HOMEBREW Digest #896 Fri 05 June 1992

Digest #895 Digest #897


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


Contents:
  Hop Identification-Sierra Nevada ("Peter W. Karlson")
  Urethane in homebrew (WAYNE HINES)
  mead supplies (Michael Gildner)
  toilet humor (Russ Gelinas)
  michigan ("Spencer W. Thomas")
  Re: Wyeast Belgian revisited (Norm Pyle)
  Immersion chillers and long siphons (BOB JONES)
  Wyeast Delbrukii (Dennis J. Templeton)
  Stuck lager (Tom Barstow - Sun BOS Software)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 08:34:58 -0400 (EDT) From: "Peter W. Karlson" <pk at columbus.dfci.harvard.edu> Subject: Hop Identification-Sierra Nevada According to Jack Erickson "Star Spangled Beer" the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale contains cascade, cluster & willamette Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 92 09:22:53 EST From: WAYNE HINES <IWLH%SNYCENVM.bitnet at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> Subject: Urethane in homebrew Chemists/Brwers: A fellow brew buddy would like to know the posibility of homebrewed beer containing urethane? Apparently urethane is a byproduct of quickly fermented beer, so he tells me. He also explained to me that urethane is a carcinogen, any explanation of this would also be appreciated. Wayno Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 07:47:42 EDT From: mmlai!lucy!gildner at uunet.UU.NET (Michael Gildner) Subject: mead supplies Hello Fellow Brewers, I've decided to try to make a batch of mead since I can't find a commercial variety to buy. I've never tasted the stuff, I'm just curious. --- The problem is I don't know where to find good honey. Does anyone know of a good mail order dealer or a local place in the Balto-Wash. area to buy bulk honey? Mike Gildner Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 9:47:49 -0400 (EDT) From: R_GELINAS at UNHH.UNH.EDU (Russ Gelinas) Subject: toilet humor No, Jack, my question about using dehumidifier water was not a joke. My initial feeling was "Ugh, scary stuff", but then I realized it might have some nice qualities, such as never being exposed to chlorine and being very soft. I would certainly use a new clean catch basin, and I would obviously boil the hell out of it before I would use it. So I tossed the question out, and got some good responses. I've decided not to use it, because it will probably have a metallic taste, and there's a question of microorganisms that I don't want to deal with, even with a boil. I'm sort of surprised, though, Jack, that such a passionate "standard brewing practice" debunker as yourself would dismiss a real question about a "non-standard" practice as a joke. Re. cleaning copper: One of the best pieces of advice I've received from this HBD is to boil copper tubing in a water/vinegar mixture to clean it. About a cup of vinegar in 5 gallons is enough. The tubing comes out shiny. For an immersion chiller, you don't really care about the inside of the tubing. I give it a once over with a steel wool pad and hot rinse after each use. Micah sez don't recycle the mash. Hmmm. That'll shorten sparging time too. What the heck, I'll give it a try this weekend. Thanks, Florian, too, your dump in boiling water to mash out should speed things up too. (I got sh*t last weekend for spending too much time in the cellar. :-/ Russ Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 09:50:24 EDT From: "Spencer W. Thomas" <Spencer.W.Thomas at med.umich.edu> Subject: michigan Lots of homebrew here in Michigan. There are several good supply stores in the area. For quick "pick ups" I go to a local "party store" that has a good selection. For major shopping trips, I go to the G.W. Kent retail outlet (they're wholesale only by mail-order), where prices tend to be a little lower (two data points: Coopers Light Extract was about 25% cheaper, and I got Fix's book for near wholesale). If you want grain, there's a supply shop about 20 minutes south of Ann Arbor that has a roller mill in the back, and will sell you crushed grain for the same price that Kent sells it uncrushed (in small quantities). We have an active homebrew club, the Ann Arbor Brewer's Guild, with about 70 members, for which I serve as the e-mail contact. Josh Grosse (a frequent HBD contributer) and I are now co-editing the newsletter, as well. July will see our annual BeerBQ, complete with a pig roast. =Spencer W. Thomas HSITN, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 spencer.thomas at med.umich.edu 313-747-2778 Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 08:06:52 MDT From: pyle at intellistor.com (Norm Pyle) Subject: Re: Wyeast Belgian revisited This thread brings up a valid point about problem solving via the hbd. Problems can often be attributed to technique, but also to bad luck. A good technique may work well for years before a particularly hearty wild yeast or bacteria infects your brew. I say the technique is "good" because it worked for years. Often, a single variable will change for the instance the brew turned bad, and the brewer will blame that variable, when it may have nothing to do with the problem. I guess the point is that if you have a problem, try to be as scientific about it as possible (i.e. don't jump to conclusions). If you're commenting on someone else's problem, do the same. We don't need to run off half-cocked (or half-crocked) yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre house. As far as Wyeast related problems go, I'm inclined to believe slow starts are much more of an issue than purity. Just MHO. Norm Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 09:00 PDT From: BOB JONES <BJONES%NOVAX at NOVA.llnl.gov> Subject: Immersion chillers and long siphons In response to Frank Dobner questions : Twice this month I have heard similar concern about cleaning the inside of an immersion cooler. After further questioning, I discovered that some brewers wrongly think you should place the cooler in a bucket of ice water and flow the hot work through the inside of the cooler. Listen up brewers, you immerse the cooler IN the hot wort and run the cool city water through the INSIDE of the cooler. That way you don't need to worry (assumming any of REALLY worry) about cleaning the cooler. I ask the first person who was doing this if he had a hard time connecting up to the 3/4 inch hose fiitings and he said. yeah. I ask if he stopped to think about why there were garden hose fitting on the cooler to start with? He had no comment, just this pie in the face look. On you other problem, Frank, of long siphoning. Why don't you just start the siphon close to the brew pot, through a short piece of hose. Then just connect that hose to the long hose that leads to the basement or wherever. Gravity will do the rest of the work for you. Also you should be cooling with your immersion cooler in your brew pot BEFORE you transfer to your fermentation vessel to avoid hot side aereation problems. Milwaukee dreamin, Bob Jones Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 12:37:15 -0400 From: djt2 at po.CWRU.Edu (Dennis J. Templeton) Subject: Wyeast Delbrukii In response to todays post about a home-cultured S. delbrukii not fermenting all the way out: My pure delbrukii was a little sweet but not "halfway" (more like 1.010). Adding the other clone (S. cerevisciae) in the real batch produced a drier product, as expected. I got a private response that said that (as had been discussed here some while ago) some/many folks use a single culture S. delbrukii in their wheat beers with good result. dennis Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 13:26:53 EDT From: tbarstow at suneast.East.Sun.COM (Tom Barstow - Sun BOS Software) Subject: Stuck lager I brewed two batches of honey-ginger lager back in late February (see recipe at end), the only difference being the type of yeast used. Wyeast #2007 (Pilsener) is in one; Whitbread Lager Yeast is in the other. The two-stage fermentations seemed to proceed normally, although the colors differed substantially until recently. I decided to bottle last night and found that the Whitbread- based batch seems to be stuck at 1.019 whereas the Wyeast batch was down to 1.008. I went ahead and bottled the Wyeast batch and boiled 2 tablespoons of yeast energizer with a cup of water and dumped that into the Whitbread batch to see if I could get the fermentation started again. Nothing as of this morning, however. So what do I do if it is stuck? Electro-shock? Threats? Therapy? It's too sweet to drink (and presumably wouldn`t carbonate, either). Please send replies to me directly at tbarstow at suneast.East.Sun.COM since I'm not currently getting the digest itself. Thanks. -Tom Recipe: 3.5# M&F light DME 2.5# clover honey 2t yeast energizer 2.5 oz ginger root, grated 1.5 oz Cascades hops (65 min.) 0.5 oz Cascades hops (3 min.) yeast Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #896, 06/05/92