HOMEBREW Digest #3549 Tue 06 February 2001

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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  RE: Capping on foam (Bob Sheck)
  The $20 question (for Brew-Scientists at least!) ("Anthony Torrez")
  Sorghum Malt (Ant Hayes)
  re: re high final gravity... ("Stephen Alexander")
  Australian Castlemaine XXXX (Brewmasterwill)
  50L kegs (JGORMAN)
  home vs. micro brewery ("Bridges, Scott")
  Brooklyn Weizenbock (John Baxter Biggins)
  Hefe Weizen Esters ("Steven Parfitt")
  Re: Center of the Brewing Universe (Jeff Renner)
  Re: question re high final gravity... (Roy Roberts)
  Re: home, micro, commercial brewing (Doug Hurst)
  Re:  headspace & carbonation ("Joel King")
  Temperature Sensors ("Pannicke, Glen A.")
  Floor Malted /Gambrinus ("Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies")
  Lurker - Coming Out of the Closet (Gene Collins)
  recirculating and hop scum (Frank Tutzauer)
  Starting the Boil Before the Sparge is finished (R.A.)" <rbarrett at ford.com>
  re: kettle volume, Grolsch sprayers, hop scum (Brian Lundeen)
  War Of The Worts Winners (John Varady)
  North Country Malt Supply (Richard Foote)
  BrewPubs in the Billerica, Mass area... (Kim Hansen)
  Spices ("Mark R. Boesen")
  Phils Filler ("Axle Maker")
  re: Bottling/headspace - capping on foam ("C.D. Pritchard")

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 00:51:39 -0500 From: Bob Sheck <bsheck at skantech.net> Subject: RE: Capping on foam The best solution here is to go to cornies. Carbonate your beer however you like- I like FORCE carbonation, cause I can drink it soon after racking! Then, the only time you have to bottle is for entering in comps! Then, you use a counter- pressure filler (I think Phil makes a very nice one, but there are other examples out on the WEB). Also, you can use a cornie as a filler- just rack from your secondary (or use the cornie as your secondary) to the cornie that has been pre-filled with your bottling sugars <whatever you use> and then use enough CO2 to force the beer out to your filling wand. If you want more foam, shake the bottle about before capping! Bob Sheck bsheck, me-sheck, abednigo! Greenville, North Carolina email:bsheck at skantech.net or see us at: http://www.skantech.net/bsheck/ (252)830-1833 - ------------- "An independent station - WJAZ - With Jazz and conversation from the foot of Mt. "Belzoni <Donald Fagen- The Nightfly> - -------------DOG IS MY CO-PILOT------------------------ Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 06:15:56 -0000 From: "Anthony Torrez" <perpacity at hotmail.com> Subject: The $20 question (for Brew-Scientists at least!) Nowhere in the archives could I find any information pertaining to my current curiosity; What types of sugars are extracted from "crystal" malts? and Are these sugars fermentable by Champagne yeasts? Thanx Again! Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 09:17:20 +0200 From: Ant Hayes <Ant.Hayes at FifthQuadrant.co.za> Subject: Sorghum Malt I have been incorporating sorghum malt in my mashes for the last 6 months. The results are quite pleasant, and add a new dimension to tired recipes. Is there anyone else who has tried this - I would like to swap notes. Ant Hayes Gauteng; South Africa Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 04:46:40 -0500 From: "Stephen Alexander" <steve-alexander at worldnet.att.net> Subject: re: re high final gravity... darrell leavitt writes ... >the final gravity really confuses me, [...] >Here is the data: ... My reading is that you mashed 12.75# of grist & 18qt of water 60' at 155F(68C), 30' at 158F(70C). You had 11# of pale malt (PA & wheat malt), 1.75# of roast (chocolate & barley & amber). A 62C mash will give ~80% attenuation and a 72C mash will give ~40% attenuation (see Kunze on Jump mash). I would expect your 68C mash to yield something like 55-60% attenuation of the wort, tho' it depends on other factors. >I collected about 7 gallons of 1.060 (about) wort. > >First runnings were 1.082 >OG was 1.072 7 gallons at 1.060 is 420 degree-gallon from your grist. That's a hair under 33 deg-gal/lb and is possible but unlikely after collecting only 7 gal from 12.75# of grist. If the 1.072OG was 5gal then you collected 360deg-gal which is a lot more plausible (28.3 deg-gal/lb). >FG after 11 days (no secondary) was 1.040 ? THIS IS WHAT CONFUSES ME (72-40)/72 = 0.44 => 44.4% attenuation. That's lower than I expected, but not vastly so. The whopping 13.7% addition of roast and quasi-roast malts hurt attenuation, but I still think your attenuation is too low for this grist and mash. >It tastes very good, sweet, .not cloyingly so.but I am confused as > to the high final gravity. Sweet ! That's a give-away. There is no source of sweetness in your grist bill - no crystal or caramel malt. Unfermentable dextrins are not sweet, and alcohol has a sweet sensation but that's unlikely to be your case, so the residual sweetness in your beer is almost certainly from unfermented sugars. >Any ideas as to the reason for the hight-than-expected final gravity ? Stuck/slow fermentation, but I wouldn't give up on day 11. >I kept the temp of the fermenter at real close to what it called for , > so I don't think that the yeast crapped >out. Yeast like it a LOT hotter than brewers do. 90F will make your yeast happy, but your beer will be terrible. Listed fermentation temps are for making good beer, not for making happy yeast. >If I had used a secondary perhaps the gravity would have come down.?? No. Secondary fermenter transfer doesn't have any big impact on final attenuation. You seem to have pitched enough yeast, though their condition is unspecified. Your yeast have most likely run out of some critical growth factor, other than fermentable sugar. They may be fermenting very slowly, but most likely you'll find they will be flocculating and clearing. You could try increasing the fermenter temp a few degrees and stirring up or shaking the fermenter regularly. This will improve their performance and reduce CO2 in solution and may allow them to complete the fermentation. My preference would be to repitch. See Al Korzonas' Stuck Fermentation FAQ at 'The Library' too ( http://hbd.org/brewery/library/stuck_fermentAK051195.html ) Yours is one of the few cases where the dreaded Clinitest would come in handy (a test for residual sugars). -S Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 00:01:28 EST From: Brewmasterwill at aol.com Subject: Australian Castlemaine XXXX I'm looking for a homebrew recipe of Caslemaine XXXX. Any help would be appreciated. I wolud like to try white labs new australian yeast. brewmasterwill at aol.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 08:25:00 -0500 From: JGORMAN at steelcase.com Subject: 50L kegs I was at a local micro-brewery last week and found that they had 50L kegs as decoration. I was wondering if anyone knows of any breweries that distribute their beer in 50L kegs. Perfect size for a boiling pot. Jason Gorman River Dog Brewery Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 08:52:07 -0500 From: "Bridges, Scott" <ScottBridges at sc.slr.com> Subject: home vs. micro brewery Mike Capitain said: >i am asking for the help of all those with experience and insights into the >realms of home-, micro-, and commercial brewing. where is the line drawn >between the three? what makes a homebrewery a homebrewery and not jst a >microbrewery in someone's backyard? furthermore, if a microbrewery sells it >brew, what makes that different than a purely commercial brewery? i gather >that the biggest differences are in size, but where are the boundaries? I might not be the most qualified to answer this, but since I seriously looked into opening a brewery a few yrs back I'll take a crack... I think the first distinction is between a commercial (meaning the alcohol is taxed and the brewery is licensed by the BATF) and a non-commercial brewery (meaning it falls under the home brewing exclusion to the tax law). Therefore, a home brewery is any brewery that isn't licensed to sell its beer. There are a number of details here but the gist is that you can brew 100 gals/yr for your own consumption, or 200 if there is more than 1 adult in the home (can you say SWMBO?). You can't sell it since it is untaxed alcohol, and legally you aren't supposed to take it outside of your home except for competitions and/or evaluation. Having said that, you can call your own home brewery any d*mn thing you like, and many of us use cute name's like Scott's microbrewery, etc. The name in this case has no relationship to the commercial status or recognized names I'm using below. Under the commercial heading, I think there are 4 generally accepted categories, although these seem to blur at times. First is a Brewpub. Generally, anywhere that the beer is brewed and consumed on premises. Depending on state law, some of these also bottle for off-site sales, and some are prohibited from doing so. A Microbrewery is any who exclusively bottles or kegs for off-site sales and has sales of less than 15,000 barrels. Usually, these tend to serve local markets, and don't get very wide distribution although there are exceptions. A Regional brewery is over 15,000 but less than 1 Million bbl. Then you get to the large breweries like AB, Miller and Coors who have sales in the millions of barrels. It's been a few yrs since I've been really interested in the business side of it, so the numbers might be a little different these days, but you get the idea. Hope this helps clear it up. Scott Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 09:03:24 -0500 From: John Baxter Biggins <jbbiggin at med.cornell.edu> Subject: Brooklyn Weizenbock So has anyone had the Brooklyn Weizenbock yet? I know it's out there, but haven't had it yet. - -- John B. Biggins Cornell University Medical College Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences Student -- Program in Pharmacology Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Laboratory for Biosynthetic Chemistry Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics lab:(212)639-6405 fax:(212)717-3135 http://www.ski.edu/lab_homepage.cfm?lab=189 "Science, like Nature, must also be tamed With a view towards its preservation. Given the same state of integrity It will surely serve us well." -- Neil Peart; Natural Science (III) -- Permanent Waves Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 10:02:18 -0500 From: "Steven Parfitt" <the_gimp98 at hotmail.com> Subject: Hefe Weizen Esters Sunday after church I started my yeast for a Hefe Weizen. Warmed the blister pack in 80F water (Wyeast 3068 Weihenspan from Williams) and then smacked it to start. Shook it periodiacally throught the day. Yeast date was October 2000, so I figured it would take about two days to activate. Wrong. By 6pm it was already inflated to 1". So, Sunday evening, it is brewtume. 1/2 C Belgian Special B 1/2 C 60L Crystal Malt Steep at 150 F for 30 minutes add 6 LB German Wiezenmalt (Williams Brewing) 1 Oz Hallertau Hersbrucker Boil 60 minutes. Chill in bathtub of 55 F water till wort is 95 F. Areate while adding tap water to achieve 80 F temperature (total = 5 Gal US). Pitch yeast. This morning the temperature is down to 74 F. OK, How do I get the estery flavors? The yeast is specified for 64-70F as ideal temperature range. The last time I made the Hefe Weizen, I did not get the estery flavors I desire. Do I ferment at the high end of the range, say 68-70 degrees? Or do I ferment at the low end? What temp do I use during secondary fermentation? And aging? Thanks, Steven Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 10:08:51 -0500 From: Jeff Renner <nerenner at umich.edu> Subject: Re: Center of the Brewing Universe Regarding Rennerian coordinates, Jason Henning, self appointed "Senior Rennerian Coordinate Developer," prefers the radial method of giving these important data. He suggests the first number be the distance in miles from [0,0] Rennerian, and the second the bearing in degrees. Thus Jason, who lives 12 miles ~NNE of me in Whitmore Lake, MI, is at [12,30] Rennerian. Jason has also defined [0.0] Rennerian as me, not my brewery, and as such, a mobile coordinate. In HBD last August, he wrote, "Only when we plant you will [0,0] Rennerian be static." I can wait. Regardless of how you define it, or even if you use it, it's really good to let us know where you are when you post in HBD, and use your name. It adds to the sense of community, might help answer a question, and who knows, you might even find that there is another homebrewer around the corner! And just a little history into this amusing matter, it all grew out of my semi-annual request as above. After one such request some years ago, Dan McConnell, a former HBDer and owner of Yeast Culture Kit Co., signed his post something like, "five miles south-east of Jeff Renner, the center of the homebrewing universe." Spencer Thomas (host of the archives) then posted that he was one mile south-east of Dan, or six miles southeast of the center. It took off from there. It was Jason who first used the term Rennerian. It's been lots of fun. Jeff - -- Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA, c/o nerenner at umich.edu "One never knows, do one?" Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943 Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 07:33:40 -0800 (PST) From: Roy Roberts <psilosome at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: question re high final gravity... I had the same problem recently with a beer. I tried repitching but to no avail. My guess was that my (single-infusion) mash temperature was too high, killing off most of the beta amylase before it could do its thing... I wonder if that might be the case with your stout. Since then I've been using the Fix 40-60-70 mash schedule with good results. You might try adding amylase to the fermentation. Roy Roberts NYC Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 09:32:34 -0600 From: Doug Hurst <DougH at theshowdept.com> Subject: Re: home, micro, commercial brewing Mike Captiain Writes: >"i am asking for the help of all those with experience and insights into the realms of home-, micro-, and commercial brewing. where is the line drawn between the three?..."< There are specific definitions for home-, micro-, and commercial brewing. A home brewery is not licensed to sell beer. They are limited to 100 gallons per year or 200 for the "head of household". I'm guessing that some home brewers break the law with regard to the quantity they brew and it would be hard for law enforcement to monitor. Selling it is a different matter. Don't do it. The government is very eager to get a slice of alcohol revenue. I personally think that they should. A micro brewery is licensed to sell alcohol, but brews less than a certain number of barrels per year. I think it's 20,000. I'm sure someone else on the list knows better than me. A large or full scale commercial brewery brews more than that. Hope this helps, Doug Hurst Chicago, IL Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 15:41:22 -0000 From: "Joel King" <joel_d_king at hotmail.com> Subject: Re: headspace & carbonation Chris Buck wrote: >>Intuitively, it seems ulinkely that pressure-inhibition of the yeast is the culprit. If there were high CO2 pressure in the headspace, doesn't it stand to reason that, at equilibrium, there would be more CO2 dissolved in the beer?<< I think pressure-inhibition IS the culprit - and it is a NON-equilibrium culprit. I think the gas space pressure grows more rapidly for a higher filled bottle, so the bottle pressure grows more rapidly, which inhibits the yeast until the CO2 can diffuse into the beer. Just my two cents worth. Joel Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 09:43:43 -0500 From: "Pannicke, Glen A." <glen_pannicke at merck.com> Subject: Temperature Sensors Dave Howell and Pete Calinski have been discussing DS Temperature Sensors: Aside from the many other cool things Dallas Semiconductors makes, these 3-wire devices (they call 'em 2-wire) work very well with the Atmel RISC u-controllers - like the AT90S2023. A single 2023 chip (about $3 retail) can control the thermometer/thermostat unit, a 16-digit key pad and an LCD display. The RISC chip can also be programmed in the system without taking it out of the socket. All you need to program the chip is your PC and a parallel cable. The chips do not have to be programmed in assembly, you can use the free version of BASCOM AVR and program in BASIC and actually COMPILE your code, not interpret like a BASIC stamp. OK, sounds like a commercial. It is. It's an ad for anyone who wants to add microcontrollers to their brew process, but wants to spend more time brewing and less time fiddling around with the electronics. I envision a PLC/SCADA system on my brewing apparatus. Automatic temperature programmed brewing in the mashtun with my yet-to-be-assembled HERMeS system. Temperature controlled fermentations in the partitioned chest freezer with ales on one side and lagers on the other! Charts and graphs galore!! A SOLAR-POWERED GRAIN MILL!!!! Huh?!? OK. I tend to get carried away at times... An excellent source of info on microcontrollers is www.dontronics.com And it's an Oz company to boot! Carpe cerevisiae! Glen A. Pannicke glen at pannicke.net http://www.pannicke.net 75CE 0DED 59E1 55AB 830F 214D 17D7 192D 8384 00DD "Designs which work well on paper rarely do so in actual practice" Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 09:56:28 -0600 From: "Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies" <orders at paddockwood.com> Subject: Floor Malted /Gambrinus Just a note to clear up any misconceptions about Gambrinus and floor malting: Gambrinus does not floor malt. They do use small Saladin boxes. They have a clean small scale operation. What they mean by British style malting is a darker colour, for richer malt flavour. The typical malt done in Canada is for the big breweries which don't want malt flavour as that means they have to add yet more corn to thin it out again too. We carry their unique Honey Malt. Although Beeston's floor malted MO is no longer produced, we have some in stock in limited quantities. We will certainly get others (Fawcett's or Crisp likely). regards, Stephen Ross Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies, Saskatoon, SK orders at paddockwood.com www.paddockwood.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 10:36:53 -0600 From: Gene Collins <GCollins at cranecarrier.com> Subject: Lurker - Coming Out of the Closet Hello fellow Homebrewers I've been lurking because this damn AOL 6.0 mail system uses MIME encoding for rich text formating and I am trying to get around it. I was wondering if it would be worth my time to grow hops here in Oklahoma. It gets so hot here in the summertime that everything melts (me included). Most posts on this subject comes from you fellows in the northern regions. I have heard some lore about some individuals trying it here but no real success stories. I'm sure that Jeff Renner probably has some wisdom about this. Gene Collins Beer Consumption and Heavy Truck Specialist Broken Arrow, OK Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 11:57:37 -0500 (EST) From: Frank Tutzauer <comfrank at acsu.buffalo.edu> Subject: recirculating and hop scum Kevin writes first about recirculating to clear the wort: >...I can't seem to get my wort to clear when I recirculate. I had this >problem with my first batch as well, so it's either the method or the >materials (and I'm betting on the method!) I use a 5 gallon Gott cooler >with a copper tubing manifold setup. I don't have much advice about what to do, but I do have an opinion on what it's not. Jack Schmidling, he of EasyMasher fame, has always maintained that it's not the manifold that does the filtering, it's the grain bed. And I believe him. Sure, I think manifold design might alter the flow of wort through the grain bed--John Palmer's experiments have convinced me of that--but ultimately that's a question of efficiency, not of clarity. If you've got a proper grain bed, the wort should run clear pretty quickly. The two problems that come to my mind probably don't apply here. First, the grain bed might be too shallow (but I can't see that happening in a 5-gallon Gott for a typical batch size). Second, the crush might be inferior. But Kevin used a Valley Mill, which should be ok unless the mill is grossly misadjusted. Other than that, I don't have much useful advice. FWIW, I use a 7 gallon Gott with a spiral of copper (I know, John, I've got to rethink that design), drilled with tiny holes, and mill my grain with a non-adjustable JSP MaltMill. I clear in a quart or so. Back to Kevin: >The second question is with regards to "hop scum" (technical term). After >the boil was complete, I found a large amount of hop residue clinging to >the side of my kettle (I used pellets). Should I be watching more >carefully as the boil progresses, and stir this stuff back into the wort? If I have a big foam up and lots of hop pellet goo sticks to the sides, I'll knock it back down. Otherwise I don't worry. At yesterday's brew session, the oddest thing happened though. After whirlpooling, settling, and racking I looked into the kettle. As usual, there was a ring of hop scum around the top of the kettle at the boil line. But, and I have never seen this before, there were also several really huge globs of hop spooge stuck to the side of the middle third of the kettle. And I mean *big* globs and lots of 'em. They looked like they were defying gravity, stuck to the side of the pot like that. And they were on only one side, much like the yeast-on-the-side-of-the-bottle phenomenon a while back. If it makes a difference, I'm in Buffalo, NY, USA, and the hop globs were on the east side of the kettle. I didn't notice any strange shout phenomenon coming from Australia, but one never knows. --frank Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 11:56:47 -0500 From: "Barrett, Bob (R.A.)" <rbarrett at ford.com> Subject: Starting the Boil Before the Sparge is finished When I was brewing yesterday I did something I have never done before. Seemed to work ok, but I thought I would post the question and see what other homebrewers have to say. My brewing partner (my wife) was out of town and the system we have for all grain batches is very manual. Lifting the Gott cooler. Lifting the 1/2 bbl brew pot. etc, etc. With no one around to help with lifting a 1/2 bbl brew pot with 7 gals of liquid inside, I decide to put the pot on one of my extra burners before starting the lauter and sparge. This way it would already be up on the burner and I would not have to try to lift it up there by myself. The recipe (the Guinness Clone from Zymurgy which I am calling this time "Lonely Stout") calls for FWH of 2 oz. Willamette hops and 1 oz of Fuggles at 60 minutes remaining of a 90 minute boil. I put the Willamette (pellets) in the brew pot and start the lauter out of my Gott cooler. Now normally we would wait until the lauter and sparge was complete before starting up the burner. But I decided to start the burner up after I had collected about 1 1/2 - 2 gallons of runnings. Needless to say the boil started in about 10-15 minutes and I just let her go and continued to lauter and sparge. I started the clock on the boil when it started in the brew pot and added the Fuggles 30 minutes later. This cut about 1 hour off my brew day because I could overlap the timeline of the lauter/sparge with the boil and I didn't have to bring 7 gallons up to boiling from around 135F. Are there any repercussions from this process that will affect the beer? We have made this recipe 5 or 6 times before and always wait to start the boil. Is there anything that we should notice will be different about this batch vs. the others? Do most homebrewers start the burner on the brew pot before the lauter/sparge is finished? We make the beer we drink!!! Bob Barrett Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 11:02:15 -0600 From: Brian Lundeen <blundeen at rrc.mb.ca> Subject: re: kettle volume, Grolsch sprayers, hop scum David Harsh writes: > Let me rephrase my post to avoid piercing your thin skin: > Why would you > want to do this, when it would be much simpler to use a dipstick with > calibrated markings for volume? > I think your proposed floating level indicator had a bit of a Rube > Goldberg complexity to it and that's why I recommended the dipstick if > you weren't going to use a sight glass. OK, I'll admit to being a bit thin-skinned, especially when I feel my intelligence is being insulted. Sorry for tearing into you. Most of the time, I'm a pretty nice guy. I think I was having a bad day at work, too. In any case, I should have mentioned that I find it increasingly difficult to use a dipstick because of vision problems. Some kind of external volume indicator would be my preference. Yes, the float is kind of Goldbergesque, and on some level that sort of appealed to me, but as Mike Pensinger pointed out, there would be the surface agitation problem to interfere with the readings. I have thought about a sight glass, and I suppose I could handle installing a weldless version without too much assistance (although I have heard drilling S/S is a tricky business). My concern (which obviously does not seem to be shared) is that the wort that sits in the sight glass might not get properly boiled. IOW, are the boiling temperatures in the main body of wort also reached in the small volume of liquid that's sitting off in its little glass home? Jbooth comments on the suitability of Grolsch bottles for higher carbonation: > I couldn't imagine a roof leak, but one day while > nearby I noticed a > Grolsch bottle with a stream of spray relieving itself on our > ceiling. > Periodicly it acted as a safety valve with more distance than > a boy baby. At the opposite experience end, I have had high carbonated weizens and (unintentionally) over carbonated stouts that open with a resounding POP within Grolsch bottles. But I have also had leakers on normal carbonated beers. Poor gasket condition and/or tension would be my guesses for any problems, but as far as the strength of the glass goes, I haven't seen any problems there. Kevin Sinn (a fellow howling savage) asks: > The second question is with regards to "hop scum" (technical > term). After > the boil was complete, I found a large amount of hop residue > clinging to the > side of my kettle (I used pellets). Should I be watching > more carefully as > the boil progresses, and stir this stuff back into the wort? This generally happens to me the worst when I get a boil up, and is one of the reasons why I boil for 15 minutes before adding my bittering hops (not much you can do about FWH). I don't seem to get too much hop residue from the normal attrition of liquid. IMO, if it froths up and deposits them on the sides of the kettle, they aren't contributing anything to the wort, so they should be scraped back down into the liquid. The rest I don't worry about, although this perhaps could explain why I find 40 IBU to be lightly bittered. ;-) Cheers, Brian Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 13:05:41 -0800 From: John Varady <rust1d at usa.net> Subject: War Of The Worts Winners War of the Worts Competition Results are posted at: http://www.eveningneon.com/WOWwinners.htm Congrat's to Dave Houseman for his BOS Ordinary Bitter. John John Varady * New email address ***> rust1d at usa.net Glenside, PA http://www.netaxs.com/~vectorsys/varady Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 14:19:57 -0500 From: Richard Foote <rfoote at mindspring.com> Subject: North Country Malt Supply Jeff Renner wrote of late: >North Country Malt Supply, another family business, is the exclusive >importer to North America. http://www.northcountrymalt.com/. I've >dealt directly with them for Fawcett's malted oats and was very happy >with the service. I also received prompt and thorough technical >support via email from a Fawcett family member. They have some interesting malts I've not seen elsewhere. I'm especially interested in the Fawcett pale chocolate, MFB kiln coffee, amber and brown malts. Has anyone tried these? I'd be interested to hear of the results. BTW, I e-mailed North Country regarding shipping rates for us homebrewers in GA. The response, FWIW: Freight to your location for one bag would be $22.61. Please let me know if your interested in having some malt sent to you and I'll get it out today. Thanks again for your interest in our products and I hope to hear from you in the near future. Sincerely, Bryan J. Bechard, Sales Dir. Bryan at northcountrymalt.com (888) 368-5571 They seem like helpful folks. No affiliation, YYY. Rick Foote Whistle Pig Brewing Murrayville, GA Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 14:16:04 -0600 From: Kim Hansen <Kim.Hansen at bankfirstcorp.com> Subject: BrewPubs in the Billerica, Mass area... All, I'm going to be in the Billerica, Massachusetts area for about a week, and was wondering if there were any good brewpubs in that area, or if anyone could recommend some of the good local brews on tap around there. Thanks! Kim Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 15:49:24 -0500 From: "Mark R. Boesen" <mrboesen at mtu.edu> Subject: Spices Hello all, I was recently at home from school and paid a visit to one of the local micro-brewery establishments. They had a cinnamon spiced porter on draft and it was quite tastey. It also sparked an interest in trying to brew something similar. Does anybody have any techniques for spicing brews or good recipes? I'm fairly new to home brewing and have not tried any thing like this, I just need something to point me in the right direction. I'm open to anything,. Thanks, Mark Boesen Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 18:29:39 -0500 From: "Axle Maker" <axlemaker at mindspring.com> Subject: Phils Filler Hi All ! I just bought a " Phils Filler " for my bottling day, i've never used one before nor have I ever seen one in action. My question is > If the filler leaked any faster I wouldn't have to worry about pushing down on the filler to fill bottles, is this how they all are or did I get a bad one ? TIA ! Axle... Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 17:16:51 From: "C.D. Pritchard" <cdp at chattanooga.net> Subject: re: Bottling/headspace - capping on foam Fred Johnson noted that he never sees foam atop the beer when bottling before naturally carbonating. I never did either Fred. He also noted, "some (many) commercial bottle filling machines disturb the surface of the beer in the bottle with a fine spray of water to generate foam just before the cap is placed on the bottle and sealed". The water jet works because the big boys' beer is fully carbonated at bottling and the bottles are counter-pressure filled so, there's much more co2 in the beer to foam when the water jet distrubs it than there is in beer in a HBer's bottling bucket. BTW: For HBers that counter-pressure bottle, a water jet isn't needed- just remove the filler after filling so its business end is in the head space, tease open the beer valve and raise the filler as the foam that's discharged fills the headspace. For non noncounter-pressure bottling, one thing that doesn't work is using a pocket beer engine (a syringe used to suck up then discharge beer to form a head). I just tried it on a sample of ale from a secondary that had been dropped to 45 degF and topped up with ~2 psig of co2. This meant the ale had more co2 in it than a brew in a bottling bucket would typically have. The sample foamed when "beer engined", but not nearly enough to fill the usual headspace in a bottle that'll be naturally carbonated. I also tried bubbling some co2 from a cylinder/regulator thru the sample. It took awhile to generate enough foam. With a 5 gal. bottling session, it'd be way too tedious for me. Anyhow, if one already has the co2 cylinder and regulator needed for bubbling, add a keg and counter-pressure filler and you can bottle the best way IMHO. c.d. pritchard cdp at chattanooga.net http://hbd.org/cdp/ http://chattanooga.net/~cdp/ Return to table of contents
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