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


Contents:
  Re: Infections ("Andy Wilcox")
  Tiny bubbles = infection? (Dale Veeneman)
  1/4 kegs and infections (mage!lou)
  Re: Infections (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
  Starters (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
  tri-chlor (florianb)
  slow fermentation,Olde Peculiar, Time in a bottle. (Bill Crick)
  light extract beers (Pete Soper)
  Sanitizing Tablets (Eric Pepke)
  leaving messages on the forum (BAUGHMANKR)


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Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 11:18:17 EDT
From: "Andy Wilcox" <andy at mosquito.cis.ufl.edu>
Subject: Re: Infections


While we're at it, here's another infection scenario in need of
help.  After 40 some batches of wonderfully clean beer, (a 
cautionary note to Ken Wiess, still with no infections -- it can
happen!) it seems I've got a critter.

The yeast settles down and the beer starts to clear - everything 
looking okay - and then the beer will become quite cloudy.  A kind
of fuzzy growth starts on the walls of the fermenter (It looks like 
yeast on the side, for lack of a better expression).  Some renewed 
bubbling usually takes place, with no off smell.  The beers have a
bit of a blackberry of taste which subsides almost entirely after
three months of aging.  At this age, they are quite drinkable, though
still cloudy.  They don't taste good at all fresh, unlike most of
my other batches.

What has my kitchen contracted?

I'm actually beginning to worry over this, as 4 of the last 5 batches
brewed have all behaved the same way.  New hoses and a kitchen scrub
down don't seem to have made any difference.  Sigh.  Maybe I'll just
stop brewing for a few months )-:

 -Andy

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Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 24:07:21 EDT
From: Dale Veeneman <dev1 at gte.com>
Subject: Tiny bubbles = infection?

This talk about infections has got me to wondering.  For about the
last six months or so, it seems that every batch has tended to
overcarbonate in the bottle.  The carbonation seems fine at 1-2
months, but by 3-4 months it requires more and more care in pouring
to avoid too large a head (no gushing problems).  This has happened
with any type of ale I've brewed (IPA, Porter, etc.).  I use Edme
ale yeast (rehydrated - active fermentation starts in about 12
hours), a glass secondary (2-3 weeks), 3/4 cup corn sugar as a
primer and the bottles are stored in a consistent 60-65 degree
cellar.  It still tastes O.K. (a little drier, perhaps), and I'm
more or less relaxed and not worrying, but I would have thought
that once the yeast did its thing it would quit and that would be
the end of it.  

Something I've noticed that may be related is that after racking to
the secondary (after 3-4 days in the primary), the action is just
about completed with another day or two of infrequent bubbles through
the air lock.  Everything then goes quiet and settles out and *then*,
maybe after a week in the secondary, I see tiny little bubbles rising
from somewhere.  They are so tiny and few in number that I can only
see them where they collect at the neck (the carboy is filled to within
an inch or two of the top) and they never seem to cause the airlock
to bubble.  Thinking "aha - infection", I was extra careful with my
current batch, and for the first time, used a glass primary.  It's
now in the secondary with the same tiny bubbles.  Has anyone else
ever seen these tiny bubbles?  Are they normal?  Next, I guess it's
a new racking tube and hose.

  -  Dale (who's drinking faster these days, trying to keep ahead)


     - Dale Veeneman

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Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 10:12:38 MDT
From: hplabs!mage!lou
Subject: 1/4 kegs and infections

In HBD #444 Greg Beary writes:

>I haven't yet begun to brew. I'm in the process of learning what
>to do and acquiring the necessary equipment. What I'd planned on
>doing was to cask my beer in 1/4 barrels and then use my 
>existing home-draft-system (fridge/CO2/taps/etc) to draw it. 
>I've located a source of the old Bud/Michelob 1/4 barrels that
>use the Golden Gate taps (gas on top, draw on the bottom). I 
>beleive that these have wooden bungs on the side.

IMHO, you should start with bottling and later move to kegging.  Bottles have
several advantages for an inexperienced brewer; 1) You can see what's happening
in the bottle.  Certain infections will show up as a ring-around-the-collar at
the beer/air interface.  You can also see the sediment buildup in the bottom
and know what to expect from your kegs.  2) You can sample the beer at
different times during the aging process without tying up your fridge and/or
lugging the keg in and out of the fridge.  Once you know what to expect and have
confidence in your technique then by all means go to the kegs if you want.

You'll want to have the bottling equipment anyway since you can't always
predict the exact amount of beer produced and you want to make sure you fill
the keg.  You're likely to have some extra that you will want to bottle rather
than throw away (you keg types out there correct me if I'm wrong).

>My problem is find the other "gear" necessary to go with such 
>an approach. How do you tailor the receipes/mixes for 7.5 
>gallons instead of 5. Where do you get the equipment (fermentation
>vessel and carboys) in a 7.5 size? 

Tailoring the recipes is as easy as multiplying the quantities by 7.5/5.0.
Unless you're going to be extremely picky and want to *exactly* reproduce a
recipe, round to the nearest convenient units and you will do fine.  If the
recipe calls for cans of extract, which may not multiply by 1.5 well, you can
make up the difference with dry malt extract (# of malt extract syrup * .85 =
# of dry malt extract).

A good homebrew/winemaking shop should have equipment in various sizes.

- ---------------
and Ken Weiss writes:

>First, are most infections bacterial or mold, or wild yeast, or what?
>Are different infective agents specific to particular locales or 
>climates?

The answers are yes and yes, although some infective agents are found almost
everywhere.  The point is, don't expect to be able to predict this in advance.

>Second, how do you tell if your beer is infected? Is it *really* obvious
>or is it possible to have a more subtle, sneaky infection that would 
>elude the tounge of a guzzler like myself?

Papazian says that nothing harmful can live in beer.  Unless you're really
uptight about winning first place in national competitions, if you like it -
drink it.

>Finally, if my yeast has consumed all or most of the fermentable
>material in my beer, what is left to feed the infection?

Not all sugars are consumed by the type of yeast used in brewing.  Your malt
and your adjuncts may contain contain some non-fermentable sugars that can
be used by bacteria or wild yeasts and some bacteria will eat things other than
sugars.

Louis Clark
mage!lou at ncar.ucar.edu


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Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 10:28:39 mdt
From: hplabs!hp-lsd.cos.hp.com!ihlpl!korz (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
Subject: Re: Infections

Ken Weiss asks a few questions about infections:

>First, are most infections bacterial or mold, or wild yeast, or what?
>Are different infective agents specific to particular locales or 
>climates?

I believe that most of my infections were bacterial.  Mold is easy
to identify - it usually floats on top, although there have been
brewers who have reported (in these hallowed pages) that they have
had floaters that they ignored and everything turned out okay.
Wild yeast will give you an off flavor, but I believe that it will
not cause a gusher (see answer 2).  If you brew in a damp place
where there is a lot of mold, you are more likely that your beer will
snag a mold spore and develop a mold infection.  You can smell it
if there's a lot of mold in the air -- I'm sure everyone has smelled
mold, right?  If not, send your USnail address and I'll send you
a piece of wood from the bottom of my woodpile ;^).

>Second, how do you tell if your beer is infected? Is it *really* obvious
>or is it possible to have a more subtle, sneaky infection that would 
>elude the tounge of a guzzler like myself?

Gushers are usually caused by bacteria (see answer 3).  Another indication
that something is in your beer (probably bacteria) is "ring around the
collar," a ring of some kind of gunk at beer level inside the neck of
the bottle.  I have had beers that, looked and tasted fine for four weeks,
then developed a "ring," but still tasted fine for eight more weeks, and
then turned into gushers (but still tasted okay except for being drier
and thinner than what I brewed).  You've hit the nail on the head!
If you drink all your beer within 4 weeks of brewing, you would have
to just about innoculate your beer with bacteria to taste the effects.
Infections are much harder to avoid when you are planning to age a beer.

>Finally, if my yeast has consumed all or most of the fermentable
>material in my beer, what is left to feed the infection?

Yeast eats simple sugars.  There are still lots of other carbohydrates
in your beer: complex sugars, starch, etc.  Bacteria (and possibly
molds - I don't know much about them) has the ability to break complex
carbohydrates down into simple sugars which it then eats or which the
yeast YOU put in eats.  The final result is an overcarbonated, possibly
off-flavor (depends on the bacteria), thin (due to loss of complex
carbs that give you (ahem... your beer, that is) body), and dry (again,
loss of complex carbs that give your beer sweetness) beer.  And no, 
this is not related to DRY beer, which I believe DOES have an aftertaste,
and except for a Kirin DRY that I had in Whistler, BC, I don't like, but
I digress.

Al.


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Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 10:28:49 mdt
From: hplabs!hp-lsd.cos.hp.com!ihlpl!korz (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
Subject: Starters

Hey, I just had a thought regarding starters.  I don't use them,
but up till now, I have been using dry yeast (ususally Muntona
from M&F or Doric) and without a starter, without rehydrating,
without anything, the yeast is off and running in about four
hours.  In eight hours it's pumping gobs of krauesen out the
blowoff hose.  Regarding using starters, what's the difference
(unless you are going to split your yeast up and freeze it)
whether you pitch into a 1/2 gallon of starter or into your
primary?  It seems to me that the additional transfer causes
MORE chance of contamination.

Al.


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Date: 21 Jun 90 12:14:11 PDT (Thu)
From: florianb at tekred.cna.tek.com
Subject: tri-chlor

Fred Condo said,

>Florian suggests the use of tri-chlor for some of the chlorine jobs, but
>my local homebrew shop says that's a British product that is equivalent
>to a chlorine-bleach solution.

I don't think there's anything particularly British about tri-chlor.  It's
a mixture of TSP and powdered chlorine bleach and is a common disinfectant.
You can obtain it from Steinbart's of Portland.  I'd be surprised if other
supply shops don't have it.  I have a list of the supply shops that was
posted in HBD some time back.  Send me a note and I'll jam it over to you.

Florian

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Date: 21 Jun 90 20:58:32 GMT
From: hplabs!gatech!mailrus!uunet!bnrgate!bnr-rsc!crick (Bill Crick)
Subject: slow fermentation,Olde Peculiar, Time in a bottle.

Someone recently asked what to do about a beer that is fermenting slowly.
I would suggest; wait, relax, have a homebrew. The beer will age in
the carboy, just as well as it will in the bottle. If you think it will be in
there a long time, say more than three months, you may want to worry a bit.
If this is the case, go into your basement and spend say 15 or 20 seconds
worrying if you have an empty carboy. If you do, rack the beer into 
tertary (SP?) fermenter, and then go back to relaxing and having a homebrew
for however long it takes. DOn't be in a rush to bottle your beer, and don't 
play in it! Every time you mess in it you risk contamination. Lots of books
say you should test SG every day, and bottle when it drops less than .00x
I have a different approach to when to bottle. When I think a beer
is ready to bottle due to lack of bubbles, I wait another 3 weeks to a month.
Then I know it should be done;-) 
  I've also noticed a lot of "it said to put in x of y but I put in 
a of b. Should I throw it out?" type postings. If you want to exactly 
reproduce a particular beer, then exact ingredients and process are important.
However you can throw almost anything into beer (as long as you boil it,
or otherwise clean it) and still get drinkable beer. Once agian the byword 
is RELAX.
 Another comment on those beers that didn't come out as good as you had hoped,
when youtried it a week after bottling; Time will heal almost anything!
Except contamination problems. If you don't like it, don't pour it out. 
Hide it and try another bottle in 6 months. I've found that in a lot of 
cases, the differnce between a good beer and a mediocre beer is how fast
it starts to taste good. The good ones taste good even before you bottle it. 
Sometimes, the mediocre beer takes six months to smooth out.
 I'm not saying be intentionally sloppy, or don't aspire to greatness,
but don't get bent out of shape if things get a little off process.
You'll probably drink a shitload of beer in your life, and some of them 
won't be the ultimate brew, but most of them will be quite acceptable.

Re: Brewing Ye Olde Peculiar: I once brewed a beer using John Bull
   Scottish export extract (lots of it like 10 lbs.) that was a lot
  like OP. I called it Thistle Down Brown Ale. It had the same treacle like
 sweetness. I'm not sure what caused the sweetness, and thickness, but the
Scottish Export extract was the only unusual thing in it, so that must 
have been it. I'll Try to find the recipe, but it may have been before 
I started keeping records? It was pretty extreme brew, and I never tried
it again. I didn't have to, the first batch lasted six or seven years;-)

Remember -> Don't worry mon! Be Hoppy!   Bill Crick

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Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 16:38:59 EDT
From: Pete Soper <soper at maxzilla.encore.com>
Subject: light extract beers

  Williams on the west coast sells a very light extract. Some of my friends
speak very highly of this and some of the beers I've seen made with it are
very light indeed.  
  However I've seen quite light lager styles made with middle of the road
"light" extract too. In these cases I think it was technique that made the
difference.  At the risk of telling you stuff you already know, let 
me share a few tips for getting the lightest colors:

  1. Switch to all-grain (Just kidding! :-)
  2. Use as much water as possible in your boils. The thicker the wort during
     the boil the more it darkens. Keep in mind though that a big change in
     wort gravity during the boil will mean a change in extraction from your hops.
  3. Be careful mixing extract in water. Heat the water up, pull it off the
     burner and mix the extract in. When you are sure it is dissolved and no
     extract is sitting on the bottom of the pot return it to the burner.
  4. Avoid hot spots. Stainless steel and electric stoves are nearly hopeless,
     IMHO but with a trivet or the like to hold the pot a fraction of an inch off 
     the burner it helps. Using less than highest heat helps. A rolling boil with
     relatively low heat can be gotten by partially covering the pot, but
     beware of boil-overs and adjust for the difference in evaporative loss.
  5. Avoid very long boils. The longer the boil, the more wort darkens. I'm not
     suggesting you do a 20 minute "beer kit" type boil but rather that 60
     minutes is better than 90 for example. With a too short boil you might not
     get a decent break and thus end up with haze, making the beer look
     darker anyway.
  6. Don't aerate hot wort. That is, don't pour hot wort around from one
     container to another such that it gets air mixed in with it. This will
     darken it (among other things).
  7. If you use a yeast starter with pre-canned (i.e. dark) wort, consider
     fermenting the starter out completely and pitching just the sediment yeast.
     That is, a very little dark starter wort can go a long way toward darkening
     a beer.
  8. If hot spots with stainless steel are a problem switch to alu, alum,
     alumin - Heck,  switch to a pot with more even heat transfer :-)
- ----------
Pete Soper (soper at encore.com)                          +1 919 481 3730
Encore Computer Corp, 901 Kildaire Farm Rd, bldg D, Cary, NC 27511  USA

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Date:    Fri, 22 Jun 1990 0:58:41 EDT
From: PEPKE at scri1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Subject: Sanitizing Tablets

Does anybody have experience with using BACATS tablets for sanitizing
equipment?  These are the tablets that restaurants and bars are required to use
in a final rinse to sanitize their equipment.  The active ingredient is alkyl
dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride dihydrate.  

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: Fri, 22 Jun 90 01:42 EST
From: BAUGHMANKR at CONRAD.APPSTATE.EDU
Subject: leaving messages on the forum

John Isenhour told me about the Homebrew Digest/Forum at the AHA conference
in Oakland.  Could someone please send me info on how to use the forum, read
articles in the Digest, etc.  Thank you.  >>Kinney Baughman<<

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End of HOMEBREW Digest #445, 06/22/90
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