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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: janitor@hbd.org
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		Livonia, Michigan for sponsoring the Homebrew Digest.
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Contents:
  H2O2 good uses, and possible less so. ("Dr. Pivo")
  Cheap beer and STD ("H. Dowda")
  We're Nice Blokes In Oz, Just A Bit Odd!! ("Phil & Jill Yates")
  The Intrepid Brewer ("Phil & Jill Yates")
  Re: Carbonation Question (KMacneal)


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Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 12:24:09 +0200
From: "Dr. Pivo" <dp at pivo.w.se>
Subject: H2O2 good uses, and possible less so.

Regarding H2O2 as a sanitizer, I think it's just dandy.

I purchase 5 litres of 35 percent at a time, and that lasts me through a
couple thousand litres of brewing.

Advantages?

1) At that concentration and volume it is pretty cheap (I pay about 20
US dollars in an extremely expensive part of the world).

2) It has a very good "foaming action" as the oxygen is liberated,
helping to remove "spotie", "dooky-wah", and "shleb".

3) It is easy to check efficacy of "mixed batches" and fun too.  Splash
a little on a cement floor and it will hiss and foam reminiscent of some
of the better Bela Lugosi scenes.

4) Environmentally "friendly". Natural breakdown products are water and oxygen.

Disadvantages?

1) Maybe not so environmentally friendly (in excess, what is?). It
releases what are called "free radicals", which is just another sort of
electron shucking (or hot potatoE passing, as I prefer to think of it)
as in Redox.  Exactly what effect that will have on the organically rich
materials that makeup the sewage lines leading from our lives, is
unknown to me, but I am expecting in the long run, is "not too good"
(Don't know that a "halogen overload" is so joyful either).

2) If you get your hands in it, and then inadvertently scratch your
head, you'll get a blonde streak (may be popular in some circles).

3) It doesn't have the "homebrew stamp of approval" amongst the
"anything less than two quarts of iodophore a day, is remiss" crowd.

 ... I might mention that 35 percent is WAY over the concentration you
need, and somewhere between about 1-3 is plenty. I sometimes keep a
squirt bottle of the stuff down in the cellar to give the quick connects
a hosing prior to hooking up, when they have been lagering there a while
in full exposure.. Mostly, I just splash a wee bit into a keg, squirt
some water over it, swirl it over all the surfaces and then pour to the
next keg, making sure I do it sloppy enough to even hit the quick
connects. I may do three or four kegs or carboys this way, let them sit
"wet" for some amount of time, then squirt them off upside down. It is
also good in sanitizing buckets, for lids, doo-dads, etc.

I hate to give advice on something I haven't tried, but I will anyway,
letting you know I have no personal experience with this.

It was recently suggested using hydrogen peroxide to drive off a sulfite
excess in a wine. I would be inclined not to. While it would do the job,
I'm sure it would oxidise a whole host of other things as well.

I'm surprised that no-one reacted to that.  One spends sleepless nights
worrying about a splash of air when the liquid is so hot it doesn't
retain gases, yet don't worry about adding an EXTREMELY potent oxidant
to a cooled finished product.

I'm expecting that using H202 as a "non-rinse" or adding it to a
finished product, would VERY quickly enhance staling effects.

Dr. Pivo

PS as a disclaimer, if anybody plans to pour this stuff in their eyes,
or bathe their children in it, I'd advise not, and treating this with
care, as I would any good cleaner... on the other hand, in particularly
"filthy" operations, where say, a bowel is punctured and the inside body
cavity is filled with the stuff that should be in the bowel, one
routinely flushes out the cavity with about 1/2 percent peroxide, and
those people get up and walk later.


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Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 15:27:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: "H. Dowda" <hdowda at yahoo.com>
Subject: Cheap beer and STD

Huummm...folling the logic of taxing beer to reduce
VD...one political pundit noted that maybe a $.25 tax
increase on cigars would reduce the number of interns molested...

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Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 13:39:05 +1000
From: "Phil & Jill Yates" <yates at acenet.com.au>
Subject: We're Nice Blokes In Oz, Just A Bit Odd!!

Ted McIrvine recently reported on where to drink in New York, and promptly
was told he didn't know what he was talking about. It seems Ted rather liked
the concept of hot sweaty monks rudely serving him very expensive beer. I
must pass this on to the owners of the Burradoo Hilton. They might like to
include this as a Friday night special.

Sorry to see you got shredded Ted, that's life in the HBD. Or is it life in
the USA? Those of us over here in Oz often have a chuckle at what we observe
from afar.

The HBD seems a remarkable focal point within which serious brewers convey
their opinions. Of course we must not forget that a lot of serious brewers
don't even own a computer and are probably doing things in brewing that have
not occurred to any of us. I regret that Doc Pivo doesn't tell us more about
what he and the other Pivos are doing in Sweden as I believe he has offered
a lot in colour and diversity from what we might otherwise consider the
"norm" in brewing. The Doc says most of what he has tried in the States was
not to his liking, maybe he went to the brewpubs that Ted McIrvine
recommended.
I'm not sure what is considered good or bad beer in America, out here we
tend to do our own thing. Ray Kruse is the only US brewer who has ever sent
me anything, that being his infamous bottle of skunk oil. Sources close to
him tell me this bottle was in fact Ray's very best attempt at a pilsner.
But I refuse to believe this.

Last week I sat down with Wes Smith (Baron Of The Southern Highlands) and
poured him a drop of rice lager. Wes cracked open a bottle of a similar
lager, without the rice. We did some thinking and we tried a bit more. Then
we did some more thinking. This process is known as "The Southern Highlands
Taste Analysis" (we don't need triangles around here) and it can be quite an
extended business. We take our tasting seriously. You must appreciate both
of us are thousands of miles from most of you (and we care nought but didly
squat for Rennarian coordinates). It occurred to me that if everyone else
was enjoying their beer making and sampling as much as Wes and I do, then
you surely must be doing things right.

If Wes and I are that far off the mark, you are all either making infinitely
better beer, or infinitely worse. Of course Wes and I are not the only
brewers in Oz.

Dave Lamotte lurks many miles to the north and is reported to make an
excellent drop. Though lately I understand he has been concentrating on
experiments to get his corny keg lid to the moon, possibly with him on it.
Give it away Dave, those blasted yanks did it all back in 1969!

Steve Lacey can be found deep in the bowels of Sydney but on last reports
was wandering around babbling "I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think
so".

Gil Drury shares a secret with Doc Pivo about how to incorporate a burnt out
clothes dryer into the brewing process, but he hasn't shared it with any of
us yet.

And of course we had Alan. Unfortunately we lost him just as he was to bring
the world to it's knees with an earth shattering drinking record. His Darwin
award was given posthumously (as I think most of them are). Come to think of
it, if Dave Lamotte's experiments go horribly wrong he might be in line for
the next award. (Sorry Dave, you are going to have to tell the HBD your
story one day, I'm still laughing when I visualise it).

So Ted, don't worry about this mean and nasty lot here in the HBD. Give
those New York bars a miss and get yourself on down here to the Burradoo
Hilton. You may even get to meet the mercurial Doc Pivo, who threatens to
barnstorm us in a month or so. I'm sure Jeff Renner would have enjoyed it,
if he hadn't have let Fred drag him home so quickly.

Cheers
Phil
Baron of Nice Blokes




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Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 20:40:05 +1000
From: "Phil & Jill Yates" <yates at acenet.com.au>
Subject: The Intrepid Brewer

No matter what disasters may confront one in the course of a day's brewing,
the intrepid brewer will always go forward. I thought this story might be of
some amusement.

When I first went to all grain brewing a couple of years ago,Jill was not
impressed with the increased length of the brew day. To help get around this
I took to starting my day very early in the morning. One cold winter's
Sunday I was down in the brew house by 5.00am, feeling much like I should
still be in bed but determined to get under way. I had the grain already
crushed and now it was a matter of getting the water up to strike temp and
getting going with the mash. With everything looking just right I added the
grain to the mash water in the picnic cooler and stirred it all to eliminate
dry spots. It settled beautifully just where I wanted it at 66C. Looking up,
I was horrified to see Dan Listermann's false bottom still sitting on the
bench. I couldn't believe I could be so stupid, I simply forgot to put it
in.

In a panic I tipped my hot sloppy mash as best I could into a couple of
buckets, worrying dreadfully about the temperature loss. At high speed I
washed out the cooler but all I could think of was the temperature loss in
the buckets. I loaded the mash back into the cooler and was relieved to find
it sitting at 62C. Not what I had wanted but good enough under the
circumstances.

Something was peering down at me from the bench, I looked up and went white.
There was Dan's false bottom still sitting on the bench. Now this is the
activity of idiots and morons, but I had managed to do it twice!

I was going to tip it all down the sink and go back to bed, thinking I never
should have left it in the first place. But I didn't. I can be tenacious
even in my most stupid of moments. Back into the buckets it all went, then
back into the cooler again. This time I got the false bottom in as well. But
the mash was now at 55C. It was early days in my brewing and I didn't know
how to deal with this. Up until now I had done everything as told to me in
my books but such a disaster had never been covered. I guess it was never
envisaged that such idiots would ever attempt mash brewing. What I did was
to take portions of the mash and heat it almost to boiling in my 15 litre
pot then add it back to the cooler. It occurred to me that I was doing
something similar to a decoction, and I started to feel better about things.
I got the mash nicely back to 66C and everything went fine from there.

The biggest surprise was the resulting beer. It came out great. It must have
been at this stage that I realised how forgiving the brewing process really
is, up until then I had tried to do everything to the letter.

I have learnt a lot more about flexibility's in the last couple of years but
have also learnt there is a lot more to learn. Brewing would be boring if
you knew it all. Thankfully no one does.

I was hoping with this post Jeff Renner might nominate me for a Darwin
award, but I think you have to die of stupidity to get one of those. Let's
see what I can do next.

Cheers
Phil





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Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 17:41:49 EDT
From: KMacneal at aol.com
Subject: Re: Carbonation Question

In a message dated 4/29/2000 12:24:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Jim Welsh 
writes:

<< I brewed a Duvel-like clone and have been lagering it in secondary for
 about one month. I have been having problems in the past carbonating
 lagered beer in the bottle. I typically prime with 3/4 cup of corn sugar
 and wait 2-3 weeks. This time around, I have been considering pitching a
 small amount of champagne yeast in the bottling bucket and then
 bottling. My question is: will this cause my bottles to burst. Is there
 a better way of carbonating this beer. >>

Give it more time.  Fermentation (and as a result carbonation) takes longer 
at the lower fermentation temperatures of lagers.  My recent batches of 
pilsner & Maibock were in the bottle for about 4 weeks at 50-55F before they 
were carbonated enough to move them into the lagering fridge.

Keith MacNeal
Worcester, MA


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