HOMEBREW Digest #176 Wed 14 June 1989

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

Contents:
  Brewing with Fruit. (bryan)
  Mead et al. (Dave Sheehy)
  Brew Humor (Steve Anthony)
  Re: Homebrew Digest #154 (May 19, 1989) (Bob Dromeshauser)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 13 Jun 89 09:53:03 PDT (Tue) From: bryan%tekgen.bv.tek.com at RELAY.CS.NET Subject: Brewing with Fruit. Hi! I'm a new brewer who became inspired to brew through reading this digest. My first brew turned out to be a nice light pale ale. O.G. of 54, T.G. of 5. This seemed pretty low, but it's O.K. I used 2 cans of Alexanders Sun Country and 1 # of 20 l. Crystal malt for my malt. We have some frozen strawberries and rasberries from last year that my wife is willing to let me brew with. They still taste fine, just are mushy from being frozen. I'd like to brew a fruit ale using my first recipe and adding the fruit. I assume the fruit is put in during the boil. For a 5 gallon batch I did a 90 minute boil, starting with 3 gallons and boiling to 2 gallons. How much fruit do I use and when do I add it to the boil? The liquid yeasts I have access to are the W'yeast products. Which yeast should I use? Anything special I need to do to brew with fruit? Thanks, Bryan Olson bryan at tekgen.UUCP Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 89 10:35:44 PDT From: Dave Sheehy <dbs at hprnd> Subject: Mead et al. Full-Name: Dave Sheehy More Fuel for the Fire ====================== Erik Henchal writes: > Excuss me a minute, while I flame. 1) Hops and that other herb > to which you are referring, besides being plants, are not > related. 2) Why would you put anything in beer or encourage > others to use ingredients which contribute negatively to the > flavor and natural aroma of beer? 3)If you want to use drugs, go > ahead. But if you want to brew REAL beer, use only hops, malt, > water and yeast. Following is an entry from one of my gardening catalogs (quoted without permission): "_Humulus_Lupulus_ 'Hops' Cannabaceae. Hardy perennial vine grown for the bitter, sedative resinous flowers. Flavouring herb in beer, yet few realize that the mellow effect of beer is not merely from alcohol but is an herbal property of the hop resins. Aggressive climber. pkt $2.50" Return to table of contents
Getting Started =============== Paul A. Ebersman writes: >I am just getting into the idea of brewing my own beer, and would appreciate >pointers as to: > >1) Instruction/Recipe books worth having > >Thanks in advance. I really think Papazian is hard to beat. It's not too hard to interpolate everything you need to do (hell, I did it!). Even better, once you've gotten that first batch under your belt, his recipes are a great place to start exploring the different types of beer. The sheer entertainment value of his writing style (while still getting the information across) makes it worth having. Return to table of contents
Mead ==== Florian Bell writes: >I'm preparing to make my first batch of mead. Some of the recipes I've >read call for hops. Others call for various herbs. Using hops in a >wine-like drink doesn't sound appealing to me. Has anyone experimented >with hops in mead? Would you do it again? What kind did you use? >Thanks. I've made one batch of mead according to Papazian's recipe for Barckshack Gingermead. I used Cascade hops as listed in the recipe. The only additional ingredient I added was some cinnamon which was added at bottling time after half of the mead had already been bottled. As of this writing the mead is 6 months old. Although it says to wait 12 months before sampling it also says you can cheat and taste it after 6 months in order to get an idea what you've gotten yourself into. And taste it I did (along with several other homebrewing companions of course!). Although still tannic we agreed that it held promise. It does come out a bit dry, I think on purpose. I suspect that Papazian may have adjusted the published recipe on the dry side so that if you want it sweeter you just add more honey next time. I get that feeling from the way it turned out and from the text preceding the recipe. I'm definitely going to make the next batch a little sweeter. Also someone (who's name I can't deciper) writes: >which were boiled for an hour. I used champagne yeast and clover/wildflower >honey from a friend's bees. I bought my honey at the local farmers' market from a beekeeper. Once I told him what I wanted 7 lbs of honey for he launched into story about how he used to live in Canada and all the locals (Canuks?) used to make mead all the time and how a pleasant time was had by all. He set me up with some light honey (I can't remember what type or if I even wrote it down). >This mead was virtually undrinkable up to 1 year >in the bottle. It's now two and 1/2 years old and much better -- very dry, a >beautiful color and quite intoxicating in small amounts. It's not bad for a >first try. But I wish now that I had started with the basics, so I know what >the contributions of various ingredients are. Looking back, I threw in just >about everything. As I said before, half of my batch is basic and the other half has some cinnamon in it. Although it's only 6 months old I wouldn't describe it as undrinkable. It will be interesting to see what another 6 months aging does for the flavor. I sampled a bottle of each and must say that I probably didn't put enough cinnamon into the second half of the batch. > >My second batch was patterned after a recipe I took out of the contest >recipes in Zymurgy. It was a grape/honey mixture (a Riesling pyment) and I >think of it more as a wine than a mead. It seemed to mature more quickly and >is very pleasing. No hops this time -- whether that is responsible for >the early maturation, I don't know. Please publish your recipes. I only have the one from Papazian's book. > >MEAD, and not a wine. My biggest problem is not knowing anyone nearby who >makes meads, so I can do the necessary research in less than 5 years. I hope >that changes when I move in the fall. We may not be close, but if there are enough people interested perhaps we can collaborate (is it legal to ship homebrew across state lines? :-). A year is a long time to see if you're latest experiment turned out. I sampled mine at 6 months so I could start another batch and have something to go on other than enthusiasum and anticipation. Dave Sheehy ----------- Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 89 15:07:46 EDT From: Steve Anthony <steveo at Think.COM> Subject: Brew Humor The following is a copy of a Dave Barry article, where he recounts his experiences with home brewing. This was copied without any permission whatsoever, other than that it's funny and this forum might enjoy it. A BOY AND HIS HOBBY Recently, I began to feel this void in my life, even after meals, and I said to myself: ``Dave, all you do with your spare time is sit around and drink beer. You need a hobby.'' So I got a hobby. I make beer. I never could get into traditional hobbies, like religion or stamp collecting. I mean, the way you collect stamps is: Every week or so the Postal Service dreams up a new stamp to mark National Peat Bog Awareness Month, or whatever, and you rush down and clog the Post Office lines to buy a batch of these stamps, but instead of putting them to a useful purpose, such as mailing toxic spiders to the Publishers Clearing House, you take them home and just sort of *have* them. Am I right? Have I left any moments of drama out of this action sequence? And then the *biggest* thrill, as I understand it, the real *payoff*, comes when you get lucky and collect a stamp on which the Post Office has made a *mistake*, such as instead of ``Peat Bog'' it prints ``Beat Pog'', whiuch causes stamp collectors to just about wet their polyester pants, right? So for many years I had no hobby. When I would fill out questionaires and they would ask what my hobbies were, I would put ``narcotics'', which was of course a totally false humorous joke. And then one day, my editor took me to a store where they sell beer-makeing equipment. Other writers, they have editors who inspire them to new heights of literary achievement, but the two major contributions my editor has made to my artistic development are (1) teaching me to juggle and (2) taking me to his beer-making store where a person named Craig gave me free samples until he could get a hold of my Visa card. But I'm glad I got into beer-making, because the beer sold here in the United States is sweet and watery and lacking in taste and overcarbonated and just generally the lamest, wimpiest beer in the entire known world. All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow. This is why American TV beer commercials are so ludicrously masculine. It's a classic case of overcompensation. You may have seen, for example, the Budweiser or Miller commercial where some big hairy are standing around on the side of a river when a barge breaks loose and starts drifting out of control. Now *real* men, who drink *real* beer, would have enough confidence in their own masulinity to say: ``Don't worry; it's probably insured.'' But the men in the commercial felt this compulsion to go racing off on a tugboat and capture the barge with big hairy ropes, after which they make excited masculine hand gestures at each other to indicate they have done a task requiring absolute *gallons* of testosterone. Then they go to a bar where they drink Miller or Budweiser and continue to reassure themselves that they are truely a collection of major stud horses, which is why you don't see any women around. The women have grown weary of listening the men say: ``Hey! We sure rescued THAT barge, didn't we?!'' And: ``You think it's easy, to resure a barge? Well, it's NOT!'' and, much later at night: ``Hey! Let's go let the barge loose again!'' So the women have gone off in search of men who make their own beer. Some of you may be reluctant to make your own beer, because you've heard stories to the effect that it's difficult to make, or it's illegal, or it makes you go blind. Let me assure you that these are falsehoods, especially the part about making you go bleof nisdc dsdf,sdfkQ$$%''%. Ha Ha! Just a little tastless humor there, designed to elicit angry letters from liberals. The truth is, homemade beer is perfectly safe, unless the bottle explodes. We'll have more on that if space permits. Also, it's completely legal to make beer at home. In fact, as I read the current federal tax laws - I use a strobe light - if you can make your own beer, you can claim a tax credit of up to $4,000, provided you claim you spent it on insulation! And it's easy to make your own beer: You just mix your ingredients and stride briskly away. (You may of course vary this recipe to suit your own personal taste.) Your two main ingredients are (1) a can of beer ingredients that you get from Craig or equivalent person, and (2) yeast. Yeast is a wonderful little plant or animal that, despite the fact that it has only one cell, has figured out how to convert sugar to alcohol. This was a far greater accomplishment than anything we can attribute to giant complex multicelled organisms such as, for example, the Secretary of Transportaion. After the little yeats are done converting your ingredients into beer, they die horrible deaths by the millions. You shouldn't feel bad about this. Bear in mind this is *yeast* we're talking about, and there's plenty more available, out on the enormous yeast ranches of the Southwest. For now, your job is to siphon your beer into bottles. This is the tricky part, because what can happen is the phone rings and you get involved in a lengthy conversation during which your son, who is 4 1/2, gets a hold of the hose and spews premature beer, called ``wort'', all over the kitchen and himself, and you become the target of an investigation by child welfare authorities because yours is the only child who comes to preschool smelling like a fraternity carpet. But that's the only real drawback I have found, and the beer tastes delicious, expect of course on those rare occasions when it explodes. Which leads us to another advantage: If you make your own beer, you no longer need to worry about running out if we have a nuclear war of sufficient severity to close the commercial breweries Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 89 16:12:25 CDT From: rdromesh at ub.D.UMN.EDU (Bob Dromeshauser) Subject: Re: Homebrew Digest #154 (May 19, 1989) Please remove me from this bulletin board. Thank you rdromesh Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #176, 06/14/89
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