HOMEBREW Digest #5072 Sun 08 October 2006


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Solvent Flavours ("Fredrik")
  Brew Haiku (?) (leavitdg)
  BJCP categories that exclude mammalian faecal matter (Signalbox Brewery)
  Specific Gravity of Sugar in Water ("William Simmons")
  fusel alchohol ("Bob Devine")
  latin brain plain ("Dante Grimes")

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 11:49:35 +0200 From: "Fredrik" <carlsbergerensis at hotmail.com> Subject: Solvent Flavours Obvious from the recent discussions and also one of the problems I've found when trying to analyse my own beers, and trying to correlate them with theory is to properly match real flavours with the supposed candidate compounds known from theory. In my experience the flavor descriptions you read are not always that obvious to understand and are dependent of subjective associations. For example "glue". There are glues that mostly use ethylacetate for solvent, and there are glues that mainly use iso-butanol for solvent. I think a good thing is to try to find references around you. Nailpolish is a good one. Nailpolish typically contains ethylacetate, but many brands also contain some butylacetate. The latter is IMO a little more fruity (in a pleasant way) than ethyl acetate. I have compared nailpolish and pure ethylacetate and they are bascically smell the same, except the ones containing also a bit butyl-acetate smells even more pleasantly fruity. To me "generic fruity" is quite similar to the solvently notes you get at high concentrations. I agree with Bob that I think that while ethylacetet does not smell fruity as in a specific fruit, it does have the "generic aroma fruitiness" at low levels, not necessarily bad. To put your nose into a bottle of nail-polish is obviously off scale in comparasion. Probably backing up the total fruitiness along with more specific fruity flavours. Some beers, like some belgian tripples has obvious levels of ethylacetate, and it's good! I dig it at least :) But some don't. That last one I recall is leffe trippel, interesting, but excellent stuff. But it's not what you drink everyday. I can't imagine that leffe tripple would be as good if you strip out all the ethyl acetate. But it also have plenty of sweetness to balance those solvently fruity notes. Perhaps the perceived harshness may be a result from the solvents when there is no counterbalancing body and sweetness? I feel no misplaced harshness in leffe trippel. It's all in excellent balance. I think that there is not only a balance between hop bitterness and sweetness and body. In my taste at least, there is also a balance between the sweetness and some other "heavy" flavours, and the highly pitched, and fire like, pungent, solvently notes you can get from alcohols and esters. In my mind, in a big beer with has lots of heavy notes and body, these pungent, solvently and peppery notes from alcohols and esters is called for. Without them I think some of these beers would be cloying, just like that lack of body, sweetness and heavy notes would make these things be over the top harsh and solvently. Not that I am a fan of budweiser, but I recently tried it again because of a recent discussion elesewhere on as it seems myth(?) that it contains alot of acetaldehyde (I just could not sense it). I could be wrong but I sensed highly pitched undertones of what I think might be ethylacetate (or something similar) in budweiser too, and it isn't bad at all. Anyone agree? About the supposed apple notes I sensed someting indeed, but not acetaldehyde I think. It reminds me of the kind of funky flavour you get from oak ages beers and I don't know where it's from, which I usually don't like. A bit woody/apple. Possibly also the long chain fatty acid "apple" ethyl esters. I don't konw. iso-propanol is at least in sweden used along with ethanol as anti-freeze in windshiled wash. Fresh, highly pitchedm spiritous, ethereal is right on IMO. Just like Steve wrote. I'd look in the supermarket or gas stations, read on the package contents. I admit I never tasted it in the mouth. Perhaps I should make dilutions and try that someday. This doesn't smell "bad" per see IMO, it's just so highly pitched and intense, that it might cut right through other flavours? iso-butanol has as a very distinct flavour from propanol, it is a bit "funky", definitely not fresh. In sweden there is a common glue that use this, and it smells just like the pure iso-butanol, which I have smelled in isolation too. Goto your walmart and read on the glue tubes, perhaps you can find a great iso-butanol reference. In my personal terminology "glue" is iso-butanol (or similarly). But then I associate to a specific glue. I have smelled 1-butanol and 2-butanol in isolation too, and it's interesting how different they are. 1-butanol is more "funky" IMO that 2-butanol. But iso-butanol(what's in glue) is then probably even more funky. About the pentanols I haven't been able to get these pure :( But I've seen various flavour descriptors for them. Some wine papers described these as marzipan or whiskey like. If anyone has suggestions for a easy to get reference for those I'd be interested. The problem is that different sources, has slightly different flavor descriptors, and it's not that easy to describe an aroma in text. I suspect that until I get to smell these first hand myself, I can only guess. I am not a grappa fan, but was offered it once at a work dinner in an italian restaurant, and I immediately say it smelled like gluey, funky, iso-butanol. I think the other guys at the tables was a bit offended, but pardon me, I was only telling the truth. Then I had to excuse myself and reveal that I was a homebrewer and explain why I had this obsession for flavours. I can't speak for all kinds of grappa, but perhaps grappy will be a a butanol reference too ;-) Only once have I smelled these clear funky butanol notes in a beer, and that was in my first beer which I still remember. It basically had three primary flavours. Ethylacetate, funky iso-butanol like, and buttery diacetyl. Interestingly enough, the heavy diacetyl provided a slight counterbalance to the solvent notes, still it was a disaster. It was fermented very warm (as warm as I could get it;) with the coopers dry strain with alot of sugar, as per instructions :) /Fredrik Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 07:02:44 -0400 From: leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu Subject: Brew Haiku (?) Drinking his evening ale, the man is at peace. Fuggles. Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 12:46:00 +0100 From: Signalbox Brewery <signalbox.brewery at ntlworld.com> Subject: BJCP categories that exclude mammalian faecal matter Steve Alexander sets a poser which demonstrates my ignorance of how BJCP classes work in practice: >E.coli of the naughty (0157:H7) sort, can survive at apple cider pH >so perhaps they could survive in beer. To prevent this I strongly >recommend that you avoid adding any mammalian fecal matter >to your beer after the boil ((which BJCP style does that eliminate?)). 13 and 23 sir? Would a coffee stout made with coffee go in one or t'other? Perhaps subtle coffee = 13, blatant coffee 23 with a reference to the base style within 13. Perhaps someone can help. Of course the warning about mammalian faecal material would only apply to a cold infusion of kopi luwak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak A second possibility, but only a risk for British brewers would a naive attempt to produce "a fine nappy head". (Nappy = diaper). David Edge, Derby UK Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 07:27:33 -0700 From: "William Simmons" <williamsimmons1 at hotmail.com> Subject: Specific Gravity of Sugar in Water I have read that one pound of sugar dissolved in one gallon on water will give a solution with specific gravity 1.045. Given that specific gravity is defined as the density of the solution being measured relative to the density of water, I can't for the life of me figure out how this calculation works. One gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs. So one gallon of water with one pound of sugar dissolved would weigh 9.34 lbs. So 9.34/8.34 = 1.199! What am I doing wrong? Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 20:40:38 -0700 From: "Bob Devine" <devinebob at gmail.com> Subject: fusel alchohol On 10/6/06, steve.alexander <-s at adelphia.net> wrote: > Bob Devine writes ... > >Fusel alcohols are the common name for the grab-bag of amyl > >alcohols and random fatty acids. > > Not fatty acids - no ! Only 5 of 40 identified fusels in beer are > amyl alcohols although three of these are important ones. Steve is right about not including fatty acids. I should have been clearer when I used the phrase "common" which I meant to include its (common but incorrect) use by some homebrewers I shouldn't have repeated that but I had hoped it would help. So let me expand-- Fusel alcohols are a normal part of fermentation. They form mainly during the first half of fermentation. Final concentrations may be only a few parts-per-billion on up to a few ppm in extreme examples. Technically, they are alcohols with more than 2 carbons, many of the molecular arrangements are branched. Examples include propanol, butanol, amyl alcohol, and furfural. Other straight-chain alcohols like pentanol, hexanol, and septanol might play a small part in the overall aroma. Most folks would say n-propanols smell alcohol-y. Propanol smells like those alcohol cleaning pads of rubbing alcohol. Butanol (aka butyl alcohol) has an industrial alcohol aroma but some might call it fermented banana. And furfural is like stale almonds. Ale yeast often make more fusel alcohols than lager fermentations. High temp usually makes more fusel alcohols. Surprisingly, the shape and size of the fermenter has an effect; deeper and bigger ones make less. Stressed yeast also make more. A formula for high fusel alcohol is to have a small fermenter filled with high-gravity wort and under-pitched with yeast. In a hot room. Sounds like the pattern used by many homebrewers for their first few batches, doesn't it? > >So, I don't think that ethyl acetate tastes like fusels. > > I disagree. Fusels and also ethyl-acetate have fruity sprity, > brandy-like aroma and are harsh. That's quite similar. We might be talking about different levels here. At "normal" levels, fusel alcohol has a distinctive 'hot' feel different from ethanol (sort of like comparing whiskey to vodka) as well as a somewhat oily/coating mouth-feel. My point was that ethyl acetate does taste different to me than fusel alcohols. I find a difference in smell too, of course. Neither are pleasant at high levels; so they are similar in that regard. not a chemist, Bob Devine Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2006 02:09:15 +0300 From: "Dante Grimes" <41stocknews at tourofshenandoah.com> Subject: latin brain plain hi, if you need any p11Ls http://oabvki.dungeoncalf.com/?35522797 bye Return to table of contents
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