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


Contents:
  Glass Grenade Syndrome!!! (Enders)
  Objective scores for beer (John Mellby)
  Cher's query on lactobacillus (florianb)
  Info on Beer Bottle (Jim Somerville)
  cherry ale (Bill Crick)


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Date: Mon, 18 Jun 90 10:16:44 -0500
From: Enders <enders at plains.NoDak.edu>
Subject: Glass Grenade Syndrome!!!


     I finally had my first brush with making the dreaded "glass hand
grenades" :^)  I'm not real sure why, so I'm going to describe what tran-
spired, in the hope of getting some suggestions on avoiding a repeat
incident.

     Bottles: various ceramic top, 1 and 2 litre capy.

     Brew: Pale Ale - FG 1.010 primed with 1/4c corn sugar (syrup w/2c water)
           per 2.5 gal batch

     All bottles filled with headspace of .125 to .25 inch.  Temp of storage
area 65-95F (had a few hot days :^).  The 2 bottles that burst were of the 2
litre variety.  One looks like it let go a bit violently (broke into numerous
fragments), while the other just cracked the bottom out.  A similar bottle of
ale from a previous batch, stored under the same conditions did not burst.

     What I think happened is that the two bottles in question were filled with
very small headspace, and during the subsequent hot storage, the liquid 
expanded to use up the entire available space, and since liquids are incompres-
sible, KABOOM!!!

     This is the first time I had some blow up on me, and since it was the last
two bottles of the batch, looks like I'm going to have to brew again :-)
Comments, anyone?

Todd Enders                        arpa: enders at plains.nodak.edu
Computer Center                    uucp: ...!uunet!plains!enders
Minot State University               or: ...!hplabs!hp-lsd!plains!enders
Minot, ND 58701                  bitnet: enders at plains.bitnet

Comming soon-----------------------ampr: Todd at wd0bci.mot.nd.ampr.org
                                         [44.114.0.12]


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Date: Mon, 18 Jun 90 09:21:23 CDT
From: jmellby at ngstl1.csc.ti.com (John Mellby)
Subject: Objective scores for beer

About 10 days ago Jay Hersh short a short (and relatively polite, for
the Internet) note against the posting of beer evaluations.  His reasons
were several, and after reflection I may have to take issue with them.

Jay claimed (Jay, I lost the original text so forgive me if I misstate
you) that tasting was idiosyncratic, and thus the tasting scores and
notes were useless.  I was going to let this pass until it occurred to
me that few things should be more important to a homebrewer than
an objective evaluation of their beer.

Certainly you should not completely rely on another's opinion of a beer,
just as the wine group has discussed people's devotion to a particular
reviewer (such as Parker).  That being said, the goal is still to have
an objective way of discussing beer.

In any homebrew competition the goal is to objectively rate the beer
against the standard for that class of beer.  This means much more than saying
"this is great swill!" since, for example, a sour taste in a bitter or
pale ale is a defect, whereas in a lambic ale it may be appropriate.

The two tools we use are the American Homebrewers' Association's beer
judging form, and a flavorwheel.  (Are these well known, or would
it be useful for everyone to see these?)  Judging the beers, as I do
in a competition, or in our local beer tastings, is not just guessing
a number for the beer, but ranking it according to each category
(aroma, appearance, taste, body, drinkability) in the context of
what class of beer it is supposed to be.  The characteristics defined
on the flavor wheel are supposedly standard beer flavor components.

Anyone who has submitted a beer to a judging realizes that even with
all these systems, there still is room for a lot of subjectivity.  It is very
hard, if you do not like wheat beer, to give it an objective measurement.
Still, my local group seems to be able to do this most of the time.

I submit that it is possible to give a largely objective set of notes on
a particular beer.  Certainly these are not perfectly objective, but it
is far from being a case of "I like this beer, so I'll give it a 45!"

One other possibility which Jay may have meant, is that we have not control
on the condition of the bottles we get.  One beer from Washington may have
been trucked to California and sat on the Liquor Barn's shelves for months
before I brought it home to taste.  Another may be just off of Sierra Nevada's
trucks and may be bright and fresh.  This is probably the biggest impediment
to objective beer notes.  We now take two bottles and decant them into a
pitcher since when we earlier passed the bottles around individually
one bottle might be significantly different, and the last person tended
to get the sediment mixed in.  (Also, with blind tastings, your own
opinion about the beer doesn't enter into the equation.)

John R. Mellby

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Date: 18 Jun 90 10:09:25 PDT (Mon)
From: florianb at tekred.cna.tek.com
Subject: Cher's query on lactobacillus

Cher inquired about culturing from a box of milk.  Doug Roberts replied:

>Interesting idea: don't know why it wouldn't work. Pitching a couple
>of tablespoons of plain yogurt should have the same effect as well.

Wouldn't putting milk or yogurt in the beer make it cloudy?  I wonder if
a local dairy would provide an innoculation of pure lactobacillus?

Florian

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Date: 15 Jun 90 14:41:00 GMT
From: hplabs!gatech!mailrus!uunet!bnrgate!bnr-rsc!jim (Jim Somerville)
Subject: Info on Beer Bottle


A friend of mine recently brought back a couple of bottles of
beer from Austria.  On the bottles, along with % alcohol
by volume, there is a marking that looks like:

               o
           12,3   Stammwurze

What does it mean?

On another topic, is there any way to filter the yeast out of
your brew before kegging it, so you don't have to worry about
sediment?
- -- 
Jim Somerville (bnr-vpa!bnr-rsc!jim)	Phone:	(613) 763-4497
Bell-Northern Research			Usenet:utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-rsc!jim
P.O. Box 3511, Station C, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1Y 4H7

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Date: 15 Jun 90 21:11:38 GMT
From: hplabs!gatech!mailrus!uunet!bnrgate!bnr-rsc!crick (Bill Crick)
Subject: cherry ale

Regarding cherry beer, I made a batch of CJOHB Cherries in the snow about 
3 years ago. I like it, and think it is still getting better, but some people 
think it is too dry, and too acidic. This could be cured by sweetening it 
a bit with about 4 -6g of lactose per bottle at bottleing? 
I'm not sure what it would  taste like sweetened?
Plan on saving it for a year or two before drinking it, as it does get better
and better as time goes on(as do most beers that you save for more than a year)

About the siphon starter. By the time you are siphoning beer, it should
have enough alcohol in it to protect it to a certain degree from contamination.
I've been starting siphons for 15 years by SUCKING ON THEM WITH MY MOUTH,
and have never experienced any indication of contamination,even in ultra light
(<2%) lagers?? I would suggest you spend your effort on improving your upstream
sanitation (cool wort to end of primary fermentation) if you have a 
contamination problem.

As far as filtering before kegging, the standard plate type wine filter
should do it. If you have more than 1 perssure vessel, you could even use 
CO2 to drive the beer through the filter.

Nice to see that my use of red star, and great dane yeast over the years
hasn't retroactively made all the beer I have drank turn bad;-)

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End of HOMEBREW Digest #442, 06/19/90
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