HOMEBREW Digest #442 Tue 19 June 1990

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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] Return to table of contents
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 Return to table of contents
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 Return to table of contents
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 Return to table of contents
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;-) Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #442, 06/19/90 ************************************* -------
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