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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  RIMS, SSR's and heat dissipation (Bjoern.Thegeby)
  Temperature controller + fridge == true love! ("John Zeller")
  Harry Potter Potables (FatCat FatCat)
  Re: Harry Potter's Butter Beer - Revealed (Jeff Renner)
  new to kegging ("Joseph Marsh")
  Buttered Beere again! ("Marc Gaspard")


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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 09:30:41 +0200
From: Bjoern.Thegeby at cec.eu.int
Subject: RIMS, SSR's and heat dissipation

I am about to build my RIMS now and have a few practical questions.
Given that I will have a combo of 10A and liquids, I would like to put the
electrical stuff in a safe enclosure, IP55 or thereabouts. I have never used
a SSR before, but they seem to require a major heatsink. Where do I put the 
SSR, inside or outside the enclosure? 

The numbers are 220V current, 1350W element (can be upped to 2000W by 
wiring a third loop). My planned safety measures include fusing the element 
(10A fuse), grounding everything and a 220V GFCI. The enclosure would have 
separate power switches for Mains, Pump and Heater, as well as a 1300/2000W
toggle. Which of my ideas will fry me?

Bjorn
(Rennerian, Schmennerian, five miles from Lembeek)


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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 05:41:16 -0700
From: "John Zeller" <jwz_sd at hotmail.com>
Subject: Temperature controller + fridge == true love!

Doug Moyer wrote:

"Setting the differential to 1 degree will shorten the life of your
refrigerator compressor. Not so my man! Since the probe is in the fermentor, 
you have a large buffer from all of that liquid," (snip)
regarding my comments about setting the differential too low.

Doug, I understand the buffering principle, but how long do you think it 
will take to change the temperature of 5 gallons of wort 1 degree?
I suspect that even with a tight differential, the controller will overshoot 
and then undershoot the desired temperature causing even larger temperature 
fluctuations in the wort than if the probe were simply in the air with a 
wider differential set on the controller.  The problem is that with your 
method, the buffering effect will be too large.  I think you could make your 
method work if the probe were in a smaller container of liquid with less 
thermal mass.  Even then, what you would be doing is creating a differential 
external to the controller itself.  Very likely, this differential would be 
close to the 3 degree preset of the mechanical controller.  These 
difficulties could possibly be even more of a problem if you are using a 
freezer rather than a refrigerator as it would obviously have the potential 
to drop the temperature much lower than the refrigerator ever could.

My only point being that all of this is unecessary with either controller.  
There will be very little fluctuation in the 5 gallons of wort with the 
probe in the air.  I can easily maintain the wort temperature within one 
degree or so with the probe in the air and this is more than stable enough 
for brewing purposes.  It is much easier and cleaner to keep the probe out 
of the wort and still have excellent temperature control.








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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 06:09:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: FatCat FatCat <fatcat at homebrew.com>
Subject: Harry Potter Potables

One has to wonder about the 
desirability of beer consumed 
by the 11-14 year old H. Potter 
and Co.  Recall, their favorite
beverage is iced pumpkin juice.



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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 09:25:56 -0400
From: Jeff Renner <JeffRenner at mediaone.net>
Subject: Re: Harry Potter's Butter Beer - Revealed

Phil Wilcox <pjwilcox at cmsenergy.com> writes:

>I find this to be as credible a source as one could hope to find, and it
>just goes to follow that the geography does play out well. As we all
>know that the Hogwarts Express leave's out eastbound out of London on
>track 49 3/4. Given the speed of trains the overnight journey puts them
>indeed on a track for Plymouth. I speculate the secret location of
>Hogwarts is somewhere in the Dartmoor National Park.

No, no, no.  It is in the north!  I'm sure they talk about the 
weather change as the train goes north (but I'm too lazy to go look 
it up), and think of the winters.  There are no winters like that in 
the south.  And it would be a slow train indeed that gets only as far 
as Dartmoor overnight.

Besides, Dartmoor is south-west of London, so why would you leave eastbound?

Maybe you're thinking of Dartmoor Prison?

My bet is on the wilds of North Yorkshire.

Jeff
- -- 
Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA, JeffRenner at mediaone.net
"One never knows, do one?"  Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943


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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 10:30:42 -0500
From: "Joseph Marsh" <josephmarsh62 at hotmail.com>
Subject: new to kegging

Good idea, If I had stayed with bottles I'd have quit by now.
One thing to remember is that this IS NOT rocket science. Buy your hoses a 
bit on the long side and you can cut them down if you need to.

I personally like to force carbonate then give my beers a shot of CO2 to 
dispense as needed. That way I don't have to drill holes in my fridge or 
keep my gas cylinder hooked up constantly. In my situation I'd have a 15 lb 
gas cylinder sitting on a table top. Not a good thing to do. I seldom have 
any problem with too much CO2. If I do I bleed it off and tap another keg.

Do my beers meet AHA guidelines for carbonation levels? Probably not but so 
what? They're good beers and I like 'em.

Another thing I get laughed at for, I put "gas in", "beer out" labels on my 
cornie kegs. Costs about $0.005 per label (masking tape and highlighter), 
takes 10 seconds and I don't have try to read those finely etched lines by 
refrigerator light.

Ball locks on cornie kegs are tough to tell apart. I now have a small sketch 
that shows the difference between gas in and beer out. It saves some anguish 
at clean up time. Just disassemble clean up and drop all the parts in 
sanitizer. Refer to drawing to reassemble. The drawing took maybe 30 seconds 
to make.

Good brewing,
  Joe

PS: I recently pitched out my mini kegs. Too much hassle at clean up.



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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 19:45:26 -0500
From: "Marc Gaspard" <mgaspard1 at kc.rr.com>
Subject: Buttered Beere again!

I have also found a two references to 'Buttered Beere'  in Bickerdyke's
"The Curiosities of Ale and Beer".

Page 385:  "A favorite drink of the 17th century was Buttered Ale.  It was
composed of ale (brewed without hops), butter, sugar and cinnamon.  In
_Pepys' Diary_ for December 5th, 1662, 'a morning draught of _buttered
ale_ is mentioned.  There is also reference to it in _The Convivial
Songster_:-

                 And now the merry spic'd bowls went round,
                  The gossips were void of shame too;
                 In _Butter'd Ale_ the priests half drown'd,
                  Demands the infant's name too."

Page 413: "...Thomas Cogan was advocating in _The Haven of Health
(1584)_......[also] gives a curious receipt for _'Buttered Beere'_ which
is good for a cough or chortness of wind:- Take a quart or more of
Double Beere and put to it a good piece of fresh butter, sugar candie an
ounce, of liquerise in powder, of ginger grated, of each a dramme, and if
you would have it strong, put in as much long pepper and Greynes, let
it boyle in the quart in the manner as you burne wine and who so will
drink it, let him drinke it as hot as he may suffer.  Some put in the yolke
of an egge or two towards the latter end , and so they make it more
strengthfull."

     Thought you might find it interesting!

                                                    Marc Gaspard
From: Phil Wilcox <pjwilcox at cmsenergy.com>
Subject: Harry Potter's Butter Beer - Revealed

Back in December there was a thread on the origin of "Butter Beer"
Though the original poster speculated on a high diacytel low gravity
brittish ale, I did find an interesting passage in Chapter 13 of the
1736 London and Country Brewer. This chapter is titled "Of fermenting
and working of beers and ales, and the pernicious practice of beating in
the yeast detected. " Pg.83 The author has been rambling about the
differences between various outlaying country brewing techniques. At
this point he is referring to the people of Plymouth.

"Their white ale is a clear wort made from pale malt, and fermented with
what they call ripening, which is a composition, they fey, of the flower
of malt, yeast and whites of eggs, a 'Nostrum' made and sold only by two
or three in thise parts, but the wort is brewed and the ale vended by
many of the publicans, which is drank while it is fermenting in Earthen
Steens, in such a thick manner as resembles butter'd ale, and sold for
twopence halfpenny the full quart. It is often prescribed by physicians
to be drank by wet nurses for the encrease of their milk, and also as a
prevalent medicine for the colick and gravel. But the Drover and Chatham
people won't drink their butt-beer, unless it is aged, fine and strong."

I find this to be as credible a source as one could hope to find, and it
just goes to follow that the geography does play out well. As we all
know that the Hogwarts Express leave's out eastbound out of London on
track 49 3/4. Given the speed of trains the overnight journey puts them
indeed on a track for Plymouth. I speculate the secret location of
Hogwarts is somewhere in the Dartmoor National Park.

Phil Wilcox
Poison Frog Homebrewer
Bumblefrog Meadmaker
Leapingfrog Vintner







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