HOMEBREW Digest #1235 Tue 28 September 1993

Digest #1234 Digest #1236


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


Contents:
  BRFware ("Andy Phillips, Long Ashton, Bristol, UK")
  Pumpkin-pie beer (JIM)
  Beer/Pubs in Barbados (GONTAREK)
  Hops! (and more hops) (Diane Palme x2617)
  mailing samples (Jim Sims)
  PHILLY HOMEBREW COMPETITION (tmr)
  Cherry Juice (Chris Estes)
  Solder And Brazing (Bob_McIlvaine)
  Re: Purging Keg Headspaces (tmr)
  Troubleshoot my dry hopping! (Kelly Jones)
  Wedding Bells (Paul Boor)
  Apple cider in Boulder area... (Corby Bacco)
  Blow-off Loss and Cherry Juice (Tim Anderson)
  CO2 / mead (Brian Bliss)
  Keg aging (drose)
  Accelerating bottle carbonation? (lyons)
  oatmeal stout extract, mash HSA (Jonathan G Knight)
  Hydrometer rea                                                    (uszvnrl6)
  Brewpubs in Dartmouth, NH? Need info by 9/30 (Jan Holloway)
  Louis Vierling (korz)
  Mash temperature drop (Domenick Venezia)
  Utah Brewpubs (COYOTE)
  Smoked Porter (ron_hall)
  Re: heating SS/Keg Forced Carbonation Confusion/Campden Blowoff (korz)
  Cellar Notes: Radio Program (Philip J Difalco)

Send articles for __publication_only__ to homebrew at hpfcmi.fc.hp.com (Articles are published in the order they are received.) Send UNSUBSCRIBE and all other requests, ie, address change, etc., to homebrew-request@ hpfcmi.fc.hp.com, BUT PLEASE NOTE that if you subscribed via the BITNET listserver (BEER-L at UA1VM.UA.EDU), then you MUST unsubscribe the same way! If your account is being deleted, please be courteous and unsubscribe first. Archives are available via anonymous ftp from sierra.stanford.edu. (Those without ftp access may retrieve files via mail from listserv at sierra.stanford.edu. Send HELP as the body of a message to that address to receive listserver instructions.) Please don't send me requests for back issues - you will be silently ignored. For "Cat's Meow" information, send mail to lutzen at novell.physics.umr.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 11:22 BST From: "Andy Phillips, Long Ashton, Bristol, UK" <phillipsa at afrc.ac.uk> Subject: BRFware Sorry to use the HBD for this, but I couldn't get direct mailings to work: To: Chris Campanelli - -------------------- Are you planning a new version of the BRF brewing calculator, of which I'm a big fan? Can I persuade you to include a US/metric conversion for those of us on the wrong side of the Atlantic? I get very confused about the size of US gallons, quarts and pounds. Thanks Andy Phillips, Bristol, UK Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 07:09 EDT From: JMGARNETT at ATCSD.ESS.HARRIS.COM (JIM) Subject: Pumpkin-pie beer Anyone out there have a good pumpkin recipie? I don't do my own mashing, so I need to be able to buy the malt. How do you cook the pumpkin? Only leave it in the wort and filter it out, or should it stay in the fermenter? Thanks Jim Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 07:46:40 -0400 (EDT) From: GONTAREK at JHUVMS.HCF.JHU.EDU Subject: Beer/Pubs in Barbados Greetings all! Forgive me if this is not strictly a homebrewing question, but does anybody know of any good pubs in Barbados? In two weeks I'll be going there for my honeymoon, and I wanted some input on where my new wife and I could go for some chilly ones. Do they drink beer there, or is rum the only thing they imbibe? I would be grateful for any and all information regarding brewskies and this lovely vacation spot. You can e-mail me directly. Cheers! Rick Gontarek Dept. of Biology The Johns Hopkins University gontarek at jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 07:38:08 -0500 (CDT) From: dspalme at mke.ab.com (Diane Palme x2617) Subject: Hops! (and more hops) Hi All! Just thought I would throw in my $0.02 on this year's hop harvest. With three brand new rhisomes put in the ground ~mid-May, I was able to get enough hops to distribute freely among friends and family. We planted three varieties: Cascade, Hallertau, and Tett. The Hallertau was the early-on favorite but in the end, pooped out before putting out many cones. Total? Well, maybe 12-15 cones. That's right, CONES, not ounces. :-( The cascade, on the other hand, did a bang-up job. The hop vines reminded me of grape vines, there were so many cones! Yikes! We have a standard grocery bag which has about a 4"layer of cones. This is verrrrry promising. The Tett? Well, it was a shy plant. Total vine length was about 12". Yup, that's right, 12". Oh well, I'll get 'em next year! Looking forward to brewing with home-grown hops ... D. - -- Diane Palme Department Engineer, Central Inspection Allen-Bradley Co. (414) 382-2617 dspalme at mkelan5.remnet.ab.com dspalme at mke.ab.com " I have found that it is much easier to fake an orgasm than to pretend to like basketball. " Oh yeah, um, what I say is my opinion, um, what I think are my own ideas, uh, Allen-Bradley has nothing to do with them, uh, yeah. That's about it. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 08:53:14 EDT From: sims at pdesds1.scra.org (Jim Sims) Subject: mailing samples I was at the Post Office Friday and checked out the "mailing liquids" issue. They have a big poster on packaging. It specifically includes mailing liquids, so obviously that *IS* legal. They say to pack it in absrobent padding (in case it breaks, obviously). No mention of mailing alcohol being illegal, despite a long list of other stuff you cant mail (flammables, toxins, compressed gases, explosives, etc) jim Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 08:43:15 EDT From: tmr at fjtld.att.com Subject: PHILLY HOMEBREW COMPETITION I recently heard there was going to be a homebrew competition at the Sam Adams brewery in Philadelphia some time in November. My first question is: has anyone heard about it, does anyone have any details about it like location, date, time, cost, parking and directions. My second question is: what does a person do at a homewbrew competition besides watch judges taste beer? I`m thinking of taking a friend (a non-homebrewer) and wondered how interesting it would be for either of us. I won't have any entries so the judging might not be the highlight of the day for me. Tom Romalewski Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 13:31:12 GMT From: Chris Estes <CESTES at argos5.argosinc.com> Subject: Cherry Juice Hi All, In today's HBD there was a discussion (sorry, no quotes or sources) about using cherry juice instead of whole cherries. One respondent mentioned that he couldn't find 100% cherry juice. Many health food stores carry Knudeson's (sp?) and they make a 100% cherry juice. They also make a variety of other pure, juices (anyone for a kiwi-papaya weiss?!?). I've used the cherry juice twice. The first time was in a light ale. The stuff had a real metallic edge to it and wasn't very drinkable (I just dumped out the last gallon of it yesterday - over a year old!). It actually turned out to be passable if consumed on the rocks! I later made a cherry stout which was much better. In both brews, I used about 3 quarts of the stuff. Personally, I'm not wild about fruit in my beers. I did my part as a homebrewer and experimented, and now I'm happily back to malt, hops, water, and yeast! -Chris Estes- Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 09:35:08 EDT From: Bob_McIlvaine at keyfile.com Subject: Solder And Brazing A welder with mig or tig capabilities will take about 10 minutes to weld a keg type joint with Stainless, and charge an hour minimum, typically $30 to $40 per hour. Make sure the guy knows how to do stainless and can handle liquid tight joints. Get all your holes and fittings ready to weld and he can probably do all your joints in an hour. If your lucky, you'll find a welder who will do the job for several pints of good home brew. Silver solder can be nasty to solder and can be hazardous to your health if you get the wrong stuff. For your health's sake, get the kind that is cadmium free, for your yeast's health get low, low lead content. The simplest flux is plain old borax, the chemical not the soap :-) You can get the solder and the flux at your local welding supply, consult them about the solder for food preparation vessels, melt point of at least 1200 degreesF. The flux you can get at hardware stores, drug stores (sometimes), and your local supplier of chemicals for school science labs. The actual soldering is tricky, burnish the stainless steel parts, mix the borax powder with water and apply to the joint, bring entire joint up to temperature, the borax will melt. Don't get the joint to hot (easier said than done, with stainless steel), to hot and the solder will ball up and roll right off. Some old timers will wrap the solder wire around the joint and heat indirectly until the solder sweats into the joint making a very nice fillet. The key is to not oxidixe the surface that the flux has cleaned, direct heat from a flame WILL oxidise. Regards, Mac Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 09:51:47 EDT From: tmr at fjtld.att.com Subject: Re: Purging Keg Headspaces Although Chris Cook writes about purging kegs with CO2, I have been doing this with my secondary fermenter to eliminate any risk of wort oxidation. Before racking from the primary to the secondary, I fill my 5 gallon glass carboy with CO2 using a small 2 or 3 inch long CO2 "charger" used in making carbonated water. I place the cartridge into the empty water container, tighten the cartridge to puncture it and then squeeze the lever on the bottle to release all the CO2 into the secondary. With a carboy I use a rubber or vinyl tube long enough to reach the bottom of the carboy. Since the CO2 is denser than air it should fill up from the bottom upwards, diplacing the air on top as it fills. Then when racking, the wort is transferred into the secondary under a blanket of CO2 avoiding any contact with air. I also use this technique when adding priming sugar/DME. I purge whatever air I can out of the primary plastic pail with the CO2 bottle. In this case I don't need any tube. Just fire the CO2 into the secondary starting all the way at the bottom. I don't know how well this works since I can't see the CO2 in the fermenters, but it seems like it should work. Maybe I'll lower a match or candle into the CO2 filled pail and see at what level the flame goes out. Tom Romalewski Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 09:06:00 -0600 From: Kelly Jones <k-jones at ee.utah.edu> Subject: Troubleshoot my dry hopping! Recently, I tried my first dry hop, and I'm not entirely pleased with the results. In brief, the brew was half of a 10gal batch of American Pale Ale. When secondary was almost complete, I added 1 oz of homegrown cascade, in a weighted nylon stocking, to the carboy. Sunday, after 10 days dryhop, I bottled. I tasted the brew at bottling time, and found a very pronounced excess bitterness. I compared this to the other half of the batch, which had not been dry hopped, and which did not have this bitterness. So, the bitterness was a result of the dryhopping. Questions: Is this simply a temporary bitterness that will soon mellow? Or can dry hopping really add noticeable bitterness? Did I over dryhop? How many IBU's can/should dry hops introduce? By the way, the hop aromatics in the dry-hopped batch are great, so I'd prefer not to reduce the amount of dry hops, but I'm afraid this bitterness may have spoiled an otherwise great ale. Thanks, Kelly Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 10:34:14 -0500 (CDT) From: Paul Boor <PBOOR at BEACH.UTMB.EDU> Subject: Wedding Bells I've been brewing like a madman, the kegs have aged up, and the bride and groom have tasted and decided which two kegs they want to have at the wedding. Now my problem is: How do I set it up at the wedding? I noticed several earlier posting about beer for weddings, so anyone with experience please let me know how it went; specifically: 1) transport:: I was going to haul it over a couple of hours before but is this enough time? 2) temperature:: THIS could be a problem. I was planning on having the kegs in a tub with alittle ice on the bottom and cover the whole thing with a rug or something. I don't want it too cold, etc. 3) Tank:: I'll tape the 5lb CO2 tank to the outside of the tub, I guess, and cover the regulator to protect it. Basically I have the standard 5gal kegs, a 5lb tank, and a regular regulator. Any advise appreciated, paul boor Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 09:46:49 MDT From: bacco at md.fsl.noaa.gov (Corby Bacco) Subject: Apple cider in Boulder area... Hello, Does anyone know of a good source of apple cider suitable for making hard cider in the Boulder area? Are there any apple orchards in the area? Thanks, Corby Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 08:50:32 PDT From: tima at wv.MENTORG.COM (Tim Anderson) Subject: Blow-off Loss and Cherry Juice Norm sez: >Aren't you risking a siphon of potentially contaminated water (or sanitizer) >back into your fermenter? > > blowoff hose > ________ > B____ /________\ > // \\ > || || > || || > _||_ || > / || \ |~||~|---C > | || | | | >A---|~~||~~| | | > | | |____| > | | blowoff bucket > | | > |______| > fermenter > ... If you did it this way, you'd have a bigger problem than sanitizer suck-back. You'd probably blow most of your batch out the hose! The hose goes just into top of the carboy thusly: blowoff hose ________ B____ /__foam__\ // \\ || || || || _||_ || / \ |~||~|---C | foam | | | A---|~~~~~~| | | | | |____| | | blowoff bucket | | |______| fermenter I agree with raising the effluent bucket above the carboy. I put mine on a shelf well above the carboy. In fact, I intend to get a longer hose (maybe 8 feet) so I can put it way up there. Most of the foul goo sticks to the inside of the hose and never makes to the bucket anyway, and I'm hoping I can get back most of the magic liquid that rides along with the foam. Added note: 1" ID hose jammed right into the carboy neck is the only way to go. (But jam it in just a little!) A data point for the cherry juice: Some months back I made a wheat ale with Wyeast Belgian and primed with pure cherry juice. It was just some commercial bottled stuff from a local "natural food" store (no added sugar, preservatives, or camel snot). I didn't have a clue how much to use. It wasn't very sweet, so I used 2 quarts to a 5 gallon batch. Didn't boil, heat, or otherwise incant; Just dumped it in. The carbonation came slowly but in the end was over- carbonated. The result was tasty and surprisingly kriek-like. Were I to do it again, I would use only a quart and resign myself to less cherry flavor. tim Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 11:25:59 -0500 From: bliss at pixel.convex.com (Brian Bliss) Subject: CO2 / mead Chris Cook (cook at cdhf2.gsfc.nasa.gov) writes: >When people say "purge the headspace," what procedures are you following? Being totally anal, blanketing the keg with CO2 before you siphon into it, pressurizing the headspace to 15 PSI and releasing the gas at least 3 times, once with the keg stright up, once tilted to the side (so that the "IN" gas fitting is on top), and once swirling the beer in the keg, to make danm sure you got every last little bit of air out of the headspace. You should at least be this anal if you are going to force carbonate the beer by agitating it - any O2 in the headspace is going to making into solution, and you can easily oxidize 5 gal of beer overnight if you're not careful (If it doesn't taste as good the next morning as it did the night before when you carbonated it, then you did something wrong :-). If you just crank up the pressure and let sit undisturbed for a few days, it's not a big factor... - ----- Paul dArmond <paulf at henson.cc.wwu.edu> writes: >At this point the keg is over pressurized and undercarbonated. The >pressure is 35 psi. If the pressure is vented to dispensing range, the >beer will have large coarse bubbles, foam a lot and go flat quickly. >... >Something odd happens as the storage time increases. The bubbles get >smaller, the beading (trails of bubbles) improves, and the carbonation >lasts longer in the glass. I suspect this is due to the CO2 bonding >(slowly) to things other than water, but you can't prove it by me. This >improvement in the quality of carbonation over time is puzzling, but pleasant. I have definitely noticed this, also. I kind of like the "foamy head, but little CO2 in the beer" effect that happens just after force carbonation via agitation (for dry stouts). It makes for more of a Guinness-like taste. certainly not appropriate in most brews, though. - ----- Keith Hill <khill at eecs.wsu.edu> writes: >I was wondering if anyone wout there has mad mead using fruit? If so >I would like some hints for future batches or help on the following >problem, how to avoid. If you use watermelon, beware that the pith will not dissolve during fermentation; rather, it will float on top, forming a sponge-like layer that easily clogs blowoff apparati. It also has a red-fireworks effect (much better than anything you've seen on the 4th of july) when the pressure is released. If you figure the carpet cleaning in with the price of the batch, the cost is prohibitive. On the + side, what's left tastes great :-) bb Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 12:50:47 -0400 (EDT) From: drose at husc.harvard.edu Subject: Keg aging Greetings: I have a relatively new keg set up, and I am working on getting a system that works well for me. I have read the recent postings on forced carbonation with interest, but I have an additional question. Everyone suggests shaking vigorously to get the CO2 into solution. However, this would appear to be at odds with another objective, getting the beer to clear. In other words, one is also stirring up sediment when shaking. So, once the keg is carbonated, how long does in need to sit to get a good clear final product? While I try to rack carefully, some stuff invariably comes along for the ride, particularly if I dry hop. Also, will chill haze eventually settle out if I store the kegs cold? How long does this take? Help. Dave Rose. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 13:05:33 EDT From: lyons%adc1 at swlvx2.msd.ray.com Subject: Accelerating bottle carbonation? Paul dArmond posted an answer to the question on forced carbonation in kegs (HBD #1234): > ... >cubes. CO2 is pretty soluble, but not instantly so. Nor does it difuse >rapidly through the beer. The disolving takes place only at the >gas/liquid interface, so the amount of surface area is important. > >There are several implications to these facts. > ... >3) An upright motionless keg presents the least surface area and thus >provides the worst conditions for carbonation. Does this imply that bottled beer would carbonate faster if placed on its side rather than upright? Anyone have a data point? Chris Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 12:32:24 -0500 (cdt) From: Jonathan G Knight <KNIGHTJ at AC.GRIN.EDU> Subject: oatmeal stout extract, mash HSA Jim, my e-mail to you bounced. William's Brewing is a big mail-order outfit in San LEandro CA. Their malt/ oat extract syrup, Oatmeal Dark, is one I used with great success last year. You can add more specialty grain or extract if you want (I did) but I imagine it's pretty good just by itself too. (I have no finacial or other blahblahblah I'm just a yakkityyakkity O.K.? Enough of that.) Here's yet another partial-mash question, raised by the recent thread on aeration (bad) of the mash. If I use the colander to strain/sparge my grains into the brew pot, am I not then subjecting the mash to Hot Side Aeration?? How hard should I work to avoid this? Jonathan Knight Grinnell Iowa Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 14:01:56 EDT From: uszvnrl6 at ibmmail.COM Subject: Hydrometer rea - ----------------------- Mail item text follows --------------- I'm new the the HBD and homebrewing for that matter, but I figure that someone out there has probably wanted to do this before. I would like to record temperature and gravity readings using my personal computer. What I need is a way of obtaining a hydrometer reading that can be modified, or already provides an 8/16 bit output. I'm not sure if there are comercially available "electronic" hydrometers, or if what I will have to do is attach a carbon strip to the scale of the hydrometer, and read a resistance to determine the gravity. If I use the resistance method, I need to find someplace that makes a beer scale hydrometer that has a rather large distance between units of measure. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. response via E-Mail or HBD is acceptable. Don Zickefoose Electronic Systems Engineer InterBold internet: USZVNRL6 at ibmmail.com compuserve: 71155,220 Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 13:34:40 -0500 From: holloway at ezmail1.ucs.indiana.edu (Jan Holloway) Subject: Brewpubs in Dartmouth, NH? Need info by 9/30 Greetings, brewlist. A friend is going to Dartmouth, NH, on Thursday and needs your recommendations for local microbreweries/brewpubs. He's leaving Indiana Thursday, so we need your inspiration post-haste! If you want to reply to me, please write to holloway at indiana.edu. We who are staying behind in Indiana thank you. --Jan Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 13:47 CDT From: korz at iepubj.att.com Subject: Louis Vierling Louis-- Can't reach you via email -- please call me some evening at 708-430-HOPS -- sorry for the bandwidth. Al. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 11:58:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Domenick Venezia <venezia at zgi.com> Subject: Mash temperature drop I have seen little about acceptable temperature drops during mashing. There is much about target and strike temps, however I'm looking for an indication of how much of a temperature drop is acceptable over the course of a mash. So, for a single step infusion with a target of 153F what is an acceptable temperature drop over an hour? Can one average the temp over the mash and then assume that the conversion characteristics are actually those found with a mash of the average temp. For example, if I start at 156F, and drop to 150F over an hour is it safe to assume that I would have gotten the same result with a constant 153F? Domenick Venezia ZymoGenetics, Inc. venezia at zgi.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1993 13:30:15 -0600 (MDT) From: COYOTE <SLK6P at cc.usu.edu> Subject: Utah Brewpubs There are four brewpubs in the land of 3.2 beer and the Osmond family :( The biggest in Wasatch brewery in Park City. About 1/2-1hr up from Salt Lake. Worth the visit just to see the location. Beautiful! They have a number of brews. I would recommend the Slickrock. Light, hoppy, hazy. Good afternoon brew. Ale. Usually pretty good. Recently has been excellent. Malty. Slightly browned amber. Good heady/hoppy. Stout. I used to love this stuff till I started making better stouts Used to seem very thick and creamy. Now...I've had ones I could walk on top of. This would be a swimmer! Seasonals...You may still catch the Rasberry. I think it's slickrock with rasberry extract added. Pretty good though. Holiday ales, christmass ale, fall bock...depends on what they are up to at the time. There is a Light beer now. Watered down slickrock is my guess. ugh. I have not known them to have the "best quality control" but hey....it's a brewpub not Miller! It is the only bottler you could take with you from Utah. Squatter. Salt Lake City. Mostly a restaurant which brews too. Hop vines on the patie. Good selection of styles. I don't know what they have going now. They've had a cask-conditioned ale which was quite true to style. Light ales, cream stouts, ambers...Generally nice beer. More adventurous and willing to bring out the flavors of a style, rather than catering to "american beer" style consumers. That's a very good thing! (ps. that should read SQUATTERS) Ebeneezers. Ogden Utah. An hour north of salt lake. A wonderfully built log cabin housing a classy restaurant. Oh by the way, they brew beer upstairs too. Haven't tried the food, but the 4 beers we sampled were...well... played pretty safe. Their setup looks very nice and clean...but being the extreme hop-head I am, I felt the brews were lacking. The pub has only been open a couple of years, and I hit it early on so maybe things have changed. A worthy place to visit all in all. They had a light, amber, stout...and a specialty, which changes. That may all have changed by now. (oh..it was a lager at the time) ????Can't remember the name. In Price Ut. A few hours south of Salt Lake. Never been there. Never had their beer. Seen the label on a bottle. Looked nice. Don't know what the inside was like. But I liked the homebrew toot refilled it with! And finally for the more adventurous... The Coyote Brewery in Logan UT. Run my....none other than.... The Wyllie-Man himself. Fresh brewed beer on tap in a senic basement lounge decorated in the fashion of the Lambic breweries. All spiders intact. Even the aggressive house spiders! An ever changing array of tastes to delight. IPA's, Malty ambers, hoppy bitters, Creamy stouts, Potable Porters... and the occasional experimental adventures... Fruits, spices, one of the latest being a Pepper Cardamon corrupted Scotch Ale (90 shilling). The Pumpkin Mash will begin it's life with the full moon! (really...if you're passing through northern Ut. drop me a line. We have the biggest vendor of Wasatch beers (other than their home) here in town, the White Owl tavern. Nothing like an Owl burger on the deck friday afternoon with a Big Dog of Ale. Summers gone, the trees are alive!) **** PS: I don't have any affilition with any of the breweries, except my own! And sharing the kinship of the many other mini breweries found in basements and closets all over this little valley!!! ****** *********** John (The Coyote) Wyllie SLK6P at cc.usu.edu 801-753-0825 ********* Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 19:57:00 +0000 From: ron_hall%80 at hp6400.desk.hp.com Subject: Smoked Porter I would like to make a Smoked Porter similar to the wonderful stuff put out by the Alaskan Beer Co. and Greg Noonan's brewery. I would like to smoke my own grain, but I have heard or read widely varied recipes on how to do this. TCJOHB recommends 1 lb. of smoked 2-row for their Smokey the Beer recipe, and suggests doing it on a brass screen on the BBQ. I seem to remember a winning recipe from the national AHA convention that used 4-5 lbs. of smoked grain for a 5 gallon batch. Any experiences out there? I guess the plan for now is to use 2 lbs. of 2-row, fire up the Weber, add some Alder chips (that seems to be the smoker's wood of choice here in the Pacific NW), place the grain on a screen or cookie sheet, cover and wait until deep roasted color prevails. Any advice? Ron Hall Corvallis, Oregon ron_hall at hp6400.desk.hp.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 15:05 CDT From: korz at iepubj.att.com Subject: Re: heating SS/Keg Forced Carbonation Confusion/Campden Blowoff Paul writes: >I've used Safety-Silv 1200 to braze numerous bicycle frames, without a joint >failure, so it provides a fairly strong joint. I use either Mapp gas with >a Turbo head or one of those propane/oxygen setups from the h/w store. As >you probably can guess the brazing rod melts in the 1200 deg F range. >I've read that prolonged heating of SS above 1200-1400 degrees can cause >it to become brittle, so be careful. I'd suggest practicing on the >portion of the keg you've cut off. I once got a hold of a Cornelius keg which I was told was legal, but in retrospect, I'm quite sure wasn't. The source was a guy from one of the homebrew clubs who said he got a dozen kegs from an aluminum recycler and that they had been released by the owners. The kegs still had the: "WARNING: PROPERTY OF PEPSI COLA BOTTLERS OF ILLINOIS" or some such statment. I tried removing this label by pulling, but that's not a good way. Then, I thought, hey, why don't I burn it off with a propane torch? The label burned off quite nicely, but in the process, the SS glowed red-hot. Upon cooling, the metal was dark brown and rough. On the inside of the keg, there was a rainbow colored area, right where I had been heating. I never ended up using that keg and I think it just started to rust in that heated area. The bottom line is that I think that it's possible to ruin a SS keg by overheating, even with a simple propane torch (no oxygen other than that in the air). ************************ In response to John McCafferey's keg carbonation/dispensing pressure confusion: John "Cisco" and I are still working this issue. We'll report shortly on our findings. ************************ Johnathan writes: >Anyway, in #1231 Aaaron Morris recommends Campden tablets in the blowoff >bucket. What does the campden do? I've never heard of this. The campden tablets sanitize the water in the blowoff bucket. I believe they are Sodium or Potassium Metabisulfite. I'm quite sure the intent is to sanitize the water in case the cooling of the wort sucks blowoff water up the blowoff tube into the fermenter. Since I've switched to 1.25" OD, 1" ID blowoff hoses, there's no fear of this happening, so I just use plain water. You could just as well use boiling water in the blowoff bucket if you wish since after 24 hours, the gas that the campden tablets make (I forget which it is -- some sulfur-compound) has fizzled-out and anything that wants to live in your bucket can, so boiling water would work just as well and is cheaper. I strongly recommend that you use an oversized tube for blowoff (ideally, 1" ID) to avoid clogging and explosions. I might also add, that I'm still debating (with myself) on whether to use blowoff or not anymore (fear of lost head-retaining proteins). Al. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 93 14:26:45 -0400 From: Philip J Difalco <sxupjd at anubis.fnma.COM> Subject: Cellar Notes: Radio Program Hugh Sisson & Al Spoler (of Sisson's, The South Baltimore Brewing Co.) can be heard on WJHU, Baltimore Public Radio, 88.1 FM, every Wednesday at 8:25PM and Sunday at 12:55PM. The show explores various topics in the areas of beer, and at some point is supposed to develop into a Q&A call-in program. - --- email: sxupjd at fnma.com (NeXT Mail Okay) Philip DiFalco, Senior SomethingOrOther, Advanced Technology FannieMae, 3900 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington, DC 22016 (202)752-2812 Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #1235, 09/28/93