HOMEBREW Digest #1619 Sat 31 December 1994

Digest #1618 Digest #1620


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


Contents:
  Grand Cru Request (Jon Olsen)
  Wit beer reflections revisited ("Lee Bussy")
  BBC vs. BBW (Ben Ide)
  Gypsum is not carbonate! ("nancy e. renner")
  STEAM JACKET KETTLE  2 ("rick_ l")
  Smiling Malt Gods (ELQ1)
  Aquarium Air stones (EDGELL)
  blackhawk stout clone? (Peter Mumford)
  Fridges and Shipping Ale (Richard Buckberg)
  Shipping Ale (Richard Buckberg)

****************************************************************** * NEW POLICY NOTE: Due to the incredible volume of bouncing mail, * I am going to have to start removing addresses from the list * that cause ongoing problems. In particular, if your mailbox * is full or your account over quota, and this results in bounced * mail, your address will be removed from the list after a few days. * * If you use a 'vacation' program, please be sure that it only * sends a automated reply to homebrew-request *once*. If I get * more than one, then I'll delete your address from the list. ****************************************************************** 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. FAQs, archives and other files 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: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 02:40:07 +0600 From: olsen at augsburg.edu (Jon Olsen) Subject: Grand Cru Request Greetings. I've been doing some hunting with little luck for a Grand Cru recipe along the lines of Celis. Email please soon. Whatever method. I'm pretty clueless about it and I might have to turn to the Who's in the Garden Grand Cru from TNCJOHB so if any of you've tried it, let me know if it's any good. TIA. olsen at augsburg.edu aka Reaper Man Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 06:09:19 +0000 From: "Lee Bussy" <leeb at southwind.net> Subject: Wit beer reflections revisited I thought I'd drop a note to follow up on my Wit Beer brewing experience. We were discussing the validity of recommending decoction mashing for brewing Belgian Wit beers. My beers have been in the bottle for almost a month and I thought I'd post the results. Two seperate batches were done, one using a decoction mash and the other used a standard step infusion. As I posted then, the decoction mash yeilded 1.006 pts more extract than the standard mash and also produced a more easily handled grainbed in the lauter tun. In a tasting I had last night (which was not a blind one) the decoction brewed Wit was perceptibly (although slightly) darker. Both were still within style for the color. The decocted one also has less of a chill haze although in this style that is not necessarily a plus. The tastes were similar but the decocted one had a slightly maltier taste and a slightly fuller mouthfeel, again, not necessary in a Wit. So, in summary, next time I make a Wit beer I will not kill myself doing it and I will use a modified step-infusion rather than the decoction. I liked the decoction brewed beer better but with consideration towards the final product abd how it relates to style, the step mash is probably the better way to go. Other recipe notes: I used Tangerine peel along with the Orange, very slight taste but perceptible if you know what to look for. 1/2 oz Tangerine and 1 oz Orange peel along with an oz of Corriander were used. I'd use the Tangerine again. I used 15 ml of Lactic acid at bottling and that seemd slightly too much. Next time I'll use 10 (like everyone told me to). The yeast I used was from a culture plated out from a bottle of Steendonk. It was slightly but perceptibly phenolic and next time perhaps I'll use a different one. That's about it. Both were good beers and I look forward to entering them in some competitions to see what the judges think. -Lee Bussy | The Homebrew Television Workshop Presents: | leeb at southwind.net | The 4 Basic Foodgroups... Salt, Fat, Beer & Women | Wichita, Kansas | A Special Documentary on Proper Diet. This Week | Super Brewer! | On your local PBS Station. Check local listings. | Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 09:48:58 -0500 (EST) From: Ben Ide <bide at acad.bryant.edu> Subject: BBC vs. BBW My wife, Sarah, stopped in at the Boston Beer Works yesterday and saw that they had a special double bock named Victory on the menu. When she asked about it her waitress said that it was named to commemorate their recent, and fourth, victory over the Boston Brewing Company in court. My question is: What is the problem? Why have they gone to court with the BBC four times? Is there some sort of grudge between the Boston Beer Works and the Boston Brewing Company? Does any one know the history? -- Ben Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 11:19:54 -0500 (EST) From: "nancy e. renner" <nerenner at umich.edu> Subject: Gypsum is not carbonate! (From *Jeff* Renner) In HBD 1614, Andrew Patrick wrote: >We DO use gypsum for certain styles where a high carbonate water is >desirable, but _only_ for those styles. And dont chuck in 8 tablespoons >of the stuff, you are making BEER, not CHALK, for Pete's sake!! Gypsum is calcium sulphate, chalk is calcium carbonate. Gypsous (sp?) water has gypsum dissolved in it , and is good for pale ales - the calcium for wort acidity with pale malts, and the sulphate for the snappy bitterness is gives with hops. Carbonate water has pH raising carbonate (actually bicarbonate), which is good for balancing the acidity of dark malts in stouts, porters, dunkles, etc. This was originally discovered empirically, when brewers in Dublin, London, Munich, etc. discovered that they could make better dark beers than pale, and those in Burton, Dortmunder, etc. found the reverse. Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan c/o nerenner at umich.edu Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 12:30:25 +0000 From: "rick_ l" <rick_l at nr.infi.net> Subject: STEAM JACKET KETTLE 2 Can any of the professional brewers or researchers out there help me? My friend who is an advanced homebrewer and myself would like to do a production and marketing trial using some of his recipes . If the trial is successful we could progress to some larger more professional equipment. Our goal is turn out a good quality brew with a minimum investment. We have seen K. Boughman's operation at Tumbleweed and were very impressed with the quality of the beer he turns out , especially given his minimum investment in brewing equipment. Kenny's low investment approach to brewing good beer is something we would like to model. Following the model we have located an inexpensive used Groen steam jacketed kettle for a boiler. This kettle is generally used in food service. WILL THIS STEAM JACKETED KETTLE MAKE A GOOD BREW KETTLE? The bottom of the kettle is contoured toward the drain port. It looks like the trub will fall into the drain, making it impossible to remove. We received several good suggestions when we posed this question several weeks ago. They included: use a copper "chore boy" to catch the trub, use a false bottom with hops as a filter, weld a piece of stainless pipe to the inside of the drain to give the trub a space to settle. Unfortunately most of the suggestions were from folks who had never seen a steam kettle .Can someone tell me how the bottom and drain in a real brew kettle are constructed. Is the drain located above the bottom of the kettle to allow space for the trub to settle? Given the steam kettle's drain configuration would it make a good boiler? Any good source for a used stainless 2 bbl boiler ( we tried all the scrap yards) ? Thanks and good brewing Rick Langhorne Blueberry Hill Farm Gibsonville NC rick_l at nr.infi.net Rick Langhorne "The diffusion of knowledge is Blueberry Hill Farm the only guardian of Gibsonville, NC true liberty" 910-449-7246 rick_l at nr.infi.net James Madison Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 94 11:20:23 PST From: ELQ1%Maint%HBPP at bangate.pge.com Subject: Smiling Malt Gods ....So there I was, just getting home after driving 5 hours on Dec. 26 to find my house a mess from our Day after Christmas Earthquake, I run down to my brewing shed and find EVERYTHING in the middle of the floor, and under all this mess I see the top of a carboy sans the air lock, hmmmm.. I try to ponder 'ala Coyote, lets see, that carboy is still full, it was sitting on a upsidedown 5 gal bucket and it just hopped off amid all the crash and clutter and landed bung up, this particular batch took 5 hours to sparge thanks to a gooy infusion, and not even a little earthquake will take this mizzerable batch out. So.... when it stops shaking and und gravity be dropping, I'll bottle this mizzerable miracle batch up! New Years Wish to all of you, May all yours land BUNG UP!! ELQ1 at PGE.COM Ed Quier 707-444-0718 Brewing Live! and bung up, from behind the Redwood Curtain in Eureka Ca. Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 13:55:56 -0600 (CST) From: EDGELL at uwmfe.neep.wisc.edu Subject: Aquarium Air stones HBD, I recently received an aquarium air pump and stuff. I have two questions. 1) With the pump I was given a cubic "air stone" and some cylindrical "air diffusers". Is there any real differrence between the two? 2) These porous air stone/diffusers seem like their small holes would be hard to sterilize. Is boiling the only way to sanitize them well enough for brewing? Thanks, Dana Edgell edgell at uwmfe.neep.wisc.edu - --------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 14:04:32 -0800 (PST) From: Peter Mumford <pmumford at seanet.com> Subject: blackhawk stout clone? greetings Brewers! if anyone wants to brew a pretty good copy of Mendocino's Blackhawk stout, they might try The Homebrewer's Store stout kit. (really, no affiliation) you can order the kit from them (the 800 number is advertized in zymergy) and you get the live yeast culture. but, since they list the ingrediants in their catalog, i'll list them here: 6 lbs dark malt extract. 3lbs crystal malt. 1 lb roasted barley. 1/4 lb chocolate malt. 2oz northern brewer hops & 2 oz cascade. the HBS kit comes with a porter/stout liquid yeast culture, but i used a chico culture from a sierra nevada bottle. maybe this was part of my beer's similarity to blackhawk? the hop schedule is: add 2oz northern brewer, boil half an hour. add 1 & 1/2 oz cascade and boil another 45 min. turn off the heat and finish with 1/2 oz cascade. now i know what your thinking - how can that taste like blackhawk with all that crystal malt? who knows? i dont think any commercial brewery could afford to use so much crystal malt, even in a premium priced brew. but it is a pretty close match, try it yourself. peter mumford Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 15:12:09 -0800 From: Richard Buckberg <buck at well.sf.ca.us> Subject: Fridges and Shipping Ale Peter Misiaszek asked about getting fridges or freezers for brewing. I think you will find that most refridgerators, especially old cheapies, will have a hard time getting down below 40 degrees F. If you wish to lager your beers, you will want to be able to hold a temp below 40, preferrable about 30-32. For that you will need to scrounge a freezer. You will also need a decent temperature controller, since you will get a wider range of temps using the freezer's thermostat. The aftermarket controllers are available in lots of catalogs - let me know if you want a referral to the one I use. Highly recommended. FWIW, off the Net I scrounged a good working fridge (for storing bottled beer) for $30, and got a good working freezer for free. Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 15:15:16 -0800 From: Richard Buckberg <buck at well.sf.ca.us> Subject: Shipping Ale I forgot to ask this question before sending off the other note to the Digest: Has anyone ever sent homebrew to England from the states? What are the rules regarding shipping it? Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #1619, 12/31/94