HOMEBREW Digest #4204 Tue 25 March 2003


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  PID Controls ("Michael O'Donnell")
  acetic mashes ("Raj B. Apte")
  re: "The Brewers' Handbook" by Ted Goldammer ("Mark Tumarkin")
  RE: Igloo Conversion (Jonathan Royce)
  Procon Pump???? ("Guillote")
  Beerjolais nouveau ("Mike Dixon")
  Re: Beerjolais nouveau (Larry Bristol)
  fastest beer in the east (Marc Sedam)
  Irish Red (Leo Vitt)
  white film ("Buck Wilke")
  "burnt sugar" (Jeremy Bergsman)
  Kettle False Bottoms (Lonzo McLaughlin)
  Mountain Creek Water in Brewing (Andrew Nix)
  enzymes an overnight mashing ("greg man")
  Kellogs' Black and Tan (John)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 21:44:58 -0800 From: "Michael O'Donnell" <mooseo at stanford.edu> Subject: PID Controls >Doug Moyer had a question about a PID controller & SSR > > "I have an Omega 1/16 DIN MICROMEGA Autotune PID >Temperature Controller, model CN77333. This unit's >outputs are both Relay SPDT 5 A at 120. As I >understand it, these are mechanical relays, as opposed >to SSRs. As such is it possible to use this unit to >control a RIMS heater?" > >Set the time constant to a value somewhere around 2 seconds, and you should >be ok with the relays. You'll need to set up some sort of control voltage >for the SSR--but that will depend on the SSR. Wire the control voltage >through the NO contact of the relay. The relay is 5A at 120V, but that >doesn't mean it "puts out" 120v...that's just it's rating. Before you go about doing anything like this, I'd highly recommend taking Pat Reddy's suggestion from last week and just buying an SSR controller on Ebay. You can probably get one for around $50, then turn around and sell your relay one for the same amount. Much better to start with the right part than to try and kluge it together, especially if there is no cost savings. I bought 2 of them last week and got great deals.IIn a bit of shameless self-promotion, one of them is about to go back up for sale because I forgot I wanted to use a thermocouple and got a controller that needs an RTD probe... if you have a use for an 0mron E5CX-RP, let me know. Although I am a big promoter of Ebay, it is easy to get burned by purchasing the wrong item if you don't take the time to download the instruction manual and make sure you are getting the right thing before you bid. Once you are sure, you can get what you need. cheers, mike Monterey, CA Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 00:03:43 -0800 (PST) From: "Raj B. Apte" <raj_apte at yahoo.com> Subject: acetic mashes All, Can anyone explain how acetic acid is produced during mashing? I refer specifically to p56 of "Wines & Beers of Old New England" by Sanborn Brown of MIT: ...and this cracked malt, called grist, was steeped in hot water for several hours somewhat below the boiling point. If the water was too cool, the process did not work, and if it was too hot, acetic acid was rapidly produced which would spoil the beer. The early farmers adjusted the mashing temperature by taste--if too cool, the wort did not become sweet; if too hot, they were warned by the vinegar taste. This is clearly not thermophilic lactic acid mashing ala Papazian. From the sound of it, I don't think he's refering to a possible acetic fermentation that could come from a highly dextrinous wort--that should take a few days (as in lambic, which has an early acetic production by bacteria). Any ideas? raj Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 06:47:16 -0500 From: "Mark Tumarkin" <mark_t at ix.netcom.com> Subject: re: "The Brewers' Handbook" by Ted Goldammer Bill Halstead wrote: "In regard to Steinfillers question about reference books I would certainly concur with Mr. Daniels. Another book that can serve as a good reference source, though not as technical nor as in depth as some of the other books mentioned, is "The Brewers' Handbook" by Ted Goldammer. It's 457 pages and gives an excellent overview of the commercial brewing process as well as has chapters on the U.S. beer market and beer styles." You can read Ted Goldammer's book online at http://www.beer-brewing.com/index.htm Although the website says something about 'selected excerpts' it appears to be the complete book, though I'm not sure about that. Anyhow, it's a valuable link to have bookmarked. Mark Tumarkin Hogtown Brewers Gainesville, FL Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 05:03:07 -0800 From: Jonathan Royce <jonathan at woodburybrewingco.com> Subject: RE: Igloo Conversion Mary Johnson asked about converting a 3 qt Igloo for partial mashes. First, let me just say that I am also a partial masher, and in IMHO a 3 qt cooler is too small to be useful. I went with a 2 gallon cooler from Home Depot and it is just about right--allows for 4-5 lbs of grain per 5 gallon batch and gives anywhere from 8-12 quarts of runoff. You can see the design on my website- -I went with a sealed bulkhead fitting, but my cooler was rectangular so making the seal was easier than in a round cooler. Anyway, if you're determined to try the 3 qt design, I see no reason why drilling a 7/8" hole wouldn't work. Just be sure to use a very sharp hole saw so that you get a nice round hole and (if possible) fix something inside the cooler wall that you can drill into. This method will prevent the plastic inside the cooler from becoming frayed or broken and will provide a better edge to seal against. Even better, if you have access to a hole punch, drill a hole big enough for the hole punch bolt and then make the hole using the punch. This will provide the cleanest, roundest hole you can make. HTH, Jonathan Woodbury Brewing Co. www.woodburybrewingco.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:28:27 -0300 From: "Guillote" <guillote at castresana-sa.com> Subject: Procon Pump???? Hi! My name is Guillermo im from Argentina. So, I could take a "REDHEAD PROCON PUMP" from a Coke dispenser machine. I want to know if someone have experience whit this pump. Im thinking use it for my Herms System. Coments??? Thanks. Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 08:44:04 -0500 From: "Mike Dixon" <mpdixon at ipass.net> Subject: Beerjolais nouveau > From: Jeff Renner <jeffrenner at comcast.net> > How young have you served your beer? How about five days? >[snip] > So, five days old. And it tasted pretty damn good. Can you top that? Let's see, you brewed on Monday, served on Saturday. I guess I gotcha with a 4 day old. I brewed 3 batches one Saturday (a couple of years ago), one of which was a partigyle which ended up with quite a bit of extra wort so I made an additional 3 gallon batch. The grist of the partigyle was mainly wheat and pale malt, and it had been through a step mash, also I took the final runnings of the first batch I had made and used that in the boil as well. The OG post boil was about 1.040. I did not have enough wort to make the 3 gallon batch, so I dumped the trub from the two previous batches through a collander and strainer and collected all the wort left in the kettle from 2 batches that were part of the partigyle and the trub from the "cleanup" batch. I pitched the only "extra" yeast I had, Edme, and left to ferment. The next day, Sunday, the fermentation appeared done, so I decided to put it into a seconday. I checked the gravity on Monday and it was completely fermented. I fined with gelatin since I now had the idea to take it to the club meeting on Wednesday. On Tuesday, I kegged and force carbonated. On Wednesday, I served it at the meeting. Most people thought it was pretty good, one person picked out it was "extremely" young beer. Was it good, yes, was it outstanding, no. It really didn't mellow and become great beer with age, but it remained a fairly decent beer to be the dregs from multiple mashes and multiple boils... Cheers, Mike www.ipass.net/~mpdixon/homebrew.htm Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 07:54:57 -0600 From: Larry Bristol <larry at doubleluck.com> Subject: Re: Beerjolais nouveau On Sun, 23 Mar 2003 22:49:11 -0500, Jeff Renner <jeffrenner at comcast.net> wrote: > How young have you served your beer? How about five days? > Here's the story, which includes a stupid brewer's trick. >...snip... > So, five days old. And it tasted pretty damn good. Can you top that? Yep. I had some friends chew on some grain five days before the beer was even brewed, and it tasted great! There is a lot to be said for serving "fresh" beer. Neat story. It reminds me of my very first batch of homebrew made on April 1, 1982. [I started as a child, you know? Think about it --- in just a few days, my beer is going to be old enough to drink itself!] Seven days in the fermenter and then bottled. You're supposed to let it condition for 2 weeks, right? On the fifth day, my neighbor and I decided we should test one to see how the carbonation was coming along. By the time it was "ready", it was gone! - -- Larry Bristol The Double Luck Bellville, TX http://www.doubleluck.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 09:33:11 -0500 From: Marc Sedam <marc_sedam at unc.edu> Subject: fastest beer in the east I can beat Jeff R. by one day. After moving into my new pad I quickly found myself with NO beer, having extinguished the reserves in the hot moving days. I did have some malt left and ground up 7lbs pils and a pound of 40L crystal. Pitched a sachets of EDME dry yeast at 10pm on Wednesday and racked to the keg on 10am Friday. The beer was already clearing and there was just enough fermentability left that it carbonated sufficiently by Saturday evening. Chill and serve. A bit hazy but fresh as all get out. - -- Marc Sedam Chapel Hill, NC Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 07:05:34 -0800 (PST) From: Leo Vitt <leo_vitt at yahoo.com> Subject: Irish Red Cas Koralewski asked: >What BJCP style does "Irish Red Ale" fall into? The old AHA categories had this under brown ales. I don't think the current BJCP categories list it. If it is not, maybe we should ask - Should it be included? If I am correct that it is not a current BCJP category, you can submit it to a competition under 24 Specialty/Experimental/Historical. ===== Leo Vitt Sidney, NE Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 11:13:42 -0500 From: "Buck Wilke" <brewer at valkyrie.net> Subject: white film hello fellow brewers, first time posting. if anyone can answer this question i know that it is the collective. i had a pale ale sitting in a conical fermenter with the loose fitting lid (mini-brew from hobby beverage, and i have never had this problem before). this brew was dry-hopped. after dry-hopping for 2 weeks i lifted the lid and removed the hops. two days later i was ready to keg the batch. upon opening the lid i saw this thick bubbly white film, it almost looked like "mother" on vinegar. however the brew had no sour odor or taste, it tastes quite good. when this film is touched chunks, fall into the brew and suspend. i drained and filtered the batch through a very fine strainer with double layered cheesecloth in it. all looked well. i let this settle for a day, it was about half way settled and the white film was back. this time i took 5 campden tablets and crushed them. i then filtered the brew again on top of the campden tablets. thinking that maybe this was a yeastie thing starting (the fermenter was in the kitchen, and my wife was baking a lot of bread). i know, i'm grabbing at straws. the brew was settling out nicely and bang the white film is back. there is no sulfur taste or odor to the brew, which may have been possible with the campden tablets. i am now planning to allow the brew to settle completely. then refilter and keg. does anyone have any idea what this is? and what to do? and is this is a bad idea, of refiltering and kegging? buck wilke Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 12:34:47 -0500 From: Jeremy Bergsman <jeremy at bergsman.org> Subject: "burnt sugar" I think Tidmarsh was referring to my grandfather's beer making instructions, which do indeed refer to making "burnt sugar" to color and flavor some beer. These are at: http://bergsman.org/jeremy/beerstuff/fritz.html I think that the process (like the whole document) is interesting for historical reasons, but probably not very enlightening for how to proceed in practice nowadays. Here's what it says: Burnt sugar for colouring: 1lb. sugar (cane or corn), put in pan, cook to brownish-black colour, then add small amount of water and cook to a thin liquid. When finished should have about 1/2 dipper full (3 quart dipper) I have posted in the past on making sugar syrups and I agree that Jeff's approach is unnecessarily involved. Just add water when the caramel gets where you want it. Just do it *carefully* because the caramel is *very* hot and even better at burning you and the water will instantly boil and tend to splatter things around. - -- Jeremy Bergsman jeremy at bergsman.org http://www.bergsman.org/jeremy Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 09:43:26 -0800 (PST) From: Lonzo McLaughlin <lonkelm at yahoo.com> Subject: Kettle False Bottoms Hello, I have a 3 tier converted keg system. I'm having trouble getting all of the work out of my kettle after I finish the boil. My pickup tube goes to the center and bottom of the keg and I have a scrubbie on the end. I normally use hop pellets in my brew sessions. I see Sabco has a false bottom with 3/32" holes. I would think the fine particles of the pellets would make it through this no? Please let me know how other have made this part of their system successful. Lonzo Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 14:47:02 -0500 From: Andrew Nix <anix at vt.edu> Subject: Mountain Creek Water in Brewing Hello all, I have been tossing around the idea of using the water from my favorite wild trout stream in the mountains here in SW VA and wanted to see if anyone has tried this before with their local streams. I know there is a large variation in the water from watershed to watershed depending on the soil and rock formations. Has anyone tried to make a beer from mountain stream water, and if so, what adjustments, if any, did you make to the water chemistry before brewing with it? I know I could send a sample off for chemical analysis, but I'm not going to go that far. I want to make an American pale with it, so I may not treat it at all and just see how the beer comes out. Andrew Nix Research Associate Transonic Turbine Cascade Heat Transfer Group Department of Mechanical Engineering Virginia Tech 100B Randolph Hall (540) 231-6939 Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:54:51 -0500 From: "greg man" <dropthebeer at hotmail.com> Subject: enzymes an overnight mashing I tried overnight mashing last weekend on a belgian sasion. The whole process cut 2 hours out of my brew day (well, cut it on one day an added it to another I guess). It seemed to work pretty good, but my final resting temp the next morning was a little low at 130F. Too close to the danger zone for me, so next time I'll try to find a better way of insulating the cooler. Any suggestions would be appreciated!! This method of mashing is particularly useful for those of us who like to do decoction or complex mashing schedules. After a 2-3 hours of working on a mash your ready for bed and now that's just what you get to do. I have only two questions for the collective chemistry majors out there about the process. First do coolers lose heat in a linier scale? For example I left the mash at 1am at 150F. 10 am the next day the mash reached 130F. If it was linier then every hour the mash dropped 2.5 degrees. That to me sounds like a step mash in reverse? You could assume a backward mash temperature rest schedule? The second is this I wondered If the temp will fall that much over night then I will have to start at a higher final resting temp. Will resting the mash over night at say 158F destroy all of the beta enzymes? What I mean is by the time the mash reaches say 148F will there be any beta left to convert starches to fermentable sugars? I have read a few times that at higher temps enzymes are eventually destroyed. Of corset with the length of time mashing that is involved in overnight mashing, I would suppose even if a small about of enzymes were left they would have enough time to do there job? What about if the mash stays too long at 130F? Will I have a headless beer? Or will it become very thin in body an mouth feel? thanks all...............gregman Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 19:51:36 -0800 (PST) From: John <j2saret at yahoo.com> Subject: Kellogs' Black and Tan Thanks to both Jeff and Marc for their (differing) replies to my question on cereal mash. By a remakable conincidence the grocery store had a sale on Kellogs Corn Flakes. I had enough grain on hand to brew another batch of the Black and Tan that I had just moved to my secondary so I thought "why not In one fell swoop I can produce both a CAP and a CACA, discovering along the way the difference between brewing with corn meal and corn flakes. Having the two beers on hand to compare the flavour with and with out corn will be instructive and the process might teach me something." So far so good. I kettle mash and the mash with corn flakes took seven minutes longer than the previous batch without. The sparge yielded less liquid than expected (5.3 gal vs the projected 5.8) so I will be topping up the primary once it is chilled. I am excited about the experiment and if successful will be moving on to include rice crispies in my arsenal. On a unrelated note I got my Sportsman's Guide catalog to day and I see they are offering 30qt u.s. aluminum fry pot with a screened drain spigot for $49.97. It looks like it could be a great boiling pot/primary. Any feedback? John 545.3, 308.5 (oh no I've joined the cult, dues are next) ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. Return to table of contents
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