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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  re: Chocolate Flavour ("Greenly, Jeff")
  Turkey Fryers and such ("Tim R")
  Re: Cleaning Beer Lines ("Drew Avis")
  RE: Gruit, herbs used in beer ("RJ")
  Re: Turkey Fryers (gsferg)
  RE: keg pressures (Brian Lundeen)
  RE: Chocolate ("Don")
  Guinness Widgets ("David Houseman")


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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 05:14:05 -0500
From: "Greenly, Jeff" <greenlyj at rcbhsc.wvu.edu>
Subject: re: Chocolate Flavour

Just as an aside...

I made a porter to be ready for my birthday this past summer. It was fairly
standard as porters go, if a bit sweet, and quite enjoyable. Well, to make a
long story short, some good friends brought over one of those chocolate ice
cream cakes. I took a bite of the rich chocolate ice cream and
experimentally swished a bit of the porter in with it, and was delighted by
the taste. Since then, I have served chocolate ice cream with porter or
stout poured over it as a dessert to several of my friends, who have all
been put off initially, but after that first taste swear by it...

As for flavouring wort with chocolate, my one experiment with this used
Creme de Cacao and Grenadine in a dry stout, added when I transferred to a
secondary. It was pretty good, if not a bit overwhelming. I might try just
one or the other next time.

Jeff
Morgantown, WV (Rennarian Unknown)


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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 07:57:50 -0500
From: "Tim R" <par8head at earthlink.net>
Subject: Turkey Fryers and such

I got the same impression from the Wal-Mart version.   Costco had no SS one
in Christiana, DE.  I am now looking at the outdoor cooker sold by St Pats
Homebrew Supply (http://www.stpats.com/cookers.htm)  It is 150K BTU with a
new burner design.  The new burner is enough for them to stop carrying Camp
Chef.

Fire is cool.

Cheers!

Timmy
par8head at earthlink.net
AIM: par8head5




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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 08:55:41 -0500
From: "Drew Avis" <andrew_avis at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Cleaning Beer Lines

The recent thread on cleaning keg lines got me thinking: "when was the last
time I took everything apart on my kegs and cleaned it up?"  So, while I was
filling a keg w/ a fresh brown ale, I started running hot water, cleaner,
and sanitizer through the line.  Now, I've been too lazy to get my real tap
installed, so I'm still using the cobra picnic tap, which to be honest works
quite well, and which I've been using w/o ever cleaning out for 4 years.
However, over the past little while I've noticed a few weird floaters in the
beer - "maybe stray hops?" I thought, as I fished them out (or not). Having
a real close look into the picnic tap revealed a greenish brown snot-looking
slime buildup that scared the freakin crap out of me.  "Oh oh," I thought,
that's the floater source.  30 minutes of trying to fish the mouldy goo out
with a pointy wooden skewer got me thinking that there has to be a better
way.  30 minutes later after soaking the tap in Oxyclean got me thinking
that my particular infestation was an alien mutant slime impervious to all
cleaning efforts.

And it was then that I remembered Jeff Renner's post in #3794: "I find that
the first place to grow things is in the picnic faucet.  Be sure to take it
apart every once in a while and clean and sanitize it."  Hmmm, I never
realized you could take the faucet apart... sure enough, a cobra picnic tap
comes easily apart, as the top is threaded onto the bottom.  Now, I had only
a glimpse of the slime mould when looking down the tap opening, now, with
the tap in two pieces, I discovered the dark and horrible truth - the entire
tap was the nesting place of an unholy rubbery piece of ooze that was slowly
piecing itself out into my beer.

I had to take a long, deep quaff from my Belgian strong ale (bottled, not
kegged, luckily) to regain my composure.

So fellow brewers, learn the lesson I learned the hard way - when you're
cleaning your lines, be sure to disassemble your tap and exterminate any
abnormal growth with extreme prejudice.

Drew Avis, Merrickville, Ontario [694.5km, 56.4] ~ http://www.strangebrew.ca


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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 09:19:39 -0500
From: "RJ" <wortsup at metrocast.net>
Subject: RE: Gruit, herbs used in beer

"chris eidson" <eidsonc at hotmail.com> wrote:

<snip>..."What is the collective's experience with brewing hop-free 
beer?  What herbs were used and in what quantity?  Were they difficult
to 
obtain?  Were the results worth replicating?"

  
Chris, 

I've brewed with Spruce (most HB suppliers can get you the essence or
you can wait until the spring time an pick the young tips yourself)and
I've used ginger and mugwort.  Someday, I'll find some heather, as I've
always had an interest in that too.

Ciao,

RJ 
43:30:3.298N x 71:39:9.911W
Lakes Region of NH



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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 10:50:12 -0500
From: gsferg at clary.gwi.net
Subject: Re: Turkey Fryers


Correct, they're aluminum. I bought the 34 qt model a month ago or so and FYI 
it's plenty big for 6 gallon batches- I've easily boiled as much as 7 gallons 
in it. I wasn't happy with alumuminum, but at the time it was that, or 
nothing- I'd previously been boiling in a SS 5 gallon pot which pretty much 
limited me to boiling no more than 4 gallons. I'll eventually dig up/build/buy 
a stainless pot but this is getting me by, admirably.

George-

- -- 
George S. Fergusson <gsferg at clary.gwi.net>
Oracle DBA, Programmer, Humorist
Wooden Bear Brewery
Whitefield, Maine US [729.7, 79.6] Renerian
- --------------
I am a man, I can change, if I have to, I guess.



>I stopped by Home Depot to examine one of those deep fryers on sale for
>Thanksgiving. I quickly realized that they are not stainless steel. They
>are aluminum. They have a 26 quart and a 34 quart. There is a small hole
>in the lid. The 34 quart would be big enough for 5 gallon batches if you



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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 10:13:25 -0600
From: Brian Lundeen <blundeen at rrc.mb.ca>
Subject: RE: keg pressures

Jeff "double-not" Renner writes:

> I think this may be your problem - not the hose length, long would be 
> better because it would lower the pressure at the filler.  I think 
> you should turn down the pressure.  I'm not sure what you mean by "I 
> have the keg set at serving pressure and the gas at around 8 psi." 
> The pressure of the keg and at the gas in at the filler should be the 
> same.  I turn my down pretty far so I get a slow, non-turbulent flow 
> into the bottle.  Maybe 3-4 psi.

Aaargh, I just don't get this kegging stuff. Carbonation pressures, serving
pressures, turning up, turning down, balancing line pressures, ... I repeat,
aaargghhh!

I thought I had this figured out. 

Set your pressure for the carbonation level you want. Normally I expect that
to be around 15 psi, although for my first kegged beer (a weizen) I want
higher carbonation, so I've set it to around 25 psi. Based on what my little
applet tells me, that should give me my desired volumes of CO2 is solution
for the temperature of my keg fridge (or at least what I figure will be the
average temp of my beer based on the recorded min and max temps that my
fridge goes through).

Anyway, I thought I was supposed to balance that pressure by using an
appropriate length of line to my tap. Using 3/16" line which drops around 2
psi per foot, I figure a 12' line to my tap should produce a nice slow flow,
even if I leave the pressure at 25 psi. For my regular beers, I figure on a
7' line. So with a couple of disconnects, some cheap taps and a roll of line
I figure I should be able to fashion some appropriate serving assemblies for
handling my beers without worrying about turning down pressures for serving,
then turning them back up so that teh carbonation level doesn't drop. 

Is that not right?

Cheers
Brian Lundeen
Brewing at [314,829] aka Winnipeg


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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 08:47:58 -0800
From: "Don" <don at steinfillers.com>
Subject: RE: Chocolate

When using chocolate, I used pure Hershey's baking chocolate powder in the
can  I used one full 1# can for 5 gal in a Imperial Stout with excellent
results.  Stay away from the blocks of solid chocolate which contains
parafin.  That stuff will just re-solidify on the top as soon as it cools.

Read the label.  Hershey's says it is 100% cocoa.  It also says it is 1%
fat.  That I would like to see 0%, but I couldn't find any other brands of
pure cocoa.

Don Van Valkenburg
Stein Fillers Brewing Supply



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Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 15:19:05 -0500
From: "David Houseman" <housemanfam at earthlink.net>
Subject: Guinness Widgets

I saw an ad for Draught Guinness in bottles.  Do these use a Widget that will
fit through the opening in standard beer bottles?  Is anyone familiar with the
overall process of using Widgets and whether this is something that could be
considered by the HB community?  Can any wholesalers/retailers get these
Widgets for bottles, if they exist?

David Houseman
SE PA



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