HOMEBREW Digest #1302 Mon 20 December 1993

Digest #1301 Digest #1303


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


Contents:
  Al again? (Barry Nisly)
  yards & 1/2 yards ("Daniel K. Yee")
  Re: Flat Dinosaurs, BJCP,etc. (Chuck Cox)
  Samual Smith's quest (Bill A. Danforth)
  raspberry flavoring (LLAPV)
  Pike Place cask-conditioned ale ("when the cold winds blow, it'll ease your mind  17-Dec-1993 1611 -0500")
  Re: #1(2) Homebrew Digest #12... (pblshr)
  a holiday cider recipe... (Nick Cuccia)
  crown-capping champagne bottles (Dick Dunn)
  Re : Cheap do-it-yourself kegging system... (Conn Copas)
  Brewery Geo/High Grav Brewing/Topping Up the 2ndary (John Eustace)
  Receipe for Belgian White Beer (Celis White Clone) (yeebot)
  Secondary in Stainless Probs (Phil Brushaber)
  RE: Hydrometers and SG (Bill Szymczak)
  White Plastic Homebrew Keg? (bcyr)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Dec 93 12:44:55 PST From: barry at odf.UCSD.EDU (Barry Nisly) Subject: Al again? Regarding the recent (eternal?) discussion of aluminum stock pots, I found this while leafing through the William's Brewing Catalog: Stainless steel is neutral to acidity, which means it will not react with the relatively acid wort. Aluminum, on the other hand, will react with any acid food, be it wort or tomato sauce, possibly contributing to off- flavor development, particularly in lighter flavored beers. Though aluminum is economical and usable in a pinch, it should not be purchased for use in brewing. FWIW. No affiliation - just a satisfied customer. Now if I only had $160 for that 38 qt Vollrath... Barry bnisly at ucsd.edu Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 93 15:34:01 -0500 From: "Daniel K. Yee" <yee at a1.relay.upenn.edu> Subject: yards & 1/2 yards Hi all, I've been thinking of getting a yard or 1/2 yard beer glass (with stand) for my brother as a birthday gift. What are the best deals out there? Thanks in advance. Dan "Sven" Yee Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 93 15:25:55 EST From: chuck at synchro.com (Chuck Cox) Subject: Re: Flat Dinosaurs, BJCP,etc. Marc Hugentobler sez... > > I personally have some questions of the forum many of who seem to be > certified beer judges. Is there any more information about The BJCP exam > available besides the outline available by anonymous ftp? More sample > questions and sample answers would be very helpful. I desperately want > of qualify but find myself confounded by the amount of information. > Personal Insights would also prove valuable. Thanks in advance! > Sounds like a perfect opportunity to plug JudgeNet... - --------------------------- JudgeNet info ---------------------------- JudgeNet - the Beer Judge Digest is an Internet mailing list dedicated to the discussion of issues of interest to beer judges and competition organizers. Anyone with an interest in judging or organizing beer competitions is welcome to join. submissions: judge at synchro.com administrative requests: judge-request@ synchro.com Please send subscription and unsubscription requests to the administrative address. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - -- Chuck Cox <chuck at synchro.com> List Administrator SynchroSystems / Riverside Garage & Brewery - Cambridge, Mass. Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 93 14:18:42 PST From: danforth at trinity.llnl.gov (Bill A. Danforth) Subject: Samual Smith's quest Hello all, I am looking for recipes to make clones of two of Sam. Smith's brews. I would like to brew a Winter Welcome clone and an _Old Brewery Pale Ale_ clone. As I am currently on Paternity leave (a new boy), email to me would be the most preferred way to send me the recipes (cc to HBD would also be cool I think). Thank you very much in advance, Bill Danforth Return to table of contents
Date: Friday, 17 December 93 16:05:25 CST From: LLAPV at utxdp.dp.utexas.edu Subject: raspberry flavoring Howdy, About a week ago I said that I had some hesitations about the fruit flavorings available on the market for homebrews. Well, the raspberry wheat beer that used the flavoring available from St. Patrick's of Texas was entered in the Hill Country Brew-Ha-Ha last month, & I recieved my results yesterday. It actually had very good scores & comments, with positive notes about the raspberry note of the beer. I guess my expectations were a little too high. So I take back what I said. Happy brewin', Alan, Austin Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 93 16:17:56 EST From: "when the cold winds blow, it'll ease your mind 17-Dec-1993 1611 -0500" <ferguson at zendia.enet.dec.com> Subject: Pike Place cask-conditioned ale For those of you who get Brewing Techniques, there was an article in the last issue that featured cask-conditioned ales made by Pike Place Brewing in Seattle. I just happened to be out there on business this week. I called 'em up and asked where they were served. I went down to the 74th Street Ale House and sure enough, it was there - served much like the english style: hand pump at about 50F or so. I enjoyed a few pints of this stuff - great brew, but not quite as nice as the pub cask-conditioned ales served in England. So far, it is the best I've had in the US that approximates the English style c-c ale - perhaps more pubs will ask for this stuff! In addition to that, they had 17 others on tap - this is something us East coasters (at least me!) are not used to! Lots and lots of winter ales, some very nice wheat brews by Hale Brewing (?), etc. Great brews in the Seattle area - local brew was served all over the place, even in the Red Lion hotel bar I stayed at. JC ferguson Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 93 23:13:16 EST From: pblshr at aol.com Subject: Re: #1(2) Homebrew Digest #12... Re: The request for a GIF or PCX of Barney with tire tracks for your "Barney's Flat Oatmeal Stout," America On Line has the file in its graphics library, if you have access to that source. If not, E-mail me, and I'll arrange for some kind of transfer. Tom Finan (member, St. Louis Brews) Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 12:13:07 -0800 From: Nick Cuccia <Nick_Cuccia at Talamasca.Berkeley.CA.US> Subject: a holiday cider recipe... No, not a recipe for cider, but a recipe that uses cider... Nick's White Sauce - ------ ----- ----- 2 cups chicken stock 2 Tbsp flour 1 lb butter 1/4 cup minced mushrooms 2 cups hard cider 1/2 lb minced shallots 1.5 Tb minced tarragon Nutmeg In a double boiler, melt 2 Tbsp of the butter. gradually mixing in flour until well-blended. Gradually add chicken stock, stirring constantly, and place mixture directly on burner on low heat. Stirring constantly, bring to a boil, and continue stirring until sauce starts to thicken. Remove from burner, add mushrooms, and simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally. While the first mixture is simmering, cut the remaining butter into 1T chunks. Mix cider and shallots in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and reduce to a glaze. Remove this pan from heat, and slowly add butter, one piece at a time. The butter should not melt completely; the resulting mix should have the consis- tency of a Bearnease. Add tarragon and set aside. Take the original mixture and strain through a fine sieve into a bowl. Add the shallot/butter mixture and a pinch of nutmeg, and season to taste. This sauce is good on chicken, warm or cold veggies, or as a dipping sauce for bread. Enjoy! - --Nick Return to table of contents
Date: 19 Dec 93 00:46:36 MST (Sun) From: rcd at raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn) Subject: crown-capping champagne bottles Regarding the question (sorry, lost the actual reference) on using sparkling-wine bottles for beer: You can cap American bottles with standard beer-bottle crown caps. American bottles are one size; European bottles are a slightly larger size and won't work. If you're scrounging bottles, you don't usually run across stray Champagne (*real*, as in the particular region of France) bottles, but you're likely to find Spanish bottles from inexpensive stuff like Freixenet or Cordoniu. Specifically, you can *sometimes* manage to cap the European bottles. It depends on the particular capper and caps you're using...you might succeed 99 times out of 100, or you might fail every other bottle. The failure modes I've seen or heard of with European bottles are: - Cap doesn't seat properly, bottle leaks. - Capping breaks off a piece of the crown. The probability of the broken-off piece of glass going into the bottle is equal to the probability that the bread lands on the floor jelly-side-down. - During capping, bottle and cap jam inside capper--leading to dilemma of trying to free bottle without cracking it. (Digression: Sparkling wine bottles are interesting to brewers because they're about twice the capacity of a regular beer bottle, and because they're designed to withstand a lot of pressure.) Empirically, an American sparkling wine, and a beer bottle, seem to have a 27 mm crown. A European sparkling wine bottle seems to be 29 mm at the maximum diameter. This is less than 10% difference, but with some practice you can spot the wrong bottles quickly even if the labels are missing. If the labels are still on, you should be able to get it right away...I've never seen an American bottle of the "wrong" size nor a European bottle of the "right" size. (I'd be glad to know of any counterexamples!) It appears to be strictly national--the American arms of French Champagne houses use American-gauge bottles. (Somebody can probably get a term paper out of that fact!) If you're scrounging lots of bottles, you can easily cut a notch in a block of wood, plastic, etc, to slip over the crown and check the size...getting 2 mm precision isn't hard. Or if you've got a dial caliper (even a cheap one) that will work. --- Dick Dunn rcd at eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado USA ...Simpler is better. Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 14:00:50 GMT From: Conn Copas <C.V.Copas at lut.ac.uk> Subject: Re : Cheap do-it-yourself kegging system... Steven writes about using 2 Cornelius kegs, and no CO2 bottle, as a low-tech means of kegging. My reaction? great to see such innovation. Dave Line actually proposed storing the pressure from the _primary_ fermentation for later use, which would overcome the need to prime with triple the normal quantity. I presume that some commercial brewers must be salvaging their CO2. The idea of using 2 kegs in harness illustrates a more general point: that of the importance of having a relatively large headspace when attempting to dispense using natural conditioning alone. So, in theory, if we had a suitably large keg (say 15 galls), then we could probably dispense 5 galls of brew without ever needing to re-pressurise. Even better if the keg was collapsible, so that atmospheric pressure could maintain a near constant serving pressure. Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 11:51:03 EST From: John Eustace <3JCE1 at QUCDN.QUEENSU.CA> Subject: Brewery Geo/High Grav Brewing/Topping Up the 2ndary Hi All, Thanks to all who responded to my question about pitching to 180 gals. However, I didn't get any response to my query about brewery geometry. Again, I'm interested in any information you might have of the effects kettle geo- metry and fermenter geometry have on the brewing process, from hop utilization to rate of fermentation. Even a list of sources to explore would be helpful. I'd also be interested in more information on High Gravity Brewing. Dr. Fix's article on Diacetyl production in BREWING TECHNIQUES sparked my interest. The idea is to keep FAN levels up by brewing at optimal gravities (1.048) and then diluting the result at bottling. I believe he mentioned this practice in ref- erence to the British Brewing industry. My questions then, have to do with when and how one does such a dilution. For instance, do I do this just before bottling, or when I rack to the secondary? Will the dilution raise the pH of the beer? And if so what effect will that rise have? My final question has to do with topping up the secondary. I've been trying to manage my boils and fermentations such that I have enough beer to fill the se- condary, leaving less than an inch between the fermentation lock and the beer. However, sometimes this doesn't quite work out, and I have to make a choice as to whether or not I should add brewing water at this stage to top up the carboy or leave the space in the carboy and hope the beer is still producing enough CO2 to protect it from oxygen. What is the consensus on this? Is topping up detrimental to the beer or is it at least less harmful than oxygen? TIA and Cheers JE Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 15:40:40 EST From: yeebot at aol.com Subject: Receipe for Belgian White Beer (Celis White Clone) NOTE: PLEASE IGNORE IF ALREADY RECEIVED!!! Good to see a fellow Hoegaarden lover out there! I have a full mash recipe I copied off of AOL that was uploaded by Dr Who2959 (We miss you on AOL; how's GEnie?) who in turn captured it off of the SW Campus of the Homebrew U. BBS Network. It was a conversation between Tony Storz and Steve Daniel (who seems to know Pierre Celis!) that occured at the end of September. I hope I didn't forget anyone/thing. Now for the recipe: Steve writes: I have talked to Pierre and came up with this recipe: 2.25# 2 row 2.25# 6 row 4# unmalted wheat (hard red) 4 grams orange peel 4 grams corriander 1 ounce Hallertau leaf hops As you can see, there is a lot of unmalted wheat to convert, therefore a full mash is needed to make something similar to the real thing. If you are uable to do full mashes, try substituting 5 pounds of plain light extract, and make a mash with 2 pounds each wheat and 6-row. This will not be nearly as wheaty as the real thing, but that's life. Add the crushed spices and all of the hops only 15 minutes before the end of the boil. Stay away from honey and sugar! They are cheap, but not worth tainting the flavor of your beer to save a few pennies. What yeasts to use? Slants of the Celis/Hoegaarden yeast are floating around the homebrewer's community. I think there may be some in the Foam Ranger's Yeast Library. I've heard that Wyeast has a sample of that strain, but they haven't put it into production. If you can't find a white beer yeast or are not ready to make a yeast starter from a slant, you might try the Wyeast Bavarian Wheat Ale yeast. This may be one of my crazier ideas, but I think it might get you closer to Celis than using a regular ale yeast. The Wyeast Wheat Ale yeast haso some Lactobacillus Delbrukii in it which would simulate the secondary lactic fermentation that Pierre and company do. What do the rest of you out there think? P.S. I tried making a white beer yeast starter from some Steendonk dregs, once. It didn't work. He continues: The secret is in the yeast, though. I'm guessing they said to use amylase enzyme in the mash as a supplement. It's not needed in the full mash recipe, but any more than 50% unmalted wheat will need it. Now my caveats: I haven't tried it yet, as I cannot do full mashes right now. I'm starting small/cheap and currently have Papazian's Hoegaarden "clone" (with a few minor variations) bubbling happily away in primary. I have also heard rumors that a lactobacillus bacteria is needed to actually generate something that can called a "clone". As I am VERY interested in someday brewing a true Hoegaarden clone, I would like anybody else thoughts/ideas. Good luck. Keep me informed, I'll tell you how the Pap Wit turns out! Michael Yee/yeebot at aol.com Angst Brewing Co. "Just a glass of wine with dinner, ossifer." Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 17:01:44 CST From: philb at pro-storm.metronet.com (Phil Brushaber) Subject: Secondary in Stainless Probs I've had this problem before and I'm afraid like they used to say in Poldegeist.... It's baaaaack! I know that many of your secondary in stainless steel cornelius kegs. I like to do this as it takes up less space in my lagering refigerator. This summer I encountered this off-taste problem with a couple of American Lager's I brewed, did the primary in glass and then the secondary in stainless. The off-taste is hard to describe. At first I thought it was astringency, but it is more like a yeasty, metallic taste. The taste persists even after filtering through a .5 micron filter. It has happened when I've secondaried in stainless (about 5 total batches) but never when I've secondaried in glass (about 2 batches). Has anyone else had problems developing off-tastes in secondary? Or, I suppose it might be the hops. Has anyone experienced these kind of tastes when using 100% Cascade hops? I really would appreciate your insight. I would rather not be crossing by fingers with each batch. Finally, In case I don't get another chance... A Merry Christmas to all the brewers on HBD. Or as some homebrew wag once suggested. "A Beery Christmas to all, and a Happy New Beer!" - ----- Internet: philb at pro-storm.metronet.com UUCP: metronet.com!pro-storm!philb Bitnet: philb%pro-storm.metronet.com at nosc.mil Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 20:29:40 EST From: bszymcz%ulysses at relay.nswc.navy.mil (Bill Szymczak) Subject: RE: Hydrometers and SG Brian Cole writes >> This means that if a hydrometer has to cover a range of specific >> gravities from 1.000 to 1.100 using a linear scale, there will be >> a 10% error in the measurement from one end of the scale to >> the other (due to the delta_SG**2 term). and Ed Hitchcock responded: >So, why don't they make homebrew hydrometers with a NON-LINEAR >scale? Would that make too much sense? I thought the same thing as Ed, and so I checked my hydrometer and sure enough, the markings are non-linear, with shorter distances between higher gravity levels. And this is the no-frills hydrometer that came with my homebrew starter kit 2 1/2 years ago. Bill Szymczak Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 23:17:34 -0800 From: bcyr%spc.dnet at gpo.nsc.com Subject: White Plastic Homebrew Keg? Fellow Homebrewers, I'm thinking of buying a white plastic 5 gallon keg, that I saw in a local beverage store. The keg is designed for homebrewing and has a small replacable CO2 cartridge that goes inside it. Has anyone tried a homebrew keg similar to this with good (or bad) luck? Thanks in advance, Bryan Lisbon, Maine Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #1302, 12/20/93