HOMEBREW Digest #245 Wed 06 September 1989

[Prev HBD] [Index] [Next HBD] [Back]


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


Contents:
  re:  SG adjustments (Darryl Richman)
  Misc. Meanderings (Doug Roberts  at  Los Alamos National Laboratory)
  Mashing (kipps)

Send submissions to homebrew%hpfcmr at hplabs.hp.com Send requests to homebrew-request%hpfcmr at hplabs.hp.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 2 Sep 89 07:41:48 PDT From: Darryl Richman <darryl at ism780c.isc.com> Subject: re: SG adjustments From: ephram at violet.berkeley.edu ">and on Doug Roberts (HBD #236) "> "> (T x 1.449E-4 - 0.009) + SG(uncorrected) = SG(corrected) " "This formula does not hold true for 60 degrees F. For 60 F I get a correction "factor of -0.000306, decidedly not 0 as it should be for a hydrometer "calibrated to read acurateley at 60. I plotted the function using data "points that I got out of the back of Byron Burch's Brewing quality Beers. "The function that I was looking at was decidedly _not_ linear. My goodness! Do you really think that your measurements are accurate beyond 3 places on a hydrometer? (On my hydrometer, SG is marked off in increments of .002, which means that I can only hope to read accurately to about .001). Also, consider the size of the hair we are splitting here: .0003 difference in OG corresponds to about .075% sugar in solution. When fermented perfectly, half of this will go to alcohol. My 3 scale hydrometer will definitely not allow me to measure the difference. In fact, the owner of the shop I go to, who also owns a Ventura county winery, has an ebulometer (a professinal lab device for measuring alcohol content by distillation), and it is only good for 2 decimal places. --Darryl Richman Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 89 19:49:14 MDT From: roberts%studguppy at LANL.GOV (Doug Roberts at Los Alamos National Laboratory) Subject: Misc. Meanderings 1. In my most previous posting I asked if anybody had experience with "Clara Pils", a source of dextrine. I meant, of course, "Cara Pils". I still like the name "Clara Bell" for the recipe, though. 2. Mackeson: I tried the following recipe (recently re-posted by Marty Albini) a few years ago: Mashing Recipe 5 gal, OG 1040, FG 1008-1010 5 lb pale ale malt 1/2 lb crystal malt 1/2 lb roast black malt 1 lb soft brown sugar 1 3/4 oz Fuggle hops and I _didn't_ like the results. First, now that I am a little more experienced, I will never again make a batch with brown sugar as an ingredient (a little honey or molasses, perhaps, but not caramelized refined sugar). Second, the recipe, at least as I made it, bore absolutely no resemblence to thick, rich, sweet Mackeson. It was a thin, cidery (thanks to the brown sugar) sorry imitation. Your milage may vary, etc. etc.. 3. Linearity, or non-lin. regarding temp vs. specific gravity relationships for beer wort in the range of 50 - 130 F: I'll go back to school on this one & give my official Chem. Eng. opinion (yes, I actually used to be a Chem E., before computers became my sole professional occupation), in a few days. I'll dig out some old references that should tell us what the true story is. 4. More BEER recipes! I'm just having so much fun now that I'm making brew again I can hardly contain myself.... A year or so ago I went to a party where the host had about 20 different types of _good_ beer. One of them was a German _Malz Bier_. It was _delicious_! If any of you have had Malz beer, you know that it has a wonderful sweet, malty, full-bodied flavor, achieved, I suppose, with dextrin & crystal. Anyhow, working on that assumption, I cooked up the following recipe last night: 7# light syrup 2# Cara Pils (dextrin malt) 2# light crystal 1# extra rich crystal 1/2 oz Hallertauer hops (5.0% Alpha acids) 1.0 oz Willamette hops (4.5% AA) 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp Citric acid, 1 tsp yeast nutrient 1 TBL Irish Moss 11.5 oz Edme Yeast I mashed the cara & crystal malts for 2 hours at 140 F, then sparged to about 4 gallons. Then, added the syrup & Hallertauer hops. Boiled for 30 minutes, and added the Irish Moss. Then boiled for 30 more minutes and decanted to the primary where I added the salt, citric, nutrient & Willamette Hops (dry hopping, I believe this technique is called). Willamette, BTW, is a wonderful aromatic hops. The intent is to have all or most of the dextrin & caramelized maltose remain after fermentation for the Malz Bier taste & body. I'll let you know in a few months if it worked. In the meantime, if anybody has experience with Malz Bier recipes, please let me know. 5. Has this ever happened to anyone else? I racked my Clara Bell batch from the primary to the secondary day before yesterday. The head had just fallen after a healthy, vigorous initial fermentation. However, I noticed the next day that fermentation had completely stopped. I've experienced this before where racking seems to shock the yeast temporarily (up to a few days), and then fermentation resumes. I'm always careful to let the wort cascade down the side of the glass carboy to minimize oxygentation, and I always make sure to syphon a big slug of yeast with the wort in an attempt to assure continuous fermentation. However, about half the time I notice that fermentation comes to a complete halt for up to 3 or 4 days, after which it slowly resumes. Any ideas? Well, this should be enough ramblings for one evening. --Doug ================================================================ Douglas Roberts | Los Alamos National Laboratory |When choosing between two evils, Box 1663, MS F-602 |I always like to try the one Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 |I've never tried before. (505)667-4569 | dzzr at lanl.gov | ================================================================ Return to table of contents
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 89 11:54:34 -0700 From: kipps at etoile.ICS.UCI.EDU Subject: Mashing I'm about to try mashing for the first time :-) using a 33 qt enamel pot as the mashing tun. Now, I've read about a number of different techniques for adapting the boiling pot for mashing, i.e., from a heated oven, to a stove, to a styrofoam container, but I've thought of another way that I haven't read about. Why not emerse the pot in a sink of water? It seems like an easy way to control the temperature surrounding the mash. Has anyone tried this before or know of a good reason not to? -Jim Kipps Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #245, 09/06/89 ************************************* -------
[Prev HBD] [Index] [Next HBD] [Back]
HTML-ized on 06/29/00, by HBD2HTML version 1.2 by K.F.L.
webmaster at hbd.org, KFL, 10/9/96