HOMEBREW Digest #4852 Thu 22 September 2005


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Valhalla, Mead-only competition ("David Houseman")
  Search me! ("Pat Babcock")
  Correction: Valhalla, Mead-only competition ("David Houseman")
  E is for Esters ..../re: Oats in light colored beer. ("-S")
  Freezing vs. Canning wort... ("Michael Eyre")
  flux for soldering copper (Matt)
  re: E is for esoteric ("Chad Stevens")

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:11:50 -0400 From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net> Subject: Valhalla, Mead-only competition This is reminder and call for judges for this mead-only competition. If you've already contacted me to judge, there's no need to respond again. But if you haven't and can judge meads, please contact me at my email below. If you've got mead, prepare to enter the 1st annual Valhalla - The Meading of Life Mead-Only Competition to be held Saturday, October 15 at the Mt. Pleasant Cafe, 311 W. Mt. Pleasant Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19119 (http://www.mtpleasantcafe.com/). This competition will judge meads in BJCP categories 24--traditional meads, 25--melomel and 26--other mead. One entry per subcategory per entrant, with a $5 per entry fee. The equivalent of at least 3 12-ounce bottles is required for judging, although bottle size and shape are not restricted. No identifying markings however can appear on the bottles. Any standard competition entry form may be used. It is the responsibility of the entrant to properly identify the category and sub-category based on the 2004 BJCP Style Guidelines. Meads may be mailed or dropped off at Home Sweet Homebrew, 2008 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 by Friday, October 7th. Additional local drop off locations include Keystone Homebrew locations and Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant in West Chester, PA. The competition would like to encourage knowledgeable mead judges to commit to judging this event. Judges will receive breakfast and lunch. Judges should contact David Houseman to secure a judging seat. The judging will take place from 9am to 1pm. Awards will be given out beginning at 1:30. There will also be a tasting with numerous commercial meads as well as the remainder of the meads from the competition following the judging. Following the competition there will be 2 seatings for a "Mead-ieval" dinner at 4 and 6:30 pm, reservations required; call the restaurant at 215-242-1500 to make your reservations. Suzanne McMurphy, Competition Organizer (theimann at verizon.net) David Houseman, Judge Coordinator (david.houseman at verizon.net) Vince Galet, Asst. Competition Organizer Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:52:03 -0400 From: "Pat Babcock" <pbabcock at hbd.org> Subject: Search me! Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager.... Well, I suppose I have to speak up over all the search mystery on the HBD site. Here's where we're at... The search on the HBD domain is based on a very old (1995 - ancient, in terms of software!) free text search tool. Over the years as the kernel and the C compilers used have evolved, the source for this tool is no longer "compilable" unless I reach back to skills that were honed razor sharp waaaaaaaayyyyyy back in 1986. And, the system no longer functions as intended. My first approach is to determine what in the security model or directory structure has caused the tool to fail, and, if possible, fix the issue. This is the process I'm in now. So far, the failures (re: error messages on execution)are manifold. Knocking them down one at a time as I find the time. This approach will allow me to easily retain the function set and scope of the existing search. This failing, I'll be installing a more modern package. I've been putting this off since the modern ones are also slower, being written in languages farther from the binary the micro loves to babble. In any case, we'll get there. Sooner, if not later. Patience, please! In the meantime, the google search does a pretty fair job. - -- See ya! Pat Babcock in SE Michigan Chief of HBD Janitorial Services http://hbd.org pbabcock at hbd.org Return to table of contents
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:40:28 -0400 From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net> Subject: Correction: Valhalla, Mead-only competition Sorry, it's only two (2) bottles of precious mead for this competition, not 3. Dave Houseman Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 06:15:59 -0400 From: "-S" <-s at adelphia.net> Subject: E is for Esters ..../re: Oats in light colored beer. I know Chad Stevens knows better, yet .... > The important part to note is that oats have a higher fat/lipid content[...] > Fats and Lipids are bad for foam; their derivatives can be major flavor and > aroma contributors however. True *if* these lipids persist into the beer, but they don't. Yeast can and will consume many times the lipids that appear in normal wort. I suspect that oats (and rye) have more foam-negative glucans and less of the hydrophobic glycoproteins necessary for great head. > [..] both fats and lipids are made up of fatty acids and are generally > not soluble in water but are soluble in acids, alcohol, and bile. By definitio, "lipid" is the fraction soluble in non-polar organic solvents, but not in water. Fatty acids are the aliphatic(- big word for straight carbon chain) carboxcylic acids. The mid-length and long FAs are lipids (C6 and longer), but the short ones, like acetic acid(C2.FA) and butanoic(C4) are water soluble and not lipids. Fats (di- & tri- acyl-glycerides) are made from long chain fatty acids, but many many other lipids are NOT made of fatty acid (sterols, hops oils, terpenes). > Typically, to make an ester, all you need is an alcohol and a fatty acid. Not really - and we've just been over this in excrutiating detail. If anyone cares to disprove the statement above, just mix some vinegar (the C2 fatty acid) with ethanol and wait until you smell the resulting ethyl-acetate ester (nail polish remover aroma). It will probably take several centuries since you have forgotten that this is an enzymatically controlled reaction. The most important carboxylic acid involved in beer ester formation is acetic acid, not a lipid, and not derived from grain lipids but from sugars. The next most important carboxylic acids for esters are butanoic & hexanoic and these are mostly from yeast building fatty acids, not grain lipids. The primary ester formation process is rate limited by the alcohol acyl-transferase (AAT) class of enzymes. The AAT type, quantity and activity is dependent on yeast genetics, yeast metabolic conditions and temperature. Also adding long chain fatty acids to wort DECREASES the final ester levels in beer. There are several reasons: FAs, particularly UFAs may be a growth limiting factor for yeast; Long FAs, the most abundant type, are strongly inhibitory of the AAT enzyme; yeast may be inhibited from even producing AATs in the presences of free FAs. The small FAs produce floral&fruity esters, while long FAs esters are about as fruity and floral as the deep fat fryer at a MacDonalds. See "insecticidal soap", a combination of long FA esters and salts for example. > The number of possibilities is a function of the number of fatty acids > available and the number of alcohols available. *** and rate determined by AAT enzymes, not by substrate. > All of the even numbered C2 > to C30 common saturated fatty acids are found in nature. That is 15 fatty > acids. As an aside, there small but significant amounts of odd-chain length fatty acids (C3, C5, C7) in yeast and hops. These have a very interesting metabolic origins and fates. Hops are actually fairly rich in heptanoic acid(C7) probably as a precursor to it's aromatic oils. > So 15 fatty acids multiplied by 4 alcohols are 60 ester > possibilities. There are probably about 20FAs and even more carboxcylic acids in the fermenter, but only half a dozen appear in sufficient abundance to cause any ester aroma (~1ppm for most esters). The longest FA to regularly finish above 1ppm is hexanoic often around 2.5ppm. Only 3 FAs are seriously implicated in beer esters above aroma threshold, acetic, butanoic, and hexanoic(C2, C4, C6) [[wtih ethyl-octanoate from octanoic(C8) as a special case]]. The long chain lipids just aren't a significant part of the ester aroma story. There have also been 40 fusels identified in beer, but the only 6 alcohols than make the aroma concentration cut are ethanol, n-propanol, iso-butanol, n-methyl-butanol, and 2-phenyl-ethyl alcohol maybe 2-methyl-propanol. Technically glycerol is a very abundant alcohol in beer (up to 1000ppm), but isn't involved in common ester formation (well fats are really poly-esters of long FAs and glycerol, but they don't smell like much) [[Why no small carboxylic esters of glycerol in beer ? I mean butter contains glycerol-butryrate, not that I'd enjoy buttery beer]]. Anyway 6 FAs * maybe 6 Alcs hit the concentrations to be involved so maybe there *could* be a universe of 36 beer esters that could ever hit aroma threshold Just over 100 esters have been identified in beer, tho' most far below threshold. This calculation ignores that yeast enzymes are selective, and most of these 36 hypotheically important esters are almost absent because the enzyme activity isn't there. For example n-methyl-butanol and n-propanoal are sufficiently abundant fusels, but common yeast AAT enzymes almost ignore these alcs. No the ester list is more like this (for ales) ethyl acetate <= ethanol + acetic 18 ppm ethyl butyrate <= ethanol + butanoic 0.5 ppm ethyl hexanoate <= ethanol + hexanoic 0.95 ppm ethyl octanoate <= ethanol + octanoic 1.5 ppm(!) isobutyl-acetate <= isobutanol + acetic 40 ppb // little other isobutanol contribution. // n-propanol seems to play no role in esters ! isoamyl acetate <= n-methyl-butanol + acetic 6.3 ppm isoamyl buyrate <= n-methyl-butanol + butanoic 0.5 ppm isoamyl hexanotate <= n-methyl-butanol + hexanoic 0.42 ppm 2-phenyl-ethyl acetate <= 2-pheyl-ethyl + acetic 1.6 ppm So there are maybe 8-10 significant esters from yeast. Note that acetate esters (from acetic, not lipids) are typically an order of magnitude higher in concentration than the related butyrate, hexanoate, and octanoate esters. > Anyway, > more oats, more lipids, more ester possibilities. That is oversimplified and misdirecting. More oats->more lipids is true for wort, but the yeast are happy to consume these fatty snacks leaving less esters and a low FA beer as a result. -S Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 07:58:28 -0700 From: "Michael Eyre" <meyre at sbcglobal.net> Subject: Freezing vs. Canning wort... Hey all, I've een pondering this canning of wort for starters thing lately... but I just don't' have access to a canning pot and don't have the incentive to go try it out right yet. Frankly, I'm a big nervous about it all. I'm wondering about freezing, however. Other than the fact that you'd have to unfreeze the frozen wort, re-boil it, then cool it again... plus the storage space in the freezer aspect, is there any other downside to freezing wort for starters? Mike Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:54:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com> Subject: flux for soldering copper All, I am looking for information on the best kind of flux to use for soldering copper to make brewery equipment. A search of the archives turns up the suggestion to use water-soluble flux. My *guess* is that any excess flux of this type can be simply rinsed away, but I could be totally wrong about that. The search also turns up a decade-old post by John Palmer on cleaning flux residue, in which he details the need to use either a gasoline-then-detergent cleaning regimen, or at least a detergent cleaning if you use liquid flux. He makes no mention of water-soluble flux in that post. My question: what flux can I use (with silver plumber's solder) that will require the minimum amount of cleaning afterwards? I'd appreciate any help on this. Matt Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:37:46 -0700 From: "Chad Stevens" <zuvaruvi at cox.net> Subject: re: E is for esoteric Steven- Thanks for the clarifications...I'm big into Lambic, Flemish Red, and primitive fermentations these days so functionally, oats and other lipid sources (I'm still playing with flax seed) do contribute to the ester profile when pedio et. al. are involved; lots more enzymes.... But yes, for the average Joe using Saccharomyces only, you are by and large correct. However, I've seen some papers which suggest increased FA contributions *may* survive through to the end product and *may* be expressed as increased ester profiles. I have convinced myself through what I've observed in my own brewing, that this is more the rule than the exception. Point was, if I'm making a nice clean ordinary every day APA and want a big head, I wouldn't add oats. A little wheat, maybe. And if you're really daring, for a five gallon batch, try boiling 2 ounces of whole flax seed in a gallon of water and adding that to the mash; it'll give you a persistent head like meringue. And of course, "Typically, to make an ester, all you need is an alcohol and a fatty acid...." was a dramatic over simplification. We were discussing fermentations after all, so the enzymatic processes were a given. As always Steve, thanks, Chad Stevens QUAFF San Diego Return to table of contents
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