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


Contents:
  Oatmeal (CRF)
  Xingu Beer (Ihor W. Slabicky)
  Ginger Beer, kegs, and lauter tun (Eric Pepke)
  Bud Kegs & Magnets (S_KOZA1)
  Stupid rotten ginger ale again! (Doug Roberts)
  followup on Bud kegs (Doug Roberts)
  In search of O.P. & misc (Doug Roberts)
  Brewpub (RUSSG)
  Re: ginger ale problems (Glenn Colon-Bonet)
  Bleach/Borax (boubez)
  When to pitch starter (cckweiss)
  Follow up on Bud kegs (Dave Brown)
  XINGU (David Baer)
  Hard Water and Fermentation Startup (Mark Law)
  Stainless, and Magnets? (Bill Crick)
  Re: Xingu (a.e.mossberg)
  AUTO ANSWER MESSAGE. (mike_schrempp)


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Archives available from netlib at mthvax.cs.miami.edu


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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 10:12 EST
From: CRF at PINE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU
Subject: Oatmeal

Hi there!


All of the recent discussion about oatmeal stouts (particularly Sam. Smiths)
has had me thinking about something, and I decided to see what you lot had to
say. 

In cooking, when one is preparing British recipes calling for oatmeal, one 
goes out and buys British oatmeal.  The reason for this is that British 
oatmeal is prepared and cut entirely differently from American oatmeal (i.e., 
Quaker Oats).  If one used American oatmeal, chances are the recipe wouldn't 
turn out very well.

Why shouldn't the same hold true for brewing?  After all, ingredient 
processing/preparation is important in brewing too.

That this might be a valid point occurred to me when I received  and read
Chris Shenton's oatmeal recipe digest. On reading the recipes, I realized that
I was automatically planning to go to a local store that carries British 
oatmeal, and buy and use that.  Based on my cooking experience, I was 
automatically assuming that the type of oatmeal would make a significant 
difference.

While I still plan to buy and use British oatmeal whenever I get around to 
making the stout (right now my framboise is still making me crazy; that's 
enough for the time being :-), I was wondering what others' reactions to this 
idea might be.

So:  what do y'all think?


                         Yours in Carbonation,

                                      Cher 


"God save you from a bad neighbor and from a beginner on the fiddle." --
   Italian proverb
=============================================================================

	Cheryl Feinstein              INTERNET:  CRF at PINE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU
	Univ. of Fla.                 BITNET:  CRF at UFPINE
	Gainesville, FL

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 10:05:25 -0400
From: iws at sgfb.ssd.ray.com (Ihor W. Slabicky)
Subject: Xingu Beer

	
	From: hpfcla!hplabs!gatech!ee.ecn.purdue.edu!zentner (Mike Zentner)
	Subject: Spruce Essence
	
	PS.  Does anybody else out there like the taste (or ever had) Xingu
	Black Beer from Brazil?
	
I have had it and I like it.  It reminds me a little of the smokey
flavor of the steinbier (sp?) available from Europe - the one where
the brew is heated by dropping red hot stones into the mash to heat
it up.  I think that Xingu has a very nice flavor and look - a dark,
black, smokey lager.  Yes, lager, even tho it looks like a great stout.

The following I had posted to rec.food.drink some time ago, and
is lifted from an article in All About Beer about 2 years ago:

Xingu - pronounced 'SHIN goo' comes from the Caccador Brewery,
State of Santa Catarina, Brazil (~600 miles southwest of Rio). 
It is an Indian recipe converted to a brew of barley, water,
hops, and yeast.  The grain is roasted by open fire malting. 
It is a black, dense, opaque, LAGER beer.  It is brewed on site,
using Brazilian hops and barley.  The brew was developed by
Alan D. Eames.  Brazil used to brew quite a few great 'black' or
'escura' lagers.  Unfortunately, these have been discontinued in
favor of lager production by the majors (Brahma, Kaiser, and
Antartica).  The Indian tribes along the Xingu river and it's
tributaries (Amazon area) still brew these beers. Their
process is basically malted grains, lupine herbs, and airborne
yeasts - with the women chewing the grain and spitting the mash
into pots, the resulting 'mash' being cooked over open fires
and giving the beer it's 'blackness' from the smoke - and lagered
in underground clay pots.

Eames took their recipe and converted it to a commercial process. 
The resulting brew pours and looks like a stout but tastes like
a lager.  It is BLACK.  It has ~4 % alcohol by volume.

It is distributed by Caparra Sales Co., Randolph, MA
(617) 986-2337.  Maine artist Eric Green painted the Xingu
label, based on antique maps of the Xingu river region and
included a Txukahamei warrior with a lip disk.

It is available in NYCity in the SoHo area - a deli on
the east side of Broadway, about three blocks north of
Houston Street has it.  Also in Boston, at Ballards package
stores...

Ihor

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Date:    Mon, 9 Jul 1990 10:35:55 EDT
From: PEPKE at scri2.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Subject: Ginger Beer, kegs, and lauter tun

1) Ken Weiss' ginger ale problem

Since I was a kid I used to make regular ginger ale (sweet, little alcohol).
It involved peeling and slicing a few ounces of ginger.  Now, peeling ginger
is a pain, so I made one batch without peeling it.  The overnight fermentation
in the pot went fine, producing the appropriate amount of bubbles.  However,
after I bottled it, no more fermentation occurred, and the ginger ale was
flat.  I speculated that there was something in the peel of ginger which yeast
marginally disliked.  The ginger had been boiled, so organisms in the peel
were not to blame.  Since then I have always carefully peeled the ginger
first and have had no problems.

I haven't tested this under controlled conditions, so it may be all wet.

2) Stainless steel kegs

I, too, am interested in finding small stainless kegs for use as kettles.
I don't want to use aluminum for the simple reason that I want to hang some
dohickeys off of the kettle, and unless you have a heliarc setup (which I
don't) aluminum is a pain.  So, I would be interested in anybody's experience
of which brands of kegs are aluminum and which (if any) are stainless.

3) Lauter tun

I have improvised a great lauter tun, which others might find useful.  It's
a Coleman 2-gallon cooler with a spigot at the bottom, and a stainless steel
vegetable steamer at the bottom.  This arrangement allows the sparging of the
mash of about 7 pounds of grain.  If the grain is properly crushed, no bag
is needed.  The flow rate is quite satisfyingly slow.  The cooler is insulated,
so the temperature of the water stays at the right level.  The spigot can be
wedged open with a fork handle, allowing relatively unattended sparging.
Also, the Coleman is comparatively inexpensive.

I sparged some mash a couple of weeks ago with this arrangement and got quite
an efficient sparge.  I didn't use a flushing tube but just filled the bottom
with hot water before adding the mash, as Noonan suggests.  Only a small amount
of the initial runoff needed to be run through the mash again.  Unfortunately,
I later had an accident which involved boiling wort and my foot.  Though my
foot has, for the most part, regenerated, the wort is forever lost, so I will
not know how effective it was in the long run.  When I can figure out a safer
arrangement, I will try again.

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, 9 Jul 90 10:42 EST
From: <S_KOZA1%UNHH.BITNET at mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject:  Bud Kegs & Magnets

Hi All,
        Many stainless steel alloys have little to no magnetic
susceptibility and Bud kegs could be produced from one of these.
My first impression is that if the kegs are indeed aluminum they would need
to have a special internal coating to avoid a severe dissolution of Al in the
carbonated and low pH brew. Is there a lining? If there isn't one I would think
that the keg is indeed stainless steel. If there is one it is possibly Al and
if you didn't want to use it for wort boiling it would still make a SUPER
lobster or steamed clam pot 8-).

                                        Happy Fermentations,

                                        Stephan M. Koza

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 08:59:20 MDT
From: roberts%studguppy at LANL.GOV (Doug Roberts)
Subject: Stupid rotten ginger ale again!

[Description of beer that is flat after priming & bottline...]

Your procedure sounded fine to me, so the only thing left that I would
suspect is your bottle capper and/or bottle caps.

- --Doug

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 09:02:38 MDT
From: roberts%studguppy at LANL.GOV (Doug Roberts)
Subject: followup on Bud kegs


> Hmmm.  Looked a bit like aluminum to me.  I figured no problem, if
> it's not what I want, I'll just return it for the deposit (before
> cutting it apart...).  Got home, and it didn't pass the refrigerator
> magnet test (magnets stick to steel, dontchaknow).  Bud kegs are made
> out of aluminum.  :-(
> 
Some Bud kegs may be made out of aluminium. The one I have is
stainless, *and* be advised that magnets will not stick to many alloys
of stainless steel. If I were you, I'd have someone else look at your
keg to be sure.

- --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: Mon, 9 Jul 90 09:11:10 MDT
From: roberts%studguppy at LANL.GOV (Doug Roberts)
Subject: In search of O.P. & misc


> 2) What is the current consensus on Edme dry yeast?  I was suprised to 
>   notice that the package doesn't specify ale or lager but rather that
>   it is 'good for all types of beers'  or something like that.  I suspect it
>   is a top fermenter.  I pitched at 2:00 and by 6:00 there was a very
>   active fermentation going on (at 68 deg F)!

My  own personal experience with Edme (ale -- I don't think they even
make a lager yeast) is that is only so - so. I thought it generated a
kind of off flavor that might be described as slightly rancid. Lots of
other people seem satisfied with it, however.

- --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:     Mon, 9 Jul 90 11:17 EST
From: <R_GELINA%UNHH.BITNET at mitvma.mit.edu> (RUSSG)
Subject:  Brewpub

For those of you in the Boston/MIT area: Go to the Cambridge Brewing Co.
brewpub in Kendall square, near Draper Labs. Top-notch brew, MUCH better
than the Commonwealth Brewery. That's all, just go.

Russ Gelinas        R_GELINAS at UNHH.BITNET

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 09:31:52 mdt
From: Glenn Colon-Bonet <gcb at hpfigcb.hp.com>
Subject: Re: ginger ale problems
Full-Name: Glenn Colon-Bonet


In Homebrew Digest #455 Ken Weiss writes:
> I have opened six more bottles of this beer. Every bottle has been 
> absolutely flat, no carbonation at all. I noticed a small 'ring around
> the collar', which has been mentioned as a warning sign of bacterial
> infection.

I've had a very similar experience with my second batch of beer, in
which 9 out of every 10 bottles were uncarbonated and showed signs
of infection.  The remaining 1 bottle was perfect!  Upon inspecting
the bottlecaps that I was using, it was clear that these cork lined
caps tend to dry out and crack, allowing the carbonation to escape
and infection to enter.  Check the bottlecaps that you are using
because they can certainly cause problems like this.  I would tend
to suspect your bottling equipment rather than a simple infection,
especially since there was no sign of infection immediately prior
to bottling.
			Hope this helps!
			-Glenn
			gcb%hpfigcb at hplabs.hp.com

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Date: Mon,  9 Jul 90 11:55:40 EDT
From: boubez at bass.rutgers.edu
Subject: Bleach/Borax


Hi there!
  What are homebrewers' opinions about using Borax instead
of bleach? We've been using it at home for household cleaning
(this IS Earth Year, after all (-: ) and I was wondering about using
for my homebrew cleaning and sterilising.

toufic


Toufic Boubez
boubez at caip.rutgers.edu

- -- We didn't inherit the earth from our ancestors,
   we borrowed it from our descendants.			-- H.D. Thoreau


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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 08:23:01 -0700
From: cckweiss at castor.ucdavis.edu
Subject: When to pitch starter


Dale Veeneman asked about the correct timing for pitching a starter into
the wort. According to my impeccable source - the label on a package
of Wyeast liquid yeast - the starter should be pitched when it reaches
"high kraeusen". I've been interperting this to mean when you've got a nice
layer of foam on top. Works for me, as I get lots of activity in my
wort within 12 hours of pitching the starter.

I've been opening one bottle of the cursed Ginger Pale Ale each day. Yesterday's
bottle actually had a small trace of carbonation. Could the gelatin finings
slow fermentation down that much? I'm now 14 days since bottling. The beer
is still *crystal* clear, but basically uncarbonated.

I had a thought on a blow-off system I'd like to bounce off the group. I've
noticed in my tours of microbreweries that their blow-off system is simply
a tube that comes out the top of the fermentor, and bends 90 degrees, extends
out past the side of the vessel, and turns 90 degrees down. The tube simply
dangles there about three feet off the floor, and a bucket is placed below to
catch the blow-off. What I'm thinking about is the exact same system, but
scaled down to 5 gallon carboy size, and using pyrex lab tubing instead of
stainless. That way I could just immerse the tube in bleach solution to
clean it, and boil it if things got really nasty. Reactions?

Ken Weiss
krweiss at ucdavis.edu
cckweiss at castor.ucdavis.edu

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 10:02:51 PDT
From: brown at ocelot.llnl.gov (Dave Brown)
Subject: Follow up on Bud kegs


I must admit that I am the one that started Ken on a search for Bud
Kegs.  I purchased a book from the person who started Buffallo Bill's
a local Brew Pub here in the Bay Area.  In this book he claims that
Bud Kegs are Stainless Steel and make great brew pots.  Well I think
he's mistaken as well. 

Ken writes:
    Hmmm.  Looked a bit like aluminum to me.  I figured no problem, if
    it's not what I want, I'll just return it for the deposit (before
    cutting it apart...).  Got home, and it didn't pass the refrigerator
    magnet test (magnets stick to steel, dontchaknow).  Bud kegs are made
    out of aluminum.  :-(

Yes, I purchased a Keg a few weeks ago, but I just got time to test
out my Keg this weekend.  It seems like aluminum to me too.  I tried
the magnet test: it sticks to my 4 1/2 gallon stainless stell pot, but
not to the keg.  Since Bud sells beer in aluminum cans, I am sure they
would have no hesitation to sell a keg of beer in aluminum.

Since I want a 15 gallon pot, and a 15 gallon stainless steel pot is
way out of my price range (try $250-$350), I might still consider
using it.  Now, I don't want to start a holy way either, but since I
haven't following this debate, can somebody from each camp, Stainless
Steel and Aluminum reprise your best arguments *briefly*.

David.

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 10:25:37 PDT
From: dsbaer at EBay.Sun.COM (David Baer)
Subject: XINGU



I have tried Xingu black beer a number of times.  
It is very mild and like a milk-stout without as 
much residual sweetness.  Very nice beer. 

To confirms doug's statement about Indian Spit as part
of the Xingu recipe:

About a year ago the San Francisco Chronicle ran an
article about the fellow that brought Xingu from
the Amazon. I can't remember his name, but I'll look
in my files and see if I can find the article. 
Well,  the article said that the original recipe did
include a process where the women of the tribe that
brewed Xingu actually chewed the  barley and then spit it 
into the mash.  I think this added pepsin (??) or some 
enzyme that acted like amalyse and broke down starches 
into sugars.  

The article finished by qualifying the above statements
saying the brewery in the Amazon today uses more "modern"
methods. So I think it is safe to say the tribal spitting
no longer takes place and Xingu uses more Imperial practices.



Try it you'll like it,

Dave Baer (Sun Micro, soon to be Stanford U.)

 

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 16:28:55 -0400
From: Mark Law <law at iec.ufl.edu>
Subject: Hard Water and Fermentation Startup

    
    Most of my previous batches made with Wyeast have gotten a fairly
active fermentation going within 12 hours of pitching.  My most recent
batch, however, has been a real slow starter with very little CO2 even
36 hours after pitching.  The temperature of the wort has been about
the same and the original gravities have been in the same range.  The
main difference is that in the most recent batch I added a tablespoon
of gypsum.  Has anyone ever noticed a correlation between the hardness
of the water and the rate of fermentation?  I can't really identify any
other possible cause.

 -Mark Law
law at iec.ufl.edu

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Date: 9 Jul 90 21:10:14 GMT
From: bnrgate!bnr-rsc!crick at uunet.UU.NET (Bill Crick)
Subject: Stainless, and Magnets?

Someone mentioned testing to see if a keg was stainless steel, by
trying a magnet on it? isn't Stainless steel nonmagnetic (paramagnetic?)?
Maybe tring to file it to see how hard it is would work?

I also believe that a normal oxy-acetylene torch won't cut stainless?


Brewius Error Sum? Bill Crick

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Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 03:20:23 GMT
From: aem at mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU (a.e.mossberg)
Subject: Re: Xingu

In digest <1990Jul9.071138.2479 at mthvax.cs.miami.edu> homebrew%hpfcmr at hplabs.hp.com (CHANGE THIS IF NECESSARY) writes:

>I seem to have as very vague recollection of reading about it some time
>ago in rec.food.drink.  I know it's made by the Amazon Indians.  I seem
>to recall reading that the grains are ground by Indian women chewing the
>grains then spitting them into a vat.  This would, of course, introduce
>more enzymes.  Has anyone else heard this, or am I just contributing to
>urban legends?  Can anyone provide some enlightenment about this beer?


It is a commercial beer, *inspired* by a traditional black beer of
an indian tribe. Indians do not make it, or have anything to do
with its production.  The process of making it is not even close
to that of the indian's black beer.  The owners of the brewery
might spit in the vats to bug gringos though.


aem
- -- 
a.e.mossberg / aem at mthvax.cs.miami.edu / aem at umiami.BITNET / Pahayokee Bioregion
You are what you watch.				- The Media Foundation


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Date:         9 Jul 90 17:08 -0800
From: mike_schrempp%14 at hpg200.desk.hp.com
Subject:     AUTO ANSWER MESSAGE.

Hello,

I have changed jobs and now work at PCG in Sunnyvale. My new HPDesk address is
hp4200. My phone number is 720-3279.

Please review your distribution lists and remove my name if it is no longer
appropriate.

Thanks,
Mike Schrempp


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #456, 07/10/90
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