---

	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:
  R.E. Caramel flavor in Fuller's ESB ("Campbell, Paul R SSI-TSEA-A")
  RE:Bottle Guidelines for Contest Entry ("Donald D. Lake")
  Starter Container (Dave Hinrichs)
  Explosive O2 ("Nigel Porter")
  Hop Tea & Scorching ("Eric Sturman")
  Fullers Flavor, ESB from Ashburn malt (RCAYOT)
  O2 Hazards/Missing Mg (AJ)
  Sake rice ("Steve Blanchard")
  Question: Munich Malt : Diastatic Power ? (darrell.leavitt)
  RE: lagering idea (LaBorde, Ronald)
  Home Malting:  advanced steeping technology (Clifton Moore)
  Hops Cleanliness and Martha Stewart (Bob)
  Details - variac, Mg, silica/carbon ("Sean Richens")
  Hey!  I scored 16 Sami's! ("Brian Dixon")


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 11:24:48 +0200
From: "Campbell, Paul R SSI-TSEA-A" <Paul.R.Campbell at is.shell.com>
Subject: R.E. Caramel flavor in Fuller's ESB

Oh I guess I can't resist this one....

I've played around with my FESB recipe now for far too long. I
still maintain that you want to use as close to the brewery
ingredients as possible so pale malt, flaked maize and 
british crystal malt would form the grain bill (90%,7%,3% as
discussed here just prior to the big bang).

I left the discussion looking into the caramel addition which
Fuller's also disclosed in the Real Ale Almanac, but there was
some speculation that this would purely affect colour rather
than alter the flavour profile. I'm not convinced. I do know
of one brewer who was cloning a mild in which he perceived a
caramel flavour. His approach at emulating this was to add
home made caramel along with the primings (in a keg beer).
He reported good results; see UKHB842 onwards to see the
posts by Graham Smith on the subject.

I also found the following dotted around net-space:

- ------------------------------------------------------------
Ammonia Caramel EC No. E150c Positively charged, in powder
and liquid form. Suitable for beer, petfoods and general
food use.

- ------------------------------------------------------------
Porterine

" the addition of Porterine. This dark syrupy liquid was
composed of extract, dextrose, and other nonfermentables
and had a color rating of 940 L (10). Brewers added
Porterine to the pilsner wort not only for color adjustment,
but also to approximate the qualities of porter that
otherwise required the use of various other malts not often
found at a brewery geared toward American pilsner production.
To have maintained stocks of those malts would have been too
expensive. Porterine gave these breweries the opportunity to
keep costs down and yet cater to the popular demand for
porter."

Note that the above isn't directly related to caramel, but
I feel that it is a related subject i.e. brewery use of
combined flavour and colour additives.....

- ------------------------------------------------------------
D.D. Williamson Caramel Coloring
CARAMEL COLOR NO. 300
CLASS III
This product is typically used in the brewing industry
because of its guaranteed stability in beers. It has, however,
found applications in several segments of the food industry.

SPECIFICATIONS

COLOR INTENSITY  80 - 90 (1)    
COLOR SRM  9,400 - 10,500 (2)    
SPECIFIC GRAVITY  at  60F (15.56C)  1.365 - 1.375 
BAUME  at  60F (15.56C)  38.8 - 39.6 
WT. PER GALLON, LBS.  at  60F (15.56C)  11.37 - 11.45 
pH, AS IS  4.2 - 4.8 
VISCOSITY, cps  at  68F (20C)  MAX. 15,000 
COLLOIDAL CHARGE  POSITIVE 
SULFITE LEVEL, PPM  <25 
BEER CLARITY  BRILLIANT 

(1)  FOOD CHEMICALS CODEX METHOD - ABSORBANCE OF 0.1% W/V
SOLUTION  at  610 NM THROUGH A 1 CM SQUARE CELL ON BECKMAN
DBG SPECTROPHOTOMETER X 1000. 
   
(2)  ASBC METHOD. 
   
Packed in bulk totes, 55 gallon plastic drums, 5 gallon pails and
4 X 1 gallon case packs.
Produced in accordance with 21CFR73.85.
- ------------------------------------------------------------

As I'm *still* in the process of buying a new house I have
not tried to use any of this information for my own batches
of ESB. Usual disclaimers apply; haven't tried it; Don't
guarantee it etc. I would suggest making up different batches
of caramel in differing colour intensities and trying these
out on bottles of your favourite ESB recipe (added along with
the primings). Note that the bottled Fuller's ESB has a higher
abv than the keg beer. The higher carbonation (2.5 volumes?)
of the bottled variety also has an impact on the dry hopping
aroma.

Regards,
Paul Campbell 
Aberdeen

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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:11:07 -0400
From: "Donald D. Lake" <dake at gdi.net>
Subject: RE:Bottle Guidelines for Contest Entry

I've always been curious about the restrictions on bottle types at
competition.  Can anyone give me a legitimate or logical reason on why
Grolsh-type bottles are not allowed?

Don Lake
dlake at amuni.com
Lake Water Brewery
(wholly-owned subsidiary of Canal Water Beverages Incorporated)




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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:07:39 -0500
From: Dave Hinrichs <dhinrichs at quannon.com>
Subject: Starter Container

With all the chatter recently about stirrers it has raised and interest in
me (damn brewing has made me a gadget freak). Anyways my questions concerns
the bottom shape of the starter container. Currently I use a 1 gallon cider
jug (glass) for my starters. The bottom is concave is this a concern for
use with a stirrer. If is I am thinking the pump and filter method my be a
better route unless I can find a suitable container.

Thanks so much
***************************************************************
* Dave Hinrichs                 E-Mail: dhinrichs at quannon.com *
* Quannon CAD Systems, Inc.             Voice: (612) 935-3367 *
* 6101 Baker Road, Suite 204              FAX: (612) 935-0409 *
* Minnetonka, MN 55345                                        *
*                http://www.quannon.com/                      *


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:07:14 +0100
From: "Nigel Porter" <nigel at sparger.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Explosive O2

>" A problem I see with O2 addition via Oxygenator, is that this is 
>quite explosive and most people don't realize that potential.  Maybe 
>most brewers don't smoke - I hope so.
>John"

The main thing to remember is not to use grease or oil on any of the 
regulators or pipework you use with O2. O2 can cause sponstanious 
combustion in contact with these. Apart from usual safety measures 
to be considered when using presure vessels, O2 is pretty much 
harmless.

Nigel


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 06:34:25 PDT
From: "Eric Sturman" <ejstur at hotmail.com>
Subject: Hop Tea & Scorching

Hello everyone,

I brew on an electric stove and am concerned about scorching lighter colored

beers.  There have been questions posted about "hop tea" and I don't recall 
ever seeing any responses.  I would assume this to be boiling hops without 
malt extract until the alpha acids are extracted from the hops, then adding 
malt extract for a shorter boil.  First, is my assumption correct?  Second, 
what are the potential draw backs?  And third, are there any other 
suggestions for avoiding scorching, besides large volume boiling and 
adequate stirring?

Thanks,
Eric S.
ejstur at hotmail.com

______________________________________________________


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Date: 22 Oct 1999 08:45:26 -0400
From: RCAYOT at solutia.com
Subject: Fullers Flavor, ESB from Ashburn malt

      William Frazier discusses the flavor of Fullers ESB recently, and 
     offers up some recipies:
     
     "After eight attempts the 5 gallon recipe settled in as shown below; 
     Maris Otter   45.6%   
     Munich Malt  45.6%   
     Cara Vienne  4.1%   
     Cara Munich  4.1%   
     Roasted Barley  0.5%   
     (use enough grain to give an OG of 1050 to 1060)"
     
     I would like to add that there is no way I can possibly concieve of a 
     beer made with ~50% munich malt tasting ANYTHING like Fullers!  Munich 
     is way too malty!  I would say that the beer described above would be 
     very good, delicious, etc, but not anything like a Fullers.  Fullers, 
     when I get it around these parts (Pensacola Florida) is good, but has 
     less malt than what I immagine from this recipie. (more like a Bock 
     malt profile!) 
     
      By the way, I am nearly ready to keg my ESB form 100% Ashburn malt 
     from Briesse:
     
     Grain:100% Ashburn Malt
     OG: 1.055
     Yeast: Wyeast American Ale #2
     Hops: Cascades, Styrian Goldings 1st wort hopping, Cascades, Hallertau 
     finish.  40-45 IBU (depends if you take hop form into consideration)
     
     Very nice fermentation1  Wyeast American Ale#2 is a very robust yeast 
     throwing up a large crop of yeast on top!  It is not very attenuating, 
     but so far has lent a fair amount of fruitiness.  right now, the beer 
     is in the secondary, and I am debating on what to do:
     
     1. dry hop or not? There seems to be a good hop flavor from both 1st 
     wort hopping and finish hops, but the fresh AROMA is not as prominent, 
     and besides, didn't I want to highlight the MALT characteristic?  
     Hmmmmmmm
     
     2. Make some REAL ALE, I kept 1/2g of wort aside to prime with, I 
     could transfer to another carboy, add the 1/2g, add some fresh yeast, 
     wait till it starts to take off, and then keg it, keep the keg at 
     fermentation temperatures, and monitor the pressure.  Vois'la real 
     ale!  Hmmmmmm
     
     3.  Just keg the sucker, force carbonate it and drink it up!  Hmmmmmm.
     
     I'll let you know what I do, and how the beer comes out!
     
     Roger Ayotte
      
     


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:36:00 -0500
From: AJ <ajdel at mindspring.com>
Subject: O2 Hazards/Missing Mg

While discussing the hazards of compressed O2  I think it well to
mention that compressed oxygen carries with it all the hazards
associated with any compressed gas of which the greatest is probably
that the cylinder will be improperly secured (it should be chained to
the wall) so that it can fall over with the potential to snap off some
part of the regulator assembly. It then becomes a rocket which can do
substantial damage to people and property. Oxygen carries its own
especial risks in that it is a powerful oxidizer. One must be
particularly careful to prevent it from coming into contact with oils,
solvents etc. which can spontaneously combust (is that a verb?).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * *


John Schnupp posts

Calcium hardness      45 mg/L as CaCO3
Total hardness        61 mg/L as CaCO3

and asks why magnesium isn't reported. The info is there as total
hardness is the sum of calcium hardness and magnesium hardness.
Officially, other things which react in simple hardness tests such as
strontium and iron do not count in calculating hardness thus if your
water authority uses the usual EDTA based tests this simple relationship
may lead to small inaccuracies. If the lab uses AAS or a similar
selective technique then Mg calculated from this relarionship will be
accurate because the lab will have measured Mg and Ca, converted the
values to hardness, added them and reported this as the total. Anyway,
your Mg hardness is 61 - 45 = 16 ppm as CaCO3. This is equivalent to 3.9
Mg/L magnesium ion (and the 45 ppm as CaCO3 is equivalent to 18 mg/L
calcium ion).

John also writes
>The water reports are
>free and I don't feel like sending a sample out and paying
>for additional testing.

I don't think I have converted a single brewer with the following
prosytalization but I keep trying:
For what I'd charge for a water test (about $30) you can buy very nice
little kits that will allow you to test for total and calcium hardness
(from which you obtain magnesium hardness as above). The kits typically
do 50 - 100 tests.

Finally, John mentions that the "help information" says Mg is best kept
at 10 - 30 ppm. There are lots of beers which have magnesium at levels
much higher than this with which there is good news and bad news. The
good news is that elvevated levels of Magnesium in drinking water  has
been associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. The bad
news is that it can give you the trots. It also imparts a sour/bitter
quality at high levles. The level in this water is not problematical
with respect to brewing or dunny trips nor will it probably grant you
extended longevity.


Return to table of contents


Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 09:54:54 PDT
From: "Steve Blanchard" <steve_blanchard at hotmail.com>
Subject: Sake rice

Dave Burley made reference to the type of rice used for sake:

<Use  ? Rose ( ??) rice as it is a

<high quality short grain rice grown
<here in the US and close to the actual
<rice used in sake manufacturer, just
<not so highly polished. I believe it is
<the rice used by US sake manufacturers
<after they polish it to their specifications.

I believe he was referring to "Calrose" rice which is also a great tasting 
rice for eating as well as "drinking".

______________________________________________________


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 14:06:43 -0500 (EST)
From: darrell.leavitt at plattsburgh.edu
Subject: Question: Munich Malt : Diastatic Power ?

Date sent:  22-OCT-1999 14:03:46 

I mashed in this afternoon, and forgot that I was out of 2 row...so I 
brewed a stout using Fawcett's Munich (8 lb) as the base...along with 1 lb 
malted oats, 1 lb Roasted Barley, 1 lb Special B, 1/4 lb Black Patent.  My 
question is whether the Munich can convert the others?
 ..Darrell
<Terminally INtermediate Home-Brewer>
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/
_/Darrell Leavitt                              _/
_/INternet: leavitdg at splava.cc.plattsburgh.edu _/
_/AMpr.net: n2ixl at amgate.net.plattsburgh.edu   _/
_/AX25 : n2ixl  at  kd2aj.#nny.ny.usa            _/


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:01:23 -0500
From: rlabor at lsumc.edu (LaBorde, Ronald)
Subject: RE: lagering idea

>I thought I could recircultate the
>water, using a pump of some sort, through a length of copper tubing
>occupying the freezer of my brew fridge.  So, the bath water would leave
>the container via a pump, travel to the freezer, go through about 10 feet
>of copper tubing, and return to the main bath.  
>Would this be feasible?  Has anyone tried anything like this?  If
>so,please respond.

Yes, you could use a submersible aquarium pump (about $25) to circulate.
Place the pump in the water with the carboy, and use two tubing runs to and
from the fridge.

You may need a small fan to blow over the coil in the fridge to get adequate
temperature transfer.  Instead, could try placing the coil into a small
bucket of water (or oil) in the fridge (this will give more surface area and
should facillitate the heat transfer.

I would try a finned automotive heater core, or air conditioner core, and
probably would not need the fan in the fridge.

You can also use a thermostat to power the pump on/off and controll the
temperature.  In the winter, you can also heat the fermenter, if desired, by
just circulating with the pump in the fermenter water bath.  The pump
produces enough heat to warm up the water.

You may need some antfreeze in the water, by the way.

Ron

Ronald La Borde - Metairie, Louisiana - rlabor at lsumc.edu


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:19:10 -0800
From: Clifton Moore <cmoore at gi.alaska.edu>
Subject: Home Malting:  advanced steeping technology

It has come to my attention that there is a buzz in the malting industry 
concerning the use of inoculates in the steep water.

In much the same way as a healthy yeast pitch has a competitive 
advantage over undesirable microbes in the wort, I can easily imagine 
the advantages of having 'helper bugs' in the malting process.

Suppression of contaminant blooms and consumption of organic waste 
byproducts come to mind as two beneficial prospects of such a
technology.

So dear readers, what is the state of the art here?

Are any of you able to provide references, first hand knowledge, or wild
ass 
speculation on just who these 'helpers' might be?

As always,
Clifton Moore


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 15:39:25 -0700
From: Bob <bob at urbanartifacts.com>
Subject: Hops Cleanliness and Martha Stewart

Friends of the Brew...
Thanks to whomever advised us about the Martha Stewart show- this week
on Hops.
Being a confirmed HopHead, and lover of that floral/citrusy profile of
Cascades, I was pleased when I heard she would be visiting a Cascades
growing farm. 
The images were wonderful and the hops looked great. The interview was
nice and all was well, except it left me with a question or two.

It seems as if the hops grower mechanically strips the cones off the
vine (bines?) and then dries them overnight in a heated environment,
then bales them up in a huge bale- (hop sack?), then off to the brewer,
or the processor for packaging...  but my question is- are they ever
cleaned- and if not- does this imply that those of us who like to dry
hop are possibly getting some random but perhaps deletrious dried
insects? what about chemical fertilizers or insecticides? any srange but
useful chemicals used there?

What about bird droppings, or mites, or small furry animals, or fruit
flies- remember fruit flies, or Japanese Beetles, or whatever?

Any one care to venture an opinion of the purity of the product we throw
into our otherwise pure fermenting beer?

Bob in Texas.


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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:08:57 -0500
From: "Sean Richens" <srichens at sprint.ca>
Subject: Details - variac, Mg, silica/carbon

Hmm... lots of little things I know just a little about:

The variac used to control an electric motor has to be rated "for inductive
loads" .  It also has to be the right kind of motor but that's more
elekatricity than I've ever digested.

I'm too lazy to do the math on John E Schnupp's water, but I can see that
the Mg content will be less than 20 ppm (total hardness - Ca hardness).  If
I had the energy I'd work out the bicarbonate, but I'd be surprised if your
pH is higher than 7.5.

Large breweries worry about their malt getting "slack" i.e. absorbing
moisture but half the damage is that their volumes are large enough it
messes up their heat balance calculations.  The best thing to do is to find
a suitable measuring container and determine the volume of 1 lb. of malt
(when you've just bought it).  Remember that malt is traditionally measured
in bushels, so you're not doing anything wrong by reading recipes as "lbs
dry basis malt".  Living in New Hampshire, you won't have trouble if you
buy malt at the beginning of the winter and use it up in a season!

"Lagering Idea" will have to wait.  I want to do something similar - using
a pumped glycol loop to use the big refrigerator with the blue roof and the
light that goes out around 6:00 pm during brewing season.  My sweetie is
most tolerant of my using the front room as a walk-in lagering fridge but
it would be nice to be able to close the window in January.  I'll take this
as a shove to doing the math and post my results if and when I figure it
out.

TTFN brewers and brewsters!




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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 20:22:06 -0700
From: "Brian Dixon" <briandixon at home.com>
Subject: Hey!  I scored 16 Sami's!

I thought the stuff was gone ... until the local grocery store found a
hidden case under other beer in his walk-in cooler.  It's the original
Samichlaus Brown (1997).  I got the last 16 ... too bad only 15 are left!

Brian



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