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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Re: chilling wort and fermentation temp control ("Greg 'groggy' Lehey")
  Re: Vanilla Porter Question (Ed Benckert)
  Iodophor use in Austin (David Thompson)
  chilling and temp control ("Braam Greyling")
  Splenda -- Is it Fermentable? ("Weaver Joseph T MAJ CENTAF-AUAB CAOC\\SG")
  re: Brewing with Sugar, citrus vs cidery ("-S")
  fusels (Randy Ricchi)
  Re: Vanilla Porter Question ("Martin Brungard")
  Re: Motorizing a JSP Malt Mill (Bill Wible)
  Re: Yeast ranching (stjones1)
  RE: Iodophor (stjones1)
  Re:Vanilla Porter Question (CONN Denny G)
  Re: Advice sought on yeast culturing supplies and techniques (CONN Denny G)
  Stopper stuck in carboy ("Brian Myers")
  Aerated sparge water ("David Houseman")
  drying malted grain (bruce)
  Re: Brewing Software ("Greg 'groggy' Lehey")
  Special roast and victory malts (Michael)


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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:36:17 +1030
From: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog at lemis.com>
Subject: Re: chilling wort and fermentation temp control

Note: I can't use the degree symbol here, or the mailing list will
reject it.  Read <degree> to be a small circle at the top of the line.

On Wednesday, 14 January 2004 at 13:18:43 +0200, Braam Greyling wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Just returned from holiday, happy new year to all!
>
> The town where I live is very hot during summer.  Sometimes more
> than 40C(104F) I have huge problems with chilling my wort and
> controlling fermentation temperature. I tried counterflow chillers
> and immersion chillers.

One thing that I find works well for extract brewing is:

  Boil the water first (see my other posts for why this is important
  in my environment) and let it cool.  Then freeze it in the deep
  freezer.

  Boil the extract with not more than 60% of the final volume.  Put
  the ice in the fermenter, pour the wort on top.  One kg (or whatever
  unit of weight) of ice at -20<degrees>C (-4<degrees>F) will cool
  down 1.5 kg (or whatever) of boiling wort to 20<degrees>C
  (68<degrees>F).

The only problem with this method is that the weights are pretty
critical.  Make the ratio 1:1 and the resultant wort is at 0<degrees>C
(32<degrees>F).  Make it 1:2 and the resultant wort is at 33<degrees>C
(92<degrees>F).

Greg
- --
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.


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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 00:31:45 -0500
From: Ed Benckert <ed at ebonmists.com>
Subject: Re: Vanilla Porter Question

I was just about to brew one myself. Here's my take on things. I've only 
brewed a vanilla porter once before, a small 1 gallon tester batch. I used 1 
vanilla bean. It was so sickly vanilla I had to throw it out. When I brew my 
5 gallon batch, I plan on 2 beans. Thats 40% the amount of vanilla I used 
the last time, so it should be good. Maybe try 3 if you're daring, but 1 
bean in 1 gallon made the beer undrinkable, at least to my tastebuds.



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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 00:01:18 -0600
From: David Thompson <david at dtphoto.com>
Subject: Iodophor use in Austin

At 12:17 AM 01/20/2004 -0500, neils at texas.net scribbled the following 
1's and 0's:
>Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 10:56:13 CST
>From: neils at texas.net
>Subject: RE: "purging"
>
>When I mix up a solution for sanitizing and I immediately detect that 
>hospital
>smell I'm led to believe it is not odorless.
>
>More to the point of the "purging", again, I completely disagree that 
>Iodophor
>solution is tasteless in a finished beer. My first attempt at using Iodophor
>with corny kegs proved this. I failed to extract the solution from the outlet
>dip tube and it went into solution with the beer. The entire keg was totally
>undrinkable and had to be dumped. I did allow the keg to settle a number of
>days after having dumped a considerable number of the first pints down the
>drain after I first detected it but it never seemed to clear up. I have 
>another
>witness to this particular situation, poor sole. It truly was "Iodine Beer" -
>not one I want to reproduce.
>Neil Spake
>Austin,
>TX

Neil,

I too get a very strong odor of Iodophor when I use it. I have to rinse 
very well, and it has ruined some bottles of beer decanted from a keg for 
travel.  I have rinse my fermenters, everything.

I have used it to also sanitize some drinking bottles, and have found a 
very strong medicine taste upon drinking anything from the bottles without 
first rinsing it.

It may be the Austin water, tho.  I didn't find this problem in Dallas when 
I was living there and brewing.  Just here.


Dave (also in Austin)

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It 
helps if you have some kind of football team or some nuclear weapons, but 
at the very least, you need a beer."
 - Frank Zappa



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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 08:43:06 +0200
From: "Braam Greyling" <braam.greyling at azoteq.com>
Subject: chilling and temp control

Hi all,

Thanks to all who responded to my question about chilling and temp 
control.
Looks like the solution will be to first chill with water to remove 
most of the heat and then use cold water or glycol to chill further. 
The cold water or glycol can then also be used to control 
fermentation temperature. 

Regards 

Braam





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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:57:58 +0300
From: "Weaver Joseph T MAJ CENTAF-AUAB CAOC\\SG"
Subject: Splenda -- Is it Fermentable?

Will yeast ferment Splenda?  
Wonder if it can be used to sweeten cider?  
I tried it this week in my tea and honestly couldn't detect an aftertaste.  
Has anyone tried it in a homebrew application?

Todd in Qatar





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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 07:44:46 -0500
From: "-S" <-s at adelphia.net>
Subject: re: Brewing with Sugar, citrus vs cidery

John Palmer says,

>My first question is to Steve, you say there is an "obvious" difference
>between table sugars made from beets vs. cane?

Cane sugar (to my senses) has a clear molasses note.  I don't detect this at
all in say corn sugar or maltodextrin.  I don't have enough experience with
clearly identified beet sugar to give an opinion, but I've read in
non-brewing sources that beet sugar has a bitter edge which makes it less
desirable than cane in some applications.   Beet molasses is too bitter for
human consumption - which matches the story.  My hunch is that despite some
rather elaborate methods of refinement, the 5lb sack of granulated sugar
from the grocer contains a little source flavor.  Not much mind you - but
it's detectable.  I didn't say it mattered in beer, but the flavor/aroma is
present.

>When I was researching my Brewing With Sugars article recently, the
>sugar industry web resources stated that table sugar is so highly
>refined that there was no difference in taste between cane or beet
>sources and I accepted that. Be interesting to verify that for myself.

It would be interesting and educational.  I'm pretty certain there is a
detectable difference, but there may not be enough to matter compared to
beer flavors.

>Secondly, define citrusy flavors from high sucrose worts versus cidery
>flavors.

These are definitely different.   I've never seen a definitive test, but I
think it's pretty easy to understand where the cidery and wine-y flavors
could come from in nutritionally deficient wort.  Lack of FAN increases
levels of organic acids, and fusels and the corresponding esters.   This
isn't  the same as citrusy which implies sharply tart (yet not lactic or
acetic).  That's why I think Wes had misidentified the issue.  Citrusy has
always been uncommon and mysterious, but cidery is pretty well understood
(at least by plausible yeast metabolism) and not uncommon at all if you use
sugar adjunct.

AlK in his book "Homebrewing Vol I", pp 285 talks about cidery flavor and de
scribes his experiment.  Al separately fermented three solutions of /table
sugar(sucrose), /corn sugar(glucose) and /invert sugar.  He notes that all
three tasted cidery, the invert sugar most and the glucose sol'n least - but
all three had the cider-y flavor.  Al suggest that acetaldehyde may be
involved in the cidery flavor and I don't discount this possibility.

Anyway Al's test result flies in the face of Wes' comment that invert sugar
can somehow prevent the cidery flavor.  Al's experiment suggests the
opposite, tho' I don't honestly believe that invert is any better or worse
than sucrose.


>I recently did a side by side brew where I had 3 Coopers Draught Ale
>extract kits,[...]
 ....
>The
>Old kit made with 1 kg of extract had a pronounced apple
>fruitiness to it, but not exactly cidery.

Cooper's are LME as I recall.  DME is pretty stable, but LME  - not so much.
That could certainly be a factor in strange flavors to old LME.  Also I
wouldn't necessarily expect all the necessary yeast nutrients to be stable
in LME, maybe not DME either - who knows.

 -Steve




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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 08:58:55 -0500
From: Randy Ricchi <rricchi at houghton.k12.mi.us>
Subject: fusels

I brewed a barley wine on Sunday; 5 gallons, split between two carboys,
two different yeasts.
I pitched a decent amount of slurry in each batch and oxygenated well.

The room I'm fermenting them in gets fairly cool overnight (low 60's) so
I put the two carboys together and wrapped them with a blanket. By
Monday morning the airlocks were perking along at a pretty good clip. I
pulled the blanket away for a peek Monday evening and there was a huge
kraeusen in each carboy. I put the blanket back around them. This
morning (Tuesday), I pulled the blanket back for another look and there
was absolutely no kraeusen on one of the beers, and minimal kraeusen on
the other. Since both airlocks were still perking away like mad, I
thought "uh, oh.... excess fusels killed the head". I peeled the blanket
off and left it off.
I didn't have a thermometer tucked in there, but in feeling the sides of
the carboys there was no "cool" feeling like you would normally have
when touching glass in a 64-65 degree room. They must have been pretty
warm.

My assumption that it could be fusels that killed the head come from
strong belgian ales I have brewed in the past that initially wouldn't
hold a head, but after long ageing held a head beautifully. They were
feremented warm, mid to upper 70's, and were high gravity beers.

This has led me to a few questions that I  know this group can help me
with:

Why is it that higher fermentation temps promote higher levels of fusel
alcohols? Fusel alcohols are larger molecules than ethanol, right?

Are fusel alcohols the same as fusel oils?

I remember reading about esterification of higher alcohols over time,
and have always wondered if that meant that the higher alcohols are
broken down into smaller chained alcohols (ethanol, maybe?) and esters.
Is this so? Are the esters created this way pleasant ones? Could that be
why my belgians that initially didn't hold a head later held a
beautiful, dense head after extended ageing?

Ahhhh,,, nothing like fresh material to worry about :^)

Thanks for any insights you can provide.



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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 05:18:22 -0900
From: "Martin Brungard" <mabrungard at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Vanilla Porter Question

Don,

You won't have too much vanilla with only two beans.  I used two beans in a 
porter last year.  I sliced and split the beans, then scraped out 
everything.  All of that stuff, (skins, seeds, everything) was put into one 
of those White Labs yeast vials and then a good bourbon was added.  I sealed 
up the vial and left that to infuse for a couple of weeks.  I then dumped 
the entire contents into the secondary.

The flavors were wonderful.  The beer was a big hit with my clubmates.  The 
only problem is that the vanilla and bourbon flavors are short-lived (2 to 3 
months).  I just had a bottle of that beer that was about 9 months old.  It 
was still flavorful, but not as nice as when young.  I might consider more 
vanilla beans next time, but they sure are expensive now.  I'm hoping that 
others respond with their experience with vanilla extract additions.

I used a Robust Porter as the base for my beer, just because I enjoy them 
more.  But in retrospect,  a Brown Porter base is probably more appropriate. 
  My recipe used 10% chocolate malt and 1% roast barley.  I might delete the 
roast entirely next time, or at least cut it to 1/2%.

I would aim for the upper end of the bitterness range at 30 IBU's as you 
intend.  The bourbon and vanilla lend a sweetness that needs the bittering 
to counter.  Of course, hop aroma and flavor are not an objective for this 
beer.

Martin Brungard
Tallahassee, FL



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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 11:49:48 -0500
From: Bill Wible <bill12 at brewbyyou.net>
Subject: Re: Motorizing a JSP Malt Mill

>When I look at the site
>http://schmidling.netfirms.com/maltmill.htm
>I clearly see the statement...
>"The MALTMILL is as at home in a small brewery
>as it is in the basement. It is designed to last
>forever and any part that does not will be replaced
>at no charge. This LIFETIME WARRANTY is in no way
>effected by motorizing the MALTMILL..."
>
>Motorize all you want according to that statement
>and you're still covered...

This must be a policy change that Jack made at
some point in the not-too-distant past.  I recall
many posts and discussions in which he personally
said that motorizing the mill voids his warranty.
and such.

I'm glad for this change, because my mill is
motorized!  And yes, it is well built and works
well, and I don't think motorizing it is going to
hurt it any.

I was just re-stating what I've seen Jack post
in the past.  I wanted people to be aware of that.
However, it now appears to be a non-issue.  Great!

Bill




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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:15:13 -0500
From: stjones1 at chartertn.net
Subject: Re: Yeast ranching

Chris Swingley wonders why condensation in slants
could be a problem.

Chris, it hasn't been a problem for me, but the
source I referenced says it increases the
possibility of contamination. I guess if you are
very good about sanitation it is something you
could safely ignore.

Do check out the BSI Handbook on laboratory
procedures (link below)

http://brewingscience.com/education/handbook.pdf.


Steve Jones, Johnson City, TN
State of Franklin Homebrewers (http://hbd.org/franklin)
[421.8 mi, 168.5 deg] AR



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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:25:15 -0500
From: stjones1 at chartertn.net
Subject: RE: Iodophor

I believe that the article referenced here
concerning the iodophor test is the one
written by Robert Arguello. It can be found at
http://www.bayareamashers.org/maindocs/iodophor.htm




Steve Jones, Johnson City, TN
State of Franklin Homebrewers (http://hbd.org/franklin)
[421.8 mi, 168.5 deg] AR



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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:52:06 -0800
From: CONN Denny G <denny.g.conn at ci.eugene.or.us>
Subject: Re:Vanilla Porter Question


In my experience, how much to use and how long to leave it in is dependent
on how fresh the vanilla beans are. When I've been able to get fresh, well
stored beans, I use 2 of them.  I split them lengthwise, scrape out all the
"gunk" in the middle, cut the pods into 1-2" pieces, and put the pods and
gunk into the secondary for about a week.  Lately, I've been reading about a
worldwide shortage of vanilla and have only been able to find dried up,
crunchy beans.  My last try I used 4 of them (same prep method) for 3 weeks
and was underwhelmed by the vanilla character in the beer.

	------------>Denny
- ------------------------------

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:18:12 -0500
From: "Don Scholl" <dws at engineeringdimensions.com>
Subject: Vanilla Porter Question

Good morning, I just brewed a Brown Porter yesterday (Sunday) with approx.
30 IBU's and 5.5% ABV. I would like to add 2 vanilla beans cut into 1" long
pieces and add to the secondary and rack the porter onto them for 2 weeks.
My question is: Will this cause too strong a vanilla flavor or will I need
to add more beans? Thanks in advance for your comments.

Don Scholl
Twin Lake, Michigan
(140.9, 302.4)Rennerian


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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:55:11 -0800
From: CONN Denny G <denny.g.conn at ci.eugene.or.us>
Subject: Re: Advice sought on yeast culturing supplies and techniques


Hey, have you been checking out our garden?  Actaully, my wife is working on
becoming a commecial organic grower and we're already overwhelmed by her
experiments. I think you're right...it's gonna be _much_ easier to justify
getting a pressure cooker!  And a vacuum sealer!  And...

	---------->Denny
- ------------------------------

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 20:17:32 -0800
From: Mark Tigges <mtigges at shaw.ca>
Subject: Re: Advice sought on yeast culturing supplies and techniques


But as others have mentioned on this thread ... the PC (the really hot
kind) are useful for more than just culturing.  Get a big one, big
enough to can the tomatoes that you're growing in the field that your
border collies roam in, right Denny?

M


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Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 07:57:33 +1300
From: "Brian Myers" <Brian.Myers at oscmar.co.nz>
Subject: Stopper stuck in carboy

Been there, done that - this answer is in the HBD archives
somewhere, I'm sure. Take a small piece of cloth (like a
napkin), insert halfway into the neck of the carboy, roll
the stopper on to the cloth, and pull them out together.

cheers,
Brian Myers
Auckland, NZ
[8380.6, 246.7] Apparent Rennerian


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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:49:36 -0500
From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net>
Subject: Aerated sparge water

A post today talked about sparge arms.  I have, and used to use, a rotating
sparge arm to deliver sparge water over my mash tun.  I haven't been using
this recently and wondered if by any remote chance this has improved my
beers?  We seem to go to a lot of trouble to avoid hot side aeration,
including the wort in the mash tun, but then sprinkle water in droplets into
the tun:  Could this process cause the sparge water to pick up additional
oxygen and create more HAS than gently running the spurge water into the top
of the mash ton without splashing or sprinkling?   Or is this just another
practice for The Anal Brewer?

Dave Houseman



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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 18:51:46 -0800
From: bruce <bruce.m.bush at verizon.net>
Subject: drying malted grain

I have been trying to brew with grain I have malted myself.  The biggest
problem I have encountered is drying the grain expeditiously to stop the
sprouting.  If I can't get it dry fast enough, it can also mold.  I have
tried putting it in a hot box with a fan through.  I have also tried
putting it in my sauna for many hours.  The only thing so far that has
worked well has been drying it in the oven in small batches, which is
laborious and uses a lot of gas.  Any good ideas out there?  Bruce



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Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 12:44:47 +1030
From: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog at lemis.com>
Subject: Re: Brewing Software

On Friday, 16 January 2004 at  9:51:11 -0500, HOMEBRE973 at aol.com wrote:
> What are people's opinions of the currently available
> brewing software that are either shareware or freeware?

I'm probably the wrong person to ask, since I hate pushing mice, but
I've done some experimentation with qbrew
(http://www.usermode.org/code.html) and brewnix
(http://brewnix.sourceforge.net/).  qbrew is OK for that kind of
program; brewnix, IMO, isn't.

> How would you rate the newer version of SUDS?

I haven't seen it.  Where can you get it?

Greg
- --
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.


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Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 04:05:26 GMT
From: Michael <grice at berbee.com>
Subject: Special roast and victory malts

I have a recipe for a brown ale which calls for special roast and victory malts,
neither of which I can find. Are equivalent amounts of brown and biscuit malts
reasonable substitutes? I'd like to follow the recipe for a change before
freelancing like I normally do.

Michael
Middleton
WI





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