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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  sulfide vs sulfite ("Peter A. Ensminger")
  RE: Leaf Hops (Bob Tower)
  Re: sulfur (sulfite/sulfide) smells ("A.J deLange")
  Milling Wheat ("Dan Listermann")
  Batch sparging and specialty grains (pacman)
  link of the week - beers and holidays (Bob Devine)
  Source for food grade lye for making pretzels (David Radwin)


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Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 02:04:40 -0500
From: "Peter A. Ensminger" <ensmingr at twcny.rr.com>
Subject: sulfide vs sulfite

In HBD 4962, AJ writes about sulfide (S^-2) versus sulfite (SO3^-2) 
aroma in lagers. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is often described as a "rotten 
egg" aroma. But what does sulfite smell like? Can you describe this or 
give examples?

I really love "Victory Prima Pils" and its aroma has a distinctive 
character that I would describe as "sulfur". A young Pilsner Urquell 
also has this character. I would not describe either of these as having 
a "rotten egg" aroma. Would you say that this aroma is sulfide or 
sulfite? BTW, I have gotten a sulfur aroma from some of my own *very 
young* beers fermented with Nottingham (ale) yeast.

Cheerio!
Peter A. Ensminger
Syracuse, NY




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Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 00:02:31 -0800
From: Bob Tower <tower at cybermesa.com>
Subject: RE: Leaf Hops

Steven of Johnson City, TN commenting about Bazooka screens and pellet 
hops:

 ...snip....

I use a Bazooka Screen on my pick up tube in my
kettle. It keeps the hops out, but allows them to form
a filter bed for the wort.

The only problem I have experienced with this is with
pellet hops plugging it. Whole hops are no problem.

 ...snip...

I also had this problem. It didn't completely plug the screen, but the 
flow of wort was greatly diminished and the hop residue was so 
compacted around the screen that cleaning was becoming a pain. My 
solution is to use BOTH whole and pellet hops. The whole hops seem to 
stick to the screen first and then the pellet residue on the outside of 
the whole hops. Once I turn the pump off, the clump of hops around the 
screen is easily knocked loose and clean up is much easier than when 
using 100% pellets.

I have also found that when using a combination of Breakbright 
(Whirlfloc) and Yeastex the Bazooka screen completely plugs up with 
break material and Yeastex slime when pumping the wort out of the 
kettle regardless of what type of hops are used. The solution (at least 
in my kettle) is to stick my mash paddle into the kettle at the end of 
the boil and rapidly stir in a circular fashion (like a whirlpool) for 
2 minutes and then cover and wait for 15 minutes before pumping out of 
the kettle. This keeps the screen from plugging 100% of the time in my 
experience.

Bob Tower - Los Angeles, CA



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Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 14:27:43 +0000
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Re: sulfur (sulfite/sulfide) smells

Sulfite is usually described as "burning matches" i.e. it's the odor of 
sulfur dioxide. Many homebrewers will be familiar with it as the smell 
that evolves when Campden tablets are dissolved in water. And yes, 
that's the smell you want with continental pilsners. They aren't 
continental pilsners without that hint. As I said in the previous post 
I'm pretty sure that lagers owe a lot of their long life to the ability 
of sulfite to keep things in a reduced state (yeast help with this too).

A.J.

Peter A. Ensminger wrote:

> In HBD 4962, AJ writes about sulfide (S^-2) versus sulfite (SO4^-2) 
> aroma in lagers. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is often described as a 
> "rotten egg" aroma. But what does sulfite smell like? Can you describe 
> this or give examples?
>
> I really love "Victory Prima Pils" and its aroma has a distinctive 
> character that I would describe as "sulfur". A young Pilsner Urquell 
> also has this character. I would not describe either of these as 
> having a "rotten egg" aroma. Would you say that this aroma is sulfide 
> or sulfite? BTW, I have gotten a sulfur aroma from some of my own 
> *very young* beers fermented with Nottingham (ale) yeast.
>
> Cheerio!
> Peter A. Ensminger
> Syracuse, NY
>
>
>
>
>
>


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Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 12:55:59 -0500
From: "Dan Listermann" <dan at listermann.com>
Subject: Milling Wheat

I have to take exception to those advocating milling wheat with a wider gap 
than barley and even to mixing it in with barley.  Wheat needs a narrower 
gap than barley because it has a gumminess to it that needs to be overcome 
to crack ( higher yield point in metallurgical speak) .  Further  there is 
no husk material to protect.  Mary Ann Gruber told me that water access is 
what wheat is all about.  I mill mine to the point where I worry about dust.

Dan Listermann 





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Date: Sat,  8 Jan 2005 12:59:37 -0700
From: pacman at edwardwadsworth.com
Subject: Batch sparging and specialty grains

In a normal on-the-fly sparge, I would mash, drain and throw the specialty grain
in the tun when I initiate the sparge.  If I am batch sparging, should I mash
as usual, drain, then throw the specialty grain into the tun, add the batch
sparge water, let it sit, and drain again?  Will this pull enough of the flavor
out of the specialty grains?  Also, when batch sparging, I bump up my base malt
to account for reduced efficiency, which brings me into my target OG, but do I
need to bump up the specialty grain, or would that just throw off the balance,
seeing as how specialty grain doesn't contribute to the fermentables, and a 5
gallon batch, whether batch sparged or fly-sparged, would call for the same
amount of specialty grain to achieve the right flavor profile?  Make sense?

Parker 


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Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 13:17:47 -0700
From: Bob Devine <bob.devine at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: link of the week - beers and holidays

First, a little fun factoid:  doing a web search
for "beer heaven" yields 1,430,000 hits at Google.
Doing the same for "beer hell" gives 3,050,000.  Hmmm.

In the spirit of beer hell, I started thinking about
alcoholidays, ya know, holidays where we consume alcohol.
For New Year's Eve it's champagne.  Fourth of July is beer.
And certainly for many homebrewers, Christmas beers
are highly cherished and help with the winter blues.

But for a hilariously cheeky advertisement for a new
(or maybe old) tradition in holiday beers, look at:
http://www.shmaltz.com/

Bob Devine
no Mormon beers in Utah (except, perhaps, for Polygamy Porter)


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Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 12:47:05 -0800
From: David Radwin <dradwin at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Source for food grade lye for making pretzels

Jeff Renner wrote, regarding pretzels:

> There was a follow-up discussion about simmering them in a weak lye
> solution, which is necessary for that 'pretzelly" taste.  There
> really isn't any source that I know of for food grade lye, but my
> investigations suggest that Red Devil and the like are probably quite
> free of nasty heavy metals, etc.  Any you use very little.

Although I couldn't find it locally, I bought 100g of food grade 
(USP/NF/FCC) sodium hydroxide (lye) from http://www.chemassociates.com 
<http://www.chemassociates.com/> for about $5 plus $5 shipping a couple 
of years ago. NAJASC. I'm sure other scientific supply firms carry it 
too, and some home soap-making supply firms as well. 100g is enough for 
several batches at least.

David in Berkeley CA


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