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


Contents:
  Geordie Brew (Elaine May)
  Yeast starters (Tom Nolan (nolan at lheavx.dnet.nasa.gov))
  sparging (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8165)
  Re:  Mail Order Savings (re: list) (techentin)
  Volume vs. weight measurements. (Mark.Leone)
  Failure in culturing yeast (Dave Suurballe)
  brewpubs (Alan Duester)


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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 08:07:47 MST
From: Elaine May <elaine at hpmtlx.hp.com> <elaine at hpmtlem>
Subject: Geordie Brew
Full-Name: Elaine May

> I am nearly ready to bottle my very first batch of homebrew. I used
> a brew kit Geordi Yorkshire Bitter, has anyone used this before, if
> so do you have any comments?

I recently made some pretty decent brown ale from two Geordie Extra
Strong Ale kits.  I am not a very experienced brewer, having only made
a half-dozen or so batches.  However, this beer was (I thought) quite good.

Here is the recipe:
   2 cans Geordie Extra Strong Ale
   1 cup dark brown sugar
   2 cups corn sugar
   1/2 lb crystal malt
   1/2 cup maltodextrin
   1/2 tsp Irish Moss
   1 oz Willamette leaf hops

Bring grain to boil in 1 gallon water; remove grain when water starts to
boil.  Add another 1/2 gallon of water & bring to boil again.  Add extract
and sugars, boil for 15 minutes.  Add Irish Moss and hops for last 5
minutes of the boil.  Put it in the fermenter with enough water to make
5 gallons.  Add ale yeast, and wait.  (OSG = 1057, FSG = 1018).

The beer is a brown ale with sweetness from the sugars & crystal malt;
not much hop flavor.  The maltodextrin contributes a strange slightly
syrupy quality (I think) -- I might leave it out next time.  Anyway, I
thought it was a nice, drinkable brown ale.  Good luck with your brewing!

Elaine May
HP Manufacturing Test Division                    Loveland CO
elaine%hpmtlx at hplabs.hp.com  -OR- elaine%hpmtlx at hp-sde.hp.com



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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 10:30:20 EST
From: nolan%lheavx.dnet at east.GSFC.NASA.GOV (Tom Nolan (nolan at lheavx.dnet.nasa.gov))
Subject: Yeast starters

Sometimes it's the obvious that escapes notice, like using the dishwasher
to clean bottles. In mine, I can take out the upper rack and a plastic 
thingamajig out of the lower rack and fit in a 5-gal carboy. If I place it
correctly, the spray reaches the bottom of the bottle. But I never thought 
of using the dishwasher until I read it in a book recently.

Likewise, most brewers know that hops were originially added to beer as a
preservative, to inhibit growth of non-yeast bugs. 
In HBD #361, John Melby writes of his yeast culturing attempts, using a 
starter of boiled malt extract. Don't forget to hop that extract, and 
at a higher rate than for the brew as a whole. You get a natural form of
bacterial growth inhibitor, and it tastes good, too. Papazian's book gives
a detailed procedure for making up a sterile wort for starting yeast. It's
as time-consuming as brewing a whole batch of beer, but you get 12 bottles
of sterile wort that will keep for months. Any time you want to make a 
culture, you just pull out a bottle, open it, flame it, and add yeast.

In recent digests, the sensible suggestion was made that in order to 
improve your chances, you should open two or three bottles of live-yeast 
beer and combine the sludge from all of them.

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 10:14:03 mst
From: hplabs!hp-lsd.cos.hp.com!ihlpl!korz (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8165)
Subject: sparging

> In HBD #361, Mark R. Leone  writes:
> If you're having trouble with chill haze, try using leaf hops *without*
> one of those mesh bags.  It's not as neat, but when you sparge into the
> fermenter the spent hops supposedly help filter coagulated proteins
> out of the wort (according to Papazian).

I purchased a *very* large funnel (it holds at least a gallon) with
a removable screen from The Lil' Olde Winemaking Shoppe. I toss my
hop bags and grain bags in there and pour the wort through the whole
mess.  At first it runs quite fast but slows down to a trickle after
a short while.  Then I run my cold liquor through the mess too.  I know
a hot sparge would probably get more fermentables out of the grains,
but I don't currently have a wort chiller and since I'm currently just
doing extract, the grains are usually a small part of the fermentables.
The important thing is this: "When sparging, BE PATIENT."

Al.


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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 11:34:27 CST
From: techentin at Mayo.edu
Subject: Re:  Mail Order Savings (re: list)

Mark Stevens <stevens at ra.stsci.edu> wrote:

>  There's great prices to be had from places like Green Acres in MN
>  or Great Fermentations in CA, but I just can't afford the shipping!
>  Higher shipping costs more than wipe out the cost savings.

I have been looking for a good mail order supply to supplement the 
(often limited) selection available from our local shop.  My first 
inclination was to find somewhere just over the state border, since 
shipping would be minimal and most out-of-state mail orders do not 
charge sales tax.  That 6% savings should help offset the shipping 
costs.

We were discussing the massive order I mailed to Brew-For-Less in 
Chicago over coffee this morning, and my brewing buddy mentioned that 
Minnesota requires you to pay sales tax on out-of-state purchases.  
There is a special line for it on the state income tax return form. 
Guess I'd better save those receipts for tax time!  ;-)

- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Techentin                              Internet: techentin at Mayo.edu
Mayo Foundation, Rochester MN, 55905 USA             (507) 284-2702
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 13:10:55 EST
From: Mark.Leone at F.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Volume vs. weight measurements.


Papazian sez:  four cups of grain weighs one pound.

Simple approximations like these make life a lot easier, especially
since I don't own an accurate scale!  Anyone know volume approximations
for:

 - one ounce of whole hops
 - one ounce pelletized hops
 - one pound of dry malt extract
 - anything else?

- --
Mark R. Leone  <mleone at cs.cmu.edu>              "Don't just do something,
Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University     sit there!"
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 10:21:11 PST
From: hsfmsh!hsfdjs!suurb at sfsun.West.Sun.COM (Dave Suurballe)
Subject: Failure in culturing yeast

John Mellby asks about culturing yeast and about Sierra Nevada.

There are a couple possible reasons for his failure.  One may be the
yeast itself.  It came from Sierra Nevada's barley wine, and he doesn't
say how old it was.  I never use yeast from that beer because it is so
alcoholic I'm afraid it would ruin the yeast.  I haven't experimented,
so I can't prove this.

In my experience, age of the beer makes a huge difference.
I always use beer that was bottled within two months of the culture date.
Older beer doesn't work as well.  I've never succeeded with year-old beer.

Another possible reason may be the culture medium.  I haven't measured
the specific gravity of John's one cup of dry malt in two cups of water
but it sounds too strong.  I have read that a specific gravity of 1.030
is correct.  I use one (weighed) ounce of dry malt in a cup and a half
of water.

I have heard that all the Sierra Nevada ales use the same yeast, and 
I use whatever of their beers is the youngest in the store for my
weekly culture.  It's usually the Pale Ale, because it moves faster,
but this week it's Stout, because they just got some in and I got it
out of a case on the floor instead of from the older stuff on the 
shelf.

The bottle labels have the bottling date encoded in notches on the
right vertical edge of the bottle label.  The code has been described
in this Digest.  If you're the kind of guy who says "We don't read
no stinking notches!", then the cases themselves have the bottling
date stamped in letters and numerals (JAN031990) on the top.

Suurb

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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 22:00:50 EST
From: capnal at aqua.whoi.edu (Alan Duester)
Subject: brewpubs

Regarding the recent posting of brewpubs:
>Massachusetts -- Boston/Cambridge:
>.......
>  Wursthaus - at Harvard Square

There's also a Wursthaus at the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis, MA (routes 28
and 132). They have the 200 or so bottled beers in stock like the one in
Harvard square (some of which I've never seen elsewhere - and where else
can you order a bottle of Framboise or barley wine with dinner?). I've
heard that there is also another one (or more) at other locations. They
are not a brewpub, but rather a german-ish restaurant, and I don't think
they have any microbrews at all.

Also, r.e. Minneapolis. Tap's Waterfront Brewpub is the brewpub I was
thinking of when I posted a request on Jax a few weeks ago (which is the
name of an old brewery in New Orleans that I think has been turned into
a mall). I have no specific memories, but remember their brews as being
pleasant. The ONION RINGS, however, were the best I've had on the
planet, bar none! (It's important to balance your alcohol consumption
with starch & grease... :>)  ). Food prices were fairly reasonable, too.
I haven't been in the brewpub proper (downstairs), but the restaurant
was the all-too-frequent yuppie fern bar style, done "tastefully".

========================================================================
Al Duester, Ocean Engineer, MS S201   #  SPAN: 6308::capnal 
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution  #  INTERNET: capnal at aqua.whoi.edu
Woods Hole, MA  02543                 #  GEnie:  A.DUESTER
(508) 548-1400 x2474 
(508) 457-2000 auto-receptionist for touch tone phones
========================================================================

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End of HOMEBREW Digest #362, 02/21/90
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