://hbd.org/hbdsponsors.html *********


Contents:
  Competition announcement: Dayton beerfest, Sept 10 ("Gordon Strong")
  hops problem ("Randy Scott")
  attenative yeast/bottling & cidery taste ("Fredrik")
  Cloning liquor and mixer in a bottle ("Adam M. Bumpus")

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The HBD Logo Store is now open! * * http://www.hbd.org/store.html * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Suppport this service: http://hbd.org/donate.shtml * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Beer is our obsession and we're late for therapy! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Send articles for __publication_only__ to post@hbd.org If your e-mail account is being deleted, please unsubscribe first!! To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE send an e-mail message with the word "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to request@hbd.org FROM THE E-MAIL ACCOUNT YOU WISH TO HAVE SUBSCRIBED OR UNSUBSCRIBED!!!** IF YOU HAVE SPAM-PROOFED your e-mail address, you cannot subscribe to the digest as we cannot reach you. We will not correct your address for the automation - that's your job. HAVING TROUBLE posting, subscribing or unsusubscribing? See the HBD FAQ at http://hbd.org. LOOKING TO BUY OR SELL USED EQUIPMENT? Please do not post about it here. Go instead to http://homebrewfleamarket.com and post a free ad there. The HBD is a copyrighted document. The compilation is copyright HBD.ORG. Individual postings are copyright by their authors. ASK before reproducing and you'll rarely have trouble. Digest content cannot be reproduced by any means for sale or profit. More information is available by sending the word "info" to req@hbd.org or read the HBD FAQ at http://hbd.org. JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning, and Spencer Thomas
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:22:02 -0400 From: "Gordon Strong" <strongg at speakeasy.net> Subject: Competition announcement: Dayton beerfest, Sept 10 Entries are now being accepted for the 10th Dayton (Ohio) Beerfest. The competition will be held on September 10th; entries are due by September 3th. All details are on our web site: http://hbd.org/draft/daybeerfest.html. Quick summary: Easy online entry, no recipe, 2 bottles, $5, any type of bottles including draft packaging, enter sub-categories as often as you want (only top-scoring is eligible for prize in a single sub-category). All 2004 BJCP styles accepted including mead and cider. Nice wooden plaques for category winners (ribbons for 2nd/3rd). Gordon Strong Dayton Regional Amateur Fermentation Technologists strongg at earthlink.net Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:42:10 -0500 From: "Randy Scott" <ras at rscott.us> Subject: hops problem A couple weeks ago I brewed a porter and apparently goofed on the bittering hops (I was using whole-leaf hops which may have been too damp, throwing off the weight). There isn't enough hops bitterness to offset the malty sweetness. I figure it's underhopped by maybe 30%. Is there a way to correct this after the fact? I was thinking of boiling an ounce or so of hops in a couple quarts of water for an hour, cooling, and adding it to the beer. Is this going to work? It's only the bitterness I'm concerned about; being a porter, the hops flavor and aroma are negligible anyway. thanks ras Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 01:43:44 +0200 From: "Fredrik" <carlsbergerensis at hotmail.com> Subject: attenative yeast/bottling & cidery taste Hello all, Some comments on some previos posts. > Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 15:09:04 -0400 > From: leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu > Subject: highly attenuative yeasts, and quantity of bottling sugar? > When bottling with a highly attenuative yeast, should one > take this into account and use just a touch less corn sugar? No, I don't think so. Relative attenuation refers to the wort which contains a range of sugars.When you use mainly "easy" sugars like glucose and sucrose, all normal strains (I'm sure there are always odd exceptions) should for all practical purposes fully attenuate glucose or sucrose. I have hard to see that any differences in the trace residuals are significant to the carbonation level. My guess is something else causes the observed variation in carbonation. > Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 13:51:26 -0700 (PDT) > From: Ted Teuscher <t_teuscher at yahoo.com> > Subject: Apple cidery taste > > The starter itself smelled very strong of apples when > I pitched the yeast into the wort (which was also well > oxygenated). I would like to say it is what John > Palmer calls "acetalyhde" in his How To Brew brook. > The beer is also rather cloudy. > > What did I do to cause such a strong apple cidery > smell and taste? None of my other beers have ever had > this problem. It has been kegged for 2 weeks now and > not really dissipated at all. The beer is drinkable > but is overwhelmed by the apple cidery taste. FWIW Some ideas if it can help... I don't know for sure what you mean with apple cidery, but the green apple like aroma might be acetaldehyde like you mention yourself (though IMO acetaldehyde doesn't actually smell *apple* but I can appreciate to an extent the association with green fresh apples. But I also associate it a bit with "hangover breath".) I find the starter beer that has been aerated, never tastes as good as the cleanly fermented beer, I find it to often have an excessive acidity to flavour as well as aroma and I wouldn't be surprised to find some acetaldehyde in the starter beer either. I always decant off this. But if it's truly massive, I'd personally suspect either some infection or excessive aeration? When aerating the ethanol mixture I think there is also a possibiliy for traces of acetobacter to grow to the point where they are a problem. I prefer to minimzed this, and focus on aeration at refeeding to not encourage aerobic bacteria. I've exposed finished beer to air a few times as experiments, and sometimes it just turns into acetaldehyde, sometimes it turns into stale carboard notes, sometimes winey and sometimes all 3. Ive gotten acetaldehyde from commercial beer this way too. I recall one weissbeer I deliberately staled, and it developed first acetaldehyde notes, and then some faint funky carboard notes. I've also exposed a moderately attenuated beer to oxygen, and found as it seems a slight renewal of yeast activity upon aeration. And along with this sometimes an increased fairly *massive* acetaldehyde aroma. In high concentration acetaldehyde is really nasty and irritating gas. I did this only a few times and I am not 100% sure wether it's all the revived original yeast activity or if there are some bacteria or wild yeast involved too. I know that it has happend that some bottles have not been clean and bottling. I just found from microscopic inspection that yeasts were very abundant, and yes the beer turned cloudy. I could at lesat conclude in my case, that most of the *visible* haze were due to yeast activity, not bacteria. But that doesn't exclude bacteria in lower levels. If a beer is hazy to the point that you can see if with the naked eye and it's because of biological activity, you should be able to probe some in a microscope. Unless you aerated the beer, fermentation performance was abnormal or you didn't decant that massively flawed starter (and it stayed even at 1:20 dilution?), it sounds like you have some some infection? /Fredrik Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 21:09:45 -0500 From: "Adam M. Bumpus" <adam at bump.us> Subject: Cloning liquor and mixer in a bottle By far the easiest way to clone a drink that is made from rum and generic 7-up is to mix rum and generic 7-up and pour it into a bottle with a funnel. If you want the berry flavored sort you can buy flavored syrups in the coffee section at most super markets. The only reason these are referred to as 'Malt Beverages' is to allow them to be treated under beer rules rather than hard liquor rules. This usually means favorable tax treatment and greater access to retail outlets. If you wanted to make Bacardi Silver/Zima/Mike's Hard Something/Smirnoff Ice the way that the beverage companies do you would need to start with a very high adjunct mash, ferment it with a clean fermenting strain and then put it through an activated charcoal filter. If this process yields 51% of the alcohol in the beverage it's a 'Malt Beverage' and can be treated as beer under the law. The remainder comes from what will be referred to as natural and/or artificial flavors on the label. It's probably a mixture of neutral spirits and a bit of the brand name liquor that's on the package. I'm not saying that these aren't tasty beverages, it's just that the way they're produced doesn't resemble making beer in any meaningful way. If you were going to do it without concerns about taxation or retail availability you probably wouldn't want to go about it in the way that the guys who sell the stuff. Adam > Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:59:47 -0400 > From: "Ken Koppes" <koppeskl at hotmail.com> > Subject: bacardi silver clone > > My wife likes the Bacardi Silver Malt beverages. Has anyone had luck with > making them or know where I could find a recipe for them? Return to table of contents
[Prev HBD] [Index] [Next HBD] [Back]
HTML-ized on 08/12/05, by HBD2HTML v1.2 by KFL
webmaster@hbd.org, KFL, 10/9/96