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


Contents:
  More about hops tea (more or less)... (Mark Stevens) <stevens at stsci.edu>
  Cider and Red Star (Eric Pepke)
  Colorado Area Brewpubs (Rick Myers)
  Colorado Springs Brewpubs (Peter Klausler)
  Vanilla Beans (S_KOZA)
  Follow-up (Doug Roberts)
  HBD #431, hazy wheat dream (florianb)
  No more beer babble, Cider Probs (Jay S. Hersh)


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Date: Mon, 4 Jun 90 09:26:58 EDT
From: (Mark Stevens) <stevens at stsci.edu>
Subject: More about hops tea (more or less)...


In homebrew digest #431, Russ Gelinas suggested adding whole hops to the
wort in the last 1-3 minutes of a boil and then steep them with the
heat off.

During a tour of the Wild Goose Brewery (Cambridge Maryland), brewmaster
Alan Pugsley explained that they use a device called a "hops percolator"
to dry hop their Wild Goose Amber.  Aromatic hops (Tettnang & Bramling)
are dumped in (in leaf form) and steeped in 110 degree water. [My notes
say that Pugsley said they steep for 6 hours, but that seems an awful
long time--perhaps I misunderstood the length of time].  

According to Pugsley, the product is a bright green liquid with an
incredibly powerful hops aroma.  The hops tea is then added to the
wort in the primary fermenter, i.e., it never goes into the brewing kettle.
Pugsley said that this gives the brewery greater control over the
consistency of the brews and avoids the problem of losing aromatics.
About 30% of the total hops content of each batch is added during this
dry-hopping stage.

Those of you who have sampled Wild Goose can back me up on this--Wild Goose
has one of the sharpest hops characters of any commercial beer I can think
of.  Great Stuff.  Always nice to see how the pros do it...

Cheers,
- ---Mark Stevens
   stevens at ra.stsci.edu


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Date:    Mon, 4 Jun 1990 10:07:05 EDT
From: PEPKE at scri1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Subject: Cider and Red Star

I just tasted my first batch of apple cider made with Red Star California
Champagne yeast.  The result is quite nice.  Unlike Pasteur Champagne yeast,
the CC yeast seems to be less attenuative, leaving a residual sweetness.  There
is also less sharpness in the taste.  The result is much more like the "fine"
ciders I remember from England.

Eric Pepke                                     INTERNET: pepke at gw.scri.fsu.edu
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute  MFENET:   pepke at fsu
Florida State University                       SPAN:     scri::pepke
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052                     BITNET:   pepke at fsu

Disclaimer: My employers seldom even LISTEN to my opinions.
Meta-disclaimer: Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.

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Date: Mon, 4 Jun 90 8:17:34 MDT
From: Rick Myers <cos.hp.com!hpctdpe!rcm at hp-lsd>
Subject: Colorado Area Brewpubs
Full-Name: Rick Myers


>From: "Gary F. Mason - Image Systems - MKO2-2/K03 - 603884[DTN264]-1503  01-Jun-1990 1812" <mason at habs11.enet.dec.com>

>I am traveling to the Springs next week.  I don't see any listings in the
>"Master Brewpub List" for that locale.  Does anyone know of any there? If 
>not, what would be the closest, and how far is that anyway?

Colorado Springs (Southern Colorado, for that matter) does not have any
brewpubs/microbreweries (yet!).  The nearest brewery is Wynkoop in Denver
(~75 miles north of C. Springs).  I have never been there, but a buddy of
mine has.  He is real picky about the beers he drinks, and he likes most
of Wynkoop's.  Their address is:

   Wynkoop Brewing Company
   1634 Eighteenth Street
   Denver, CO 80202
   (303) 297-2700

There are also two microbreweries in Boulder (~35 minutes from Denver),
Boulder Brewery, and Walnut Brewery.  I've been to neither of those, too.

I shouldn't be saying this yet, but, the Antler's Hotel here in C. Springs
is opening a brewpub in October, after they finish remodeling the building.
The brewmaster owns a local homebrew shop (Mayjor Kelley Homebrewing
Supplies) here is C. Springs.  I don't think he has any experience brewing
on this large of a scale, but the Antler's folks were real anxious to get
a brewer as soon as possible - well, as soon as they open, I'll sample and
report back to the Digest... 

- --

*===========================================================================*
Rick Myers
Hewlett-Packard Colorado Telecommunications Division
5070 Centennial Blvd.
Colorado Springs, CO  80919 (719) 531-4416
INTERNET: rcm at hpctdpe.hp.com
*===========================================================================*
Disclaimer:  standard

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Date: Mon, 4 Jun 90 08:45:53 MDT
From: pmk at craycos.com (Peter Klausler)
Subject: Colorado Springs Brewpubs


> I am traveling to the Springs next week.  I don't see any listings in the
> "Master Brewpub List" for that locale.  Does anyone know of any there? If
> not, what would be the closest, and how far is that anyway?

Brewpubs in Colorado Springs? That's a laugh. There are none.

No music, theatre, restaurants, vegetarians, or books, either. The major
cultural activities are somewhat more like:
	- throwing (partially) empty Coors cans at road signs
	- pawnshop browsing
	- cutting tops off front-range mountains for strip-mining
	- gun fondling
	- grafitti
	- running red lights (unenforced in the Springs)
	- shooting holes in signs which prohibit firearms in Nat'l Forests
	- shooting prairie dogs
	- blowing up prairie dogs
	- littering
	- daytime television
Not the most amenable environment for establishing a brewpub, or even a
yuppie fern-bar. (So maybe there's some advantage to the Springs, after all.)

If you must stay in town, the best excuses for bars are "Old Chicago", downtown
(as it were), and the "Golden Bee", near the Broadmoor Hotel by Cheyenne
Mountain. At the first you can find a decent selection of imported bottled beer;
at the second you may enjoy English ales, served cold and expensively. Given
these choices, homebrewing is a natural alternative; one must mail-order
supplies and use bottled water, however.

Nearest brewpub is in Denver, to whose downtown you may flee in a short 75
minute drive from the Springs'. Try the Wynkoop brewery near the train station.

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Date:     Mon, 4 Jun 90 10:29 EST
From: <S_KOZA%UNHH.BITNET at mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject:  Vanilla Beans

Hi All.
        A brewing cohort is interested in putting up a malty, somewhat sweet
and lightly hopped Vanilla Ale. The question we're unsure of is: How many
beans should he use or should he consider using a high quality extract?
Any experiences?
                                        Stephan M. Koza

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Date: Mon, 4 Jun 90 11:11:51 MDT
From: roberts%studguppy at LANL.GOV (Doug Roberts)
Subject: Follow-up

I would like to take the opportunity to supply some feed-back
regarding a couple of suggestions that have been made in this list
which I have found to be extremely useful.

1. To whomever suggested lightly soaping the stove top prior to
boiling your wort: Nice idea! I wiped a light film of dishwashing
detergent on the stove top prior to making my last batch, and it
really did make cleaning up easy afterwards. I inevitably spill a few
drops of wort onto the stove top during a boil where it caramelizes
and bonds to the stove. The soap pre-treatment now prevents this: crud
just wipes off afterwards.

2. I have a batch of Scottish Ale fermention in my spare "beer room"
upstairs, where the temperature topped 81 degrees, yesterday. The
beer, however, is happily fermenting away at 65 degrees. I put the
carboy in my mashing pot, put water in the pot, and pulled an old tee
shirt over the carboy and down into the water. Water wicks up the
shirt and evaporates, cooling the carboy & beer. Looks like I'll be
able to brew all summer!

- --Doug
================================================================
Douglas Roberts                |
Los Alamos National Laboratory |I can resist anything
Box 1663, MS F-609             |  except temptation.
Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545   |  ...
(505)667-4569                  |Oscar Wilde
dzzr at lanl.gov                  |
================================================================

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Date: 04 Jun 90 12:43:33 PDT (Mon)
From: florianb%tekred.cna.tek.com at RELAY.CS.NET
Subject: HBD #431, hazy wheat dream

Cher sez:

>Regarding the tendency for American judges to mis-judge wheat beers due to
>haziness combined with ignorance:  is there anything to be done about this?

Yes.  Force feeding with Old Bohemian.  But let's not carry this thing too far.
Why, just last night...


Last night I had a dream that I made a beautiful wheat beer intending to 
send it off to the AHA contest next year.  It was fermented cold and 
lagered several months until a gang of my German friends came over to 
visit.  They kidnapped me, forced me to don expensive feet equipment and 
pushed me down nearby icy mountain slopes.  This was alarming and made 
me nervous.  It made them thirsty.  Later, they took me back home and 
guzzled all but two of my wheat beers which I managed to stash behind an 
aging six pack of Budweiser I had bought long ago when I worked in a 
feed mill.  After the Germans left, I took the remaining bottles of 
wheat beer, filtered them to remove the haze, added a pinch of cloves to 
both, and re-capped them.  Then I sent them away to the AHA contest.  
The judge turned out to be a visiting professor of brewing science from 
Munich, who criticized my brew for being too clear for a real wheat 
beer, and assigned it a score of 19, not good enough for the bronze 
certificate.  He had the additional gall to inquire whether Mt. Hood or 
Mount Bachelor had the better snow in April and could he crash on my 
sofa sometime.  The dream recurred twice during the evening.

I'm going to interpret this much synchronicity as a message to begin 
brewing a wheat beer now for next year's competition.  If it's dismissed 
on account of having too much haze, there's a certain professor who 
works full time at the AHA who's going to hear from me.



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Date: 04 Jun 90 19:32:47 EDT
From: Jay S. Hersh <75140.350 at compuserve.com>
Subject: No more beer babble, Cider Probs

I have been very patient with this but after reading the 100th page
 of scores and banter from J. Melby et al regarding the results of 
 his various tastings I must protest.
 Mr Melby do we all have to hear about every beer you drink, especially
 in such gory detail. This is after all a homebrew digest, a forum for
 discussion of homebrew questions and concerns, not a beer-o-the-month
 club newsletter. 
 Could you please limit your postings in the future to a BRIEF summary
 and forward scores (which many will claim are meaningless anyway)
 and other comments to those who are interested. Many of us want
 to converse about homebrew. I have noticed you cross post these
 diatribes on rec.food.drink, where I think they have more of a 
 proper place.

 To Eric(?) Pepke. I have made cider with Red star Champagne and
 had similar results, extremely bitter since all the sugar fermented
out. The solution I used was to check the gravity and pop the 
 cider into the frig (after racking it back into the bottles off of
 the yeast). This had 2 effects. It took the cider off the settled
 yeast, and it caused the still active yeast to settle out due to 
 temperature drop. It was necessary to repeat rackings, but the 
 high alcohol content and cold temperature protected against
 contamination. This has worked well for me the past few tries.

 Chuck Cox..... Nerdiest Homebrew, hardly fits the pictures
 perhaps dirtiest homebrew, nah.... we'll come up with something!

 - Jay Hersh
  too busy to drink a thousand beers and babble about them, let 
  alone read about someone else doing the same


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #432, 06/05/90
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