HOMEBREW Digest #2853 Mon 19 October 1998
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: janitor@hbd.org
Many thanks to the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers of
Livonia, Michigan for sponsoring the Homebrew Digest.
URL: http://www.oeonline.com
Contents:
Northern California Home Brewer's Festival (Charles Burns)
Recently threadless topic (PAUL W HAAF JR)
Crunchy frog lager ("Richard Hooper")
RE: Bridging from Homebrewer to Brew Pub or MicroB ("S. Wesley")
Haafbrau1: Forgot to cross the T (PAUL W HAAF JR)
RE: Large Fermenters (follow up) ("S. Wesley")
Poor head ("charles beaver")
Whirling in a 1/2 bbl? (MaltHound)
GFI/Acids in Beer/Acid in Soda/Hydro/Tannin (AJ)
THANKS (Henry Paine)
RIMS Heat Source Suggestions (Jean-Sebastien Morisset)
More GFCI ("John A. MacLaughlin")
mushrooms & homebrew (Mike Allred)
CO2 Cylinder ROCKETS!!! ("Robert G. Poirier, Jr.")
Re: Ginger (Tim Anderson)
Yeast pitching temp / sanitation ("George De Piro")
Beer is our obsession and we're late for therapy!
Send your entries in for 3rd Annual Music City Brew-Off yet?
Details: http://www.theporch.com/~homebrew
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 98 17:12 PDT
From: caburns at egusd.k12.ca.us (Charles Burns)
Subject: Northern California Home Brewer's Festival
The Road to Napa
Dave Brattstrom and I decided to go down together. Since I was only going to
spend the day Saturday and return and Dave was off to Chicago that evening
for the Real Ale Festival and 100 cask conditioned ales, it made sense to go
in one car. Dave was kind enough to drive while I got to do some sight
seeing for once.
I arrived at Dave's house out in the boondocks around Plymouth at 8:30 AM
with 2 kegs and various bottles. Dave and Dawne had a nice cup of tea and
belgian waffle waiting for me. Yummy. We loaded the car with Dave's stuff
(he'd sent 3 kegs ahead the day before) and off we went. Since Dave was
driving and he'd just heard about some new barleywines at Corti Bros, we
just had to stop there. I can't tell you how much $$ he spent on 14 bottles
of beer, but some of those barleywines are 9 years old.
Off we go back on the freeway again. We got to talking about golf and Dave
describes this game of death valley desert golf. Get a 4 wheel drive
vehicle, start at one end of death valley. Drive a few miles, pick a big
rock or cactus as the next hole, get out and start hitting a tennis ball
with your driver. Hey, Kevin, sounds like fun for our next group activity -
a desert best ball scramble! Of course you've got to down a few homebrews
before starting.
We stopped at Pedricks Produce market off the freeway around Dixon. Picked
up some pistacios, dried mango and another big bag of chips. Our plan was to
arrive at Napa around 10:00, made it about 11:30. Added my 12 gallons to the
biggest pile of homebrew I've ever seen and proceeded to trash my tastebuds
with Gary's 115 IBU rocket fuel.
I had a lot of fun, saw some old buddies (hi Randy and Dan and...) drank
some good beer and wished like hell I could have stayed the night. Next year.
Charley (drooling over these 14 bottles of Dave's barleywine in my pantry)
in N.Cal
Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 14:42:17 -0400
From: haafbrau1 at juno.com (PAUL W HAAF JR)
Subject: Recently threadless topic
I made an unhopped braggot using dark malt extract some time back. It
was so good, I'm almost out. It was pleasantly sweet but not too sweet.
It was well received by those who've tasted it. Actually, they were
pleasantly surprised by it. If I make a hopped version, will it end up
tasting more like a strong Ale or a barleywine? I've had La Fin du
Monde, but never a barleywine. Has anybody tried making this with a
wheat malt extract? If so, how was it? My previous batch had 1/2 gal
dark malt ext. & 1/2 gal wildflower honey for a 5 gal batch. I used an
Ale yeast. I let it age about 2 months after bottling. OK, I tried a
couple before then, but this is when it started tasting really good. I
must have been psychic, because I labeled the last 4-6 bottles as witches
braggot, with appropriate backgrounding in the labels. I probably made
this batch in Feb or March at the latest.
Wassail,
Paul Haaf haafbrau1atjunodotcom
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Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 08:31:46 +0200
From: "Richard Hooper" <richard at dundee.lia.net>
Subject: Crunchy frog lager
Paul Niebergall wrote [concerning fruit flies in yeast]:-
Why is it that we think that it takes nothing less than a couple of
billion yeast cells to make a good batch of beer, and yet a few
bacteria will absolutely ruin a batch of beer?
A couple of years ago I used to cool off my wort outdoors with an immersion
chiller in my 50litre boiler, loosely covered with a stainless steel lid.
This process took about an hour. On one occasion at the end of that period
I noticed a real, dead, uncooked house-fly floating in the now-cooled wort
[apologies to Monty Python]. As I had spent the best part of that day
producing afore-mentioned wort in my RIMS, I did the traditional African
thing: -
scooped it out and carried on regardless
We never noticed any difference in the flavour, but I must confess to
deriving a certain pleasure from informing my spouse about the incident -
after the beer was consumed.
Regards from South Africa
Richard Hooper
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 07:52:57 -0700
From: "S. Wesley" <sWesley at maine.maine.edu>
Subject: RE: Bridging from Homebrewer to Brew Pub or MicroB
Dear Richard,
You can access most of Title 27 at the BATF website. Try this
URL: http://www.atf.treas.gov/core/regulations/main.htm .
Good Luck
Simon
"s is for spam"
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 09:02:48 -0400
From: haafbrau1 at juno.com (PAUL W HAAF JR)
Subject: Haafbrau1: Forgot to cross the T
About six months ago I made a very tasty mead I dubbed Sacked White
Hippo. I'm sure most can figure out why. I had used about 8 green tea
bags and maybe 4 black tea bags. It cleared quickly and the tea rounded
things out nicely. I liked it enough to roughly duplicate it, although I
did use a different yeast. After it has now spent about a month or so
(notes are in the garage), I realized that I forgot to add the tea!!! Is
it too late to add it? Should I add a strong brewed tea or the tea bags
to the fermenter? I don't mind cloudy mead, and other's opinions don't
cause me to worry, but damn if that last batch didn't taste great and
look real perty. Private e-mail is preferred, as I need this info soon.
Wassail,
Paul Haaf haafbrau1atjunodotcom
- --------- End forwarded message ----------
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Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 09:23:35 -0700
From: "S. Wesley" <sWesley at maine.maine.edu>
Subject: RE: Large Fermenters (follow up)
At first it may seem that switching from five gallon carboy's to fifteen
gallon demi-john's will make your life easier. In reality you will be
just changing problems. Your full fermenter will weigh about 150 lbs. If
you plan on transferring by siphoning you will need to elevate the
fermenter. This requires two people to do "safely". I don't want to think
about what would happen if you dropped one of these things when it was
full. Recall the post from earlier this year about the guy who dropped
the five gallon carboy on his foot and wound up in the ER. You can
reduce the weight you have to lift by siphoning to another container on
the same level until the levels are equal, but this is very slow. The
other option is pumping which means sanitizing and cleaning a pump. By
the way you will need a sanitary self priming pump not one of the mag
drive pumps many homebrewers use, which must be gravity fed. Watch out
for trapped air and oxidization.
Once your beer is ready for packaging you will probably want to
empty the whole fermenter in one shot. This means bottling or kegging all
of it in one shot (You'll need a lot of soda kegs or bottles if you brew
more than one batch at a time), or transfering 2/3 of it into carboys and
only packaging part of the batch. You are now back where you started
from with a lot of carboys to worry about. You can move up to using 1/2
barrel kegs, but they are heavy, more difficult to clean, require
different hardware, and are difficult to fit into most home brewing
fridges.
Next there is cleaning and sanitizing. You'll need a large
amount of sanitizing solution, and if you want to avoid dumping it every
time you brew you'll need somewhere to store it. Cleaning a fermenter
this size is not as easy as cleaning a five gallon carboy. The added
weight and bulk make it hard to handle safely. You may find yourself
straining your back leaning over the bath tub shaking a heavy fragile
object to remove that yeast deposit. I'd rather clean three five gallon
carboys than one 15 gallon demi-john any day.
My brewing/business partner and I have quite a bit of experience
using fermenters (plastic and stainless) of this size and larger and
neither of us would consider using glass on this scale for the simple
reason that we do not feel that it is safe.
Best Wishes
Simon
"s is for spam"
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 07:41:01 -0500
From: "charles beaver" <cbeav at netnitco.net>
Subject: Poor head
Hi all,
I made a batch of oatmeal stout with 4 lb of oats in a total grain bill of
24 lb. It tastes great, but the head fades away quickly. I mashed at 158 F.
The glasswear is clean. The beer is well conditioned. All my other beers
have never presented this problem. Any ideas? Is it the oats? HELP!
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 09:38:18 EDT
From: MaltHound at aol.com
Subject: Whirling in a 1/2 bbl?
In HBD 2843 James Spies <Spies at dhcd.state.md.us> asks for input on how best
to seperate wort from the hop spooge in the kettle.
I have set up my 1/2 barrel boiler with a piece of 3/8ths inch soft copper
tubing on the inside, running down to the bottom center of the keg. On the
end of this tube I wire a copper "chore boy" scrubber thingee. Since I
typically use at least some, if not all, whole hops in the kettle, I do not
attempt to get any kind of a whirlpool going. Instead, I just let the hops
fall where they may to the bottom and form a filter bed for the cold break
that precipitates during use of the immersion chiller.
After a nominal settling time (~30-45 minutes after chilling) I open the
outlet ball valve and the typical results are crystal clear wort. The siphon
action of the 3/8ths tubing allows all of the wort to be removed with less
than a cup or two remaining behind with the trub and the excellent filtering
action of the hop leaves trap the lion's share of the break material.
I have not (yet?) tested this set-up with straight pellets, but I guess you
might have problems with the chore-boy plugging up with the hop spooge. YMMV
Best Regards,
Fred Wills
Fearless Freddie's Homebrewery
Londonderry, NH
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 10:39:13 -0400
From: AJ <ajdel at mindspring.com>
Subject: GFI/Acids in Beer/Acid in Soda/Hydro/Tannin
James Tiefenthal missed my point on GFI's. That's appropriate as my
point was in error. Spencer pointed out in private correspondence that
it wouldn't make much sense to sense the green wire because it's current
through an external path (namely the user) that the devices are intended
to protect against. They sense imbalance between the white and black
wires. This basic scheme would work for 240 as well except where there
is an assymetrical load.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Matt Comstock asked me to take a look at his post of yesterday and
comment. I only had one point that I thought needed to be raised and
that is that when an acid is used to bring the pH of a solution to a
value that is more than about 2 pH units away from the pK (a measure of
the acid strength) of the acid, the proton (hydrogen ion) associated
with that pK can be considered fully (though its actually 99%)
dissociated from the acid. If the target pH is 1 from the pK, the acid
is 91% dissociated. Thus to acidify mash or water to pH 5 with lactic
acid (single pK at 3.86) would require only 7% more moles of lactic
acid than phosphoric acid (first pK of 2.12). By the same reasoning, if
the target pH is less than a pK by 2 or more we can consider that the
proton associated with that pK is not released to any appreciable
extent. Thus in calculating the amount of phosphoric acid required to
lower pH into the 5's you can ignore the second proton of phosphoric
acid (pK 7.2) and the third (pK 12.44). As Matt pointed out, however, if
taking a chem exam, you'd better explain why your'e ignoring them.
Looking over Matt's post sent me back to
http://brewery.org/brewery/library/AcidifWaterAJD0497.html as a
convenient place to look up pK's where I noticed that the pK value for
lactic acid is given as 3.08. The 3.86 value cited above is the correct
one. Anyone know how we can get this fixed as apparently people use that
page to calculate acid additions?
Finally, the issue of calcium phosphate precipitation. As Matt said,
chemistry is tricky and this is an area where that's true. The numbers I
posted a few days ago are based on precipitation of calcium phosphate
(tribasic) according to a solubility product pKs = 31. I've seen other
data which show this pKs as having a value of 25. Werner and Stumm
(Aquatic Chemistry) refer to initial precipitation of the metastable
dibasic calcium salt, Ca4H(Po4)3 and appatite, Ca10(PO4)6X2 where X is
either hydroxyl or fluoride. They don't even mention the simple tribasic
phosphate. Tricky indeed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Johnathan Nail asked about matching the acidity of a soda he likes with
citric acid. This is a straightforward procedure with a pH meter but I
think you can probably get to the same result without the expense and
trouble one of those brings. The following is just a thought - I have
never tried to do this. Obtain an acid titration kit from your homebrew
store (if they sell winemaking stuff they will have these). Use the kit
to determine the titratable acidity of the soda you like (degass it
first). Now measure the titratable acidity of your (degassed) soda
without any citric acid. Add a small, measured amount of citric acid to
a small volume of your soda. Measure the titratable acidity of that. Add
twice as much citric acid to the same volume of untreated soda and
measure again. Repeat until you have a titratable acidity that is
greater than that of the soda you like. Taste after you add the acid but
not (repeat, not) after titration (the titrant is lye). Plot titratable
acidity vs. acid additions on a piece of graph paper and fair a curve
through the points (should be a straght line or darn close to it - try
to get the line which comes closest to all the points even though it may
not touch them all or even any of them. Now use the graph to find out
how much acid is required to get the titratable acidity level of the
soda you like. Scale that addition up to full batch size.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hydro checks on CO2 (and other gas) bottles are required every 5 years.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ian Smith reports that his IPA tastes like tannin and asks what this
might be. Quite likely it is tannin i.e. a polyphenol or polyphenols.
These are found in all kinds of plant matter (see our own Steve
Alexander's article in BT of a few months back) including barley and
hops. The usual source in homebrew is sparging with water that is too
hot or of too high pH or, indeed, sparging at all (see our own Louis
Bonham's article in BT two issues back). Polyphenols are very easy to
test for as they develop a bright red color with ferric ion. Drop me a
line if you want the details on a procedure - quantitative results
require a visible spectrophotometer.
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 09:44:30 -0500
From: Henry Paine <hpaine at iglobal.net>
Subject: THANKS
Just wanted to drop you all a note and let you know how much I appreciate
the Digest.
Thanks for all your hard, and thankless, work.
Hank Paine
Denton, Texas
Henry C. "Hank" Paine, Jr.
hpaine at iglobal.net
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 11:24:22 -0400
From: Jean-Sebastien Morisset <jsmoriss at axess.com>
Subject: RIMS Heat Source Suggestions
Our Homebrewery is fairly complete, but as finishing touch I'd like to
add a RIMS type heater to maintain mash temperature and perhaps boost it
to 158-168F at the end. All the plumbing, pump, thermometers, etc. are
in place. All that I'm missing is the actual heating method. I've
thought about using the conventional RIMS electrical element/chamber
design, but the risk of scorching the wort and cleaning the element have
me looking for other solutions. I've wondered about wrapping the
existing 1/2" OD x 18" long copper tubing (between pump outlet and
inline thermometer) with a heating wire of some kind -- you know, kind
of like toaster elements. I can monitor the temperature with the inline
thermometer and adjust the heat using a dimmer switch. A manifold would
be built around the element to keep people from burning themselves
accidentally. :-)
I'm still unsure of the hardware options available to us. As an example,
my father-in-law has found some heating *plates* which could be welded
on the tubing. Perhaps more suitable hardware exist which we haven't
heard of yet.
If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd sure appreciate hearing your views.
Most of our current homebrewery design can be viewed at
<http://www.axess.com/users/jsm-mv/homebrewery/current-setup.html>.
Thanks,
js.
- --
Jean-Sebastien Morisset, Sr. UNIX Admin <mailto:jsmoriss at axess.com>
Our Homebrewery Page <http://www.axess.com/users/jsm-mv/homebrewery/>
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 12:27:03 -0400
From: "John A. MacLaughlin" <jam at clark.net>
Subject: More GFCI
The post by Jim Tiefenthal <James.Tiefenthal at rossnutrition.com> in HBD
#2852 is right on the mark concerning the significance of current in a
ground conductor and concerning how GFCI's work. (Sorry, A. J.) Because
the purpose of the ground conductor is to provide a safe path for fault
current, current in that conductor is not a hazard unless the conductor
is damaged. But of course almost anything can be a hazard when damaged.
An ME friend once asked me if there was anything that I, as an EE, thought
he should do about the tingle he felt whenever he touched his refrigerator's
door. The fridge had been in a wet basement for nearly eight years. My
20K ohm/volt multimeter read 84 vrms between the door handle and the duplex
receptacle's ground. The fiberglass insulation was so wet that when you
squeezed it it didn't spring back. The steel panel to which the ground
wire was connected had rusted so badly that it was no longer connected to
the fridge's frame. I suggested he junk it. He did.
A couple years later he finally admitted that, the night before he asked me
about the fridge, he had touched its handle with the same hand in which he
was holding a grounded metal-bodied drill. The electric shock he felt in
that hand had made him drop the drill. If he had had the drill in one hand
and touched the handle with the other, the resulting current across his
chest
could have killed him. A GFCI or a double-insulated drill would have
protected him.
Fortunately he was smart enough that he had never gone barefoot in that
basement, and had never stayed there long enough for his shoes to get wet.
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 22:00:49 -0600
From: Mike Allred <mballred at xmission.com>
Subject: mushrooms & homebrew
I have started growing mushrooms at home in my basement (shiitake, not the
psychedelia kind). Does anyone know how big of a risk I am taking in
contaminating my beer with spores? Or is this a non-issue.
Return to table of contents
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 00:28:09 -0700
From: "Robert G. Poirier, Jr." <bpoirierjr at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: CO2 Cylinder ROCKETS!!!
Greetings!!
In HBD #2852, Scott Murman brings up the issue of saftey with respect to
CO2 cylinders and the potential energy they keep at bay. He also asks
about guage-cages for smaller cylinders.
My local home brew shop carries these guage-cages, and I'm sure they'll do
an adequate job of protecting the guages on your CO2 cylinder if it should
happen to fall over (ouch!!). Every time I think of a cylinder falling
over, I cringe!! Here's why...
A while ago I worked for a local fast food place that served fried chicken.
The chicken fryolator-thingees were kept in the kitchen, in a special spot
designed specifically to contain an accidental spill of boiling hot grease
- there was a low wall (about 8 inches high) made of concrete built up all
around the fryolators (sp??, whatever).
Well, one day the guy came to replace the 20# CO2 cylinder the store used
to dispense its fountain drinks. He had the replacement on a special hand
truck that had straps to hold the cylinder in place while it was being
transported. Well, this bozo decided he didn't need to strap the cylinder
down! He came walking in the back door, stopped short to pick his arse (or
some such idiotic thing), and the cylinder fell forward off of the hand
truck!
When the cylinder fell forward, the neck came crashing down on the low
concrete wall surrounding the chicken fryers. What happened next is
permanently ingrained in my consciousness!! Oh yah, it all happened pretty
fast, too!
The valve snapped off the cylinder and it shot out in the opposite
direction, right through the idiot delivery guy's legs! It continued
THROUGH a reinforced security door at the back of the store, and out into
the parking lot. It finally came to rest wedged BENEATH one of those big
garbage dumpsters - it had burrowed a trench in the asphalt and planted
itself about 4 feet under the dumpster, from its edge.
So, PLEASE!!!!!! Be VERY careful when handling your CO2 cylinders!!!! I
built a special box for mine - its got a base about a foot square, it's
weighted in the bottom, and it's REAL hard to knock over!!! (Kinda like
one of those coffee mugs for your car.)
Forgive the wasted bandwidth on a tangental home brewing subject, but, if
only one person remembers my little story, AND remembers to be careful with
his/her CO2 cylinder, then I think it will be worth it.
Brew On & Prosit!!
Bob P.
East Haven, CT
Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 21:28:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tim Anderson <timator at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Ginger
Darrell wrote:
>>>
I am toying with the idea of trying a Ginger beer. I have read
Papazian's statement (early in his JOY) stating that it should be
added during the last 10/15 minutes; but then he goes on with several
recipes later in the book and adds it at the beginning of the boil!
Al Korzonas, in HBVI, states at the end, and to slice rather
thangrate. I am inclined to go with Al on this one...but anyone have
any thoughts? <<<
Several years ago, I went on a real ginger binge. I tried grating,
slicing, chopping, adding at various stages of the boil, in the
primary, secondary, at bottling/kegging time. After awhile I settled
on using a ginger grater to extract the juice and using that. I even
did a test batch divided into thirds. I grated the ginger and used
the juice after decanting it off of the white stuff that settles to
the bottom. In one third I added the juice in the primary, in another
the secondary, and in the third at bottling. There was a profound
difference among them, with by far the strongest ginger flavor and
aroma in the batch that got it in the bottle, although I was pretty
careful to use the same amount in each.
I'm guessing the reason is that fermentation "scrubs" the volatile
stuff out. Now that I keg my beer, I'd probably grate it and add
juice to the keg.
Another data point: The Dark Horse Brewery in Hertford, UK, won the
silver medal for specialty beers this year at the Great British Beer
Festival for a ginger beer called Fallen Angel. I have it on good
authority (meaning this is what the regulars at their brewpub say)
that the brewer adds the ginger in the keg.
tim
==
Please ignore the advertisement below. Thank you.
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DO YOU YAHOO!?
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Date: Sat, 17 Oct 98 23:11:55 PDT
From: "George De Piro" <gdepiro at fcc.net>
Subject: Yeast pitching temp / sanitation
Hi all,
Andrew asks whether it is better to pitch yeast into 80F (27C) wort and
then cool it to fermentaton temp or to cool the wort to fermentation temp
and then pitch the yeast.
It is much more desirable to pitch the yeast into wort at or slightly
below
your desired fermentation temperature. Pitching yeast into warm wort
will promote excessive yeast growth. This ALWAYS results in excessive
production of higher (fusel) alcohols. These taste icky in high
concentrations.
Many homebrewers pitch into warm wort to get the fermentation going
faster,
but it is far more desirable to pitch more yeast than to pitch into warm
wort.
- --------------------------------------------
The discussion about the fruit fly starter has elicited comments that
might
lead some to believe you can be pretty lax in sanitation without
compromising
the quality of your beer. While it is true that you need not be insane
about
sanitation some important points have been missed:
Paul wrote:
" Yet seldom does a batch of beer get contaminated enough to cause
off-flavors, or worse (beer, say hi to Mr. Drain). Why is that?"
Back to me:
I have evaluated many, many beers at homebrew competitions. Phenolic
off flavors are one of the most common flaws in homebrewed beers. A
major
cause of these is wild yeast. Damaging infections are far from seldom
in homebrew.
While it is true that conditions in fermented beer are not ideal for many
microbes, there
are some important exceptions. Wild yeast will laugh at alcohol, hops,
and low pH.
A very small inocculation may take weeks to make itself noticed in the
flavor of the beer,
but it will. The same is true of certain bacteria. Ever have a beer get
buttery tasting
over time? It may be a pediococcus infection. How about souring of a
beer? Lactobacillus
can be the culprit.
Mishandling of a starter is potentially more damaging to the beer than
mishandling the pitched wort.
Infection of a starter allows the unwanted organisms more time to grow.
By the time
you are pitching the main wort the few invaders that originally infected
the starter may have grown
into a potentially damaging population.
An important thing to remember when reading about infections and beer
flavor in this digest
is that a substantial number of people are actually quite numb to
phenols. Unless you know
the palate of the person making the comments use your own common sense
and palate as a guide.
That applies to stuff I write, too!
Have fun!
George de Piro (Nyack, NY)
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