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


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Contents:
  stockholm: a beer-friendly socialist paradise (Raj B Apte)
  Re-hopping ("Spencer W. Thomas")
  Hop extracts ("Peed, John")
  Honey priming ("Greg Brewer")
  Honey For Priming (harry.backenass)
  Re: Honey for Priming ("Eric Wescott")
  Low efficiency with Wheat... why! (Michael Eyre)


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JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning,
                  and Spencer Thomas



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Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 20:06:06 -0800 (PST)
From: Raj B Apte <raj_apte at yahoo.com>
Subject: stockholm: a beer-friendly socialist paradise


Steve asked about Stockholm.

I was there for a few weeks last fall. The state-run liquor
shops are worth a visit. Grab a catalog while there: its a
very impressive list and I'm told that anything on the list
can be had within 2-3 days at any of the liquor stores.

Local micro-brews are excellent. Don't forget to have
punsch a few times and bring home a bottle of Batavian
Arrack (not the anise flavoured spirit of the Mediterranean
but distilled cane and rice spirit of Indonesia).  You
could bring back a bottle of Arrack for me, too ....

The normal, light beer at the grocery stores is OK, even
the canned stuff. Because of the alcohol tax, the price
difference between top-quality and rubbish is small, and
the guys who compose the state liquor-list (catalog) have
done a nice job.

raj



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Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:48:54 -0500
From: "Spencer W. Thomas" <hbd at spencerwthomas.com>
Subject: Re-hopping

Dave King suggests boiling hops in water to add bitterness to an
underhopped beer.  My experience is that this also extracts a nasty
"grassy" flavor from the hops.  Maybe the pH of my water is higher than
that of his, at least I'm assuming it was high pH that caused it.  The
pH of wort is down around 5, while the pH of my tap water is around 8.

As usual, YMMV.

=Spencer in Ann Arbor



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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 07:12:50 -0800
From: "Peed, John" <jpeed at elotouch.com>
Subject: Hop extracts


I have tried hop extract, hop essence and hop oil.  The manufacturers'
instructions for using these products are very detailed and exacting:
they're supposed to be infused at a very low rate into the path of
flowing beer (during transfer), and to do it correctly would require an
incredibly accurate mechanically controlled syringe.  I once worked on a
mobile medical infusion "cart" for injecting radiopharmaceuticals - it
was a nifty device, very accurate (obviously), but it couldn't touch the
incredibly small dose rates called for by some of these hop extracts.
"Tetra", one of the latest and greatest, gives 5 IBUs for each drop
infused into 5 gallons of beer.  And, of course, that one drop is
supposed to be infused slowly into the continuing stream of 5 gallons,
not just plunked into the whole lot (as we homebrewers would have to do
it).  Think about that ... ONE DROP in 5 gallons, 5 drops for the entire
bittering component of an average beer.

Anyway, I found that the essence and oils produced really poor aroma and
flavor results - artificial and not at all pleasant.  I also thought the
bittering extract added a deep, nasty, indescribable flavor component,
and I didn't think the bitterness was well-focused.  But A) those are
just my opinions and B) I was just adding drops to the batch rather than
infusing as directed.  Also, I didn't age the resulting beer to see if
it cleaned up any.

And BTW, Jeff Renner says he used the bittering extract once and he
absolutely loved the results - very clean, bright and focused, as I
recall.  So just think of it as two different data points.  I recently
tried an extract again and found the same results, except that the beer
did settle down nicely with some ageing.

John Peed
Oak Ridge, TN




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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 09:30:51 -0600
From: "Greg Brewer" <gbrewer1 at gmail.com>
Subject: Honey priming

Andrew asked about priming his honey porter with honey.  I tried it
with a honey wheat ale I brewed last year and had excellent results.
The final beer had a really nice honey flavor.

The amount of honey needed to prime five gallons of beer depends on
how much carbonation you want in the finished beer, and how many
volumes of residual CO2 are in solution before you bottle (varies
inversely with temperature).  It also depends on how much sugar there
is in your honey, depending on what type of honey you use.

Assuming you desire about two volumes of CO2 (typical) using domestic
clover honey and are bottling near room temperature, you will need
around 3.0 to 3.5 ounces (by weight) of honey.  Not sure what that
works out to be by volume, but a full cup sounds like too much.

Cheers,

Greg in Chicago


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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 8:07:48 -0800
From: <harry.backenass at charter.net>
Subject: Honey For Priming

1/2 cup is the recommendation - I've tried 1 cup and the resulting beer was
overcarbonated to the point of impending bottle bombs!

H.B.


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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 11:27:47 -0500
From: "Eric Wescott" <eric.wescott at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Honey for Priming

Reply to Andrew Calder

You're right on track!  1/2 cup of honey will prime 5G brew nicely.
I've used this to prime sparkling meads, and it worked well.

- --Eric Wescott
Stratford, CT


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Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:50:45 -0800
From: Michael Eyre <meyre at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Low efficiency with Wheat... why!

Hey all!

Question: Why are all my wheat beers coming out so low in O.G. compared 
to my all barley beers? Pound for pound, when I use wheat in my recipes, 
they come out low. For instance, if I were to use 100% barley in a Pale 
ale, say, 18lbs of it, my O.G. would be 1.050, for sake of argument. If 
I used 50/50 barley and *malted* wheat, my O.G. comes out towards the 
1.040 side. Every time, consistently. Supposedly, wheat has a higher 
percentage of potential fermentables in it, so what am I doing wrong?

Mike


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