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


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Contents:
  Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005 (jerry & Lilly Scott)
  Fortnight of Yeast ("I ≠ coldheart")
  Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005 - Viability, fructose metabolism and acid production ("Fredrik")
  Re:  Bud Light's aluminum bottles--any reports? (asemok)
  Re: Pat's woes... ("Michael O'Donnell")
  Re: Wheat recipe... ("Greg 'groggy' Lehey")
  Re: mash temps (dry ale) (David Edge)
  Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005 - methlyene blue (David Edge)
  Fortnight of Yeast: (Ken/Jean Schramm)
  Wheat Beer/RO Water ("A.J deLange")
  Turbo Tap ("Rod Prather")
  Ballantine Ale Clone (pulsarxp)


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*   Beer is our obsession and we're late for therapy!   *
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*   Fortnight of Yeast 2005 - 10 July through 24 July   *
*       Presented in cooperation with Lallemand         *
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JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning,
                  and Spencer Thomas



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Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 17:13:57 -0500
From: jerry & Lilly Scott <jerry.lilly at earthlink.net>
Subject: Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005

Q.  I am getting ready to go to Germany for a couple of  weeks.  Please 
duscuss methods of harvesting and transporting yeast samples from the 
brewies I am likely to visit. 

In particular I am interested in what it would take for me to  harvest 
and culture samples from my favorite Lager and Hefe Weizen (both from 
are from Mahr's Brau in Bamberg.  The Lager is their "Ungespundet" 
(non-filtered) beer and so I would think that a sample should be fairly 
easy to harvest from a bottle of either.

However, if it would be practical to bring two or three more yeasts home 
I would certainly like to.

Thanks Jerry Scott


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Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 16:26:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: "I &#8800; coldheart" <rebelcat1 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Fortnight of Yeast

Hi, long time lurker here.
I am very intrested in traditional brewing practices,
and in researching the methods used in the past it is
very hard to find information about yeast, primarly
because brewers were unaware of its existance untill
recently.

I would like a mixed strain yeast that I can reculture
infinatly. The goal would be to develop a mix of
yeasts that would be a 'house blend' and would mutate
over time. The reculturing technique would be scooping
off the yeasty head of active beer, using the sludge
at the bottom of the fermenter, or simply pouring part
of the old batch into the new one. The fermenter will
eventualy be a wooden barrel, so that should help to
carry the yeast over between batches. 

Is it feasable to continue this for years? Will yeast
mutations cause undrinkable beer? 

The alternative is to use wild yeast in every batch,
which would allow an amount of consistancy and reduce
the chances of contamination of the yeast culture. Is
this a better option? If so, what types of wild yeasts
are good for making beer? I know specific wild yeasts
are associated with certain plants, what plants can I
grow that will have tasty yeasts on them?

Thank you very much for your time. If possible,
answers to both sets of questions would be very
helpful. Looking foward all the info this year!
 -Will in oregon.


		


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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 01:31:33 +0200
From: "Fredrik" <carlsbergerensis at hotmail.com>
Subject: Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005 - Viability, fructose metabolism and acid production

Greetings experts from Lallemand!

Thanks again for another round of this fortnight of yeast! 
It's much appreciated!

To the questions.
 
(1) Yeast viability drop during storage and measurement methods
 To make a long story short, last year I did some experiments 
and viability drop tests with the methylene staining procedure and I 
posted the results to this list for comments some time ago, and come 
up with to my limited understanding some conclusions but I really 
would like your more authorative opinion on this. The main reason for 
my confusion was that the amazingly high apparent survival rates I found 
in wyeast smack packs! I did a viability drop experiment with collected
primary yeast and found a quick viability drop. I definitely expected 
the smack pack to last longer, but the difference surprised me.

My preliminary conclusions was that

 - Viability as per methylene blue staining seems to generally give 
slightly higher numbers as compare to platings, even accounting for 
the fact that one colony/count may be generated by a small flocc of 
cells. 
 - The viability was higher than I though in the 19 month old pack. 
Though possibly 86% was and overestimate. The question is exactly how 
much?

As it seems, when the health drops, some cells that are technically 
alive, or at least enough "alive" to reduce the dye, are not healthy 
enogh to complete a budding cycle - thus the deviation between method 
are expected to increase with poor health and low viability. In 
principle this made sense, but the question is

Q1. How big deviation in numbers can you expect? typically?

The first test I did was to stain a 19 month old koelsh pack. I 
opened the bag, without smacking the nutritient bag, and the 
viability was ~86%. 

Q2. Is this a normal survival rate if cells are good and O2 kept 
away, or is this to be considered exceptional? OR is something wrong 
with the staining method? The pack was stored refridgerated the 
whole time, around 5C or so. 

Once the pack was opened I stored the remaining slurry in the fridge, 
however it was unavoidable to expose it to oxygen. Once the pack was 
opened, and I assume, exposure to oxygen. The viability drop rate 
quickly adopted that of the previous fridge slurry test I did. 
(http://hem.bredband.net/frerad/beer/modelling/gallery/graph_82days.jpg)
After another 45 days, the 19 month pack originally 86%,
dropped to 50% *as per the methylene vlue staining method*. But after 
this 45 days I correlated with a plating and found the colony 
count / #plated cells to be 15%. Then I found by microscope inspection 
that the average floc size was around 1.8 cells.

So correcting for this, the 15% would actually be 27% as compare to 
the 50% from the staining procedure. 

All of the numbers are averaged, so I am a little doutful that all 
of the missing 23% are due to measurement errors. And the flocc 
size is already corrected for.

Q3. The question is now, if this deviation could be expected due 
to differences in the methods? Methylene blue staining vs plating? 
Can you please comment?

(4) I'm trying to simply the some regulatory control of 
the main parts of metabolism and in standard bio text you read about 
some of the main regulatory step, but I think I also read a claim that 
the main regulating step for glycolysis in yeast is the uptake of sugars, 
or transport of sugars through the cell membrane? Is this so, in the 
sense that the regulatory role of the hexokinases are negletcable? For 
example, I've read general, non-yeast specific biotexts says that the 
typical hexokinase enzymes for phosphorylation of hexoses have about 
20 times higher affinity for gluseo than for fructose.

Q4. Now my questions in this example is if yeast would ferment fructose 
significantly slower than glucose? If not, is this because the
phosphorylation of fructose or glucose is not main limitors, and 
that the sugar transport through the cell wall is limiting?

I had planned to make a comparasion with a 100% glucose batch,
and 100% fructose batch, do you think there would be any
differences in the fermentation profile or acid production?

Q5) Can you elaborate on factors that affect the production of 
organic acids during fermentation? I have made a few sugar brew 
experiments some time ago and found a clear correlation between 
final pH and amount of sugar used. I am assuming that this may have 
more than one reasons. Lacking amino acids might be one? but would 
ammonium nitrogen prevent excess acid production? Or does the simple 
and "quick" sugars cause a higher flow into the glyolysis pipelines 
than the yeast can get rid of? and that this overflow in glycolysis 
and perhaps acyl-CoA pools cause elevated acids beeing releasedi into 
the beer?

>From the pH/sugar data I had the impression that there was a treshold
of simple sugars where pH started to drop. How does the cell respond
when pH drops? Do it increase secrection of acids into the cytosol
to maintain a pH gradient? Could this be a factor, accelerating
acid production in the case of pH drop due to poor buffering capacity
of the growth media? 

Any other factors relevant to acid production?

Q6) A further speculation on (Q5), do you think that considering 
temperature, and other condistions that a warm fermentation of much 
simple sugars can give more esters, on the expense of organic acids? 
So that instead of acids, we see more esters and a kind of duality
between esters and acids? excess acids are released as acids unless
esterified efficiently?  I ask this because I have 
one datapoint of my own that does deviate on the sugar/pH pattern. 
It was fermented very warm(far too warm:), and had plenty of diacetly 
and plenty of ethylacetate! but it was not significantly acidic in despite
alot of sugar. though I'm sure are could be other explanaions to this. This 
was another strain. The pH/sugar correlation was all made with nottingham
from what I remember.

I guess some questions may be hard to answer but I would in any case 
appreciate any elaborations and comments from you.

 /Fredrik



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Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 20:46:19 -0400
From: asemok at mac.com
Subject: Re:  Bud Light's aluminum bottles--any reports?


On Jul 16, 2005, at 6:02 PM,  David Radwin <dradwin at sbcglobal.net>:

> And can someone suggest a good use for the Bud Light inside? (Drinking 
> it is out
> of the question, of course, and we don't have too many snails and 
> slugs.)
>


It's not too bad for making marinades for meat headed for the grill, 
and of course you can always use it to cook hot dogs.
cheers,
AL



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Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 22:53:57 -0700
From: "Michael O'Donnell" <mooseo at stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Pat's woes...

If anyone lives close enough to Pat to drop a gallon of Guiness off at his 
house, I'll chip in.  Probably a good time for all of us to kick in a 
little something for the HBD server fund.

cheers,
Mike
Monterey, CA (too far for a beer run to Michigan)

At 03:33 PM 7/16/2005, you wrote:
>I think I'll settle back and drink a gallon or so of Guinness to put my
>mind back in order. I also think I'm going to spend some cash on some
>network-attached storage and a better backup strategy than the one I've
>proven to be pretty useless here...



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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:46:23 +0930
From: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog at lemis.com>
Subject: Re: Wheat recipe...

On Tuesday, 12 July 2005 at  6:31:46 -0700, Michael Eyre wrote:
> Anyone have a good wheat beer recipe (all-grain for 10 gal) kickin'
> around? I'm fond of that Widmer brothers brew I had a little while ago
> at a festival, but I'm not hung up on it. This'll be my first Wheat, so
> any helpful hints are all appreciated...

If this is your first, it would be a good idea to make it as generic
as possible.  I've made a few; take a look at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/brewing/brew-47.html for the most successful
one.  The minerals I added there are because I brew with rainwater,
which has as good as no minerals.

Greg
- --
The virus contained in this message was detected, clubbed to death and
distributed throughout the Internet as vaccine by LEMIS anti-virus.
For further details see http://www.lemis.com/grog/lemis-virus.html

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


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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 10:37:16 +0100
From: David Edge <david.j.edge at ntlworld.com>
Subject: Re: mash temps (dry ale)

Darrell asks about mash temperatures for a dry ale.

We make one successfully with a single infusion mash at 
63degC/146degF for 90 minutes. We warm it with hot water half way 
through and stir well as the mash vessel isn't that well insulate it.

The other things that have helped make the ale very dry are water 
treatment (mash is around pH5.2) and Nottingham Ale yeast.

Is og1039, fg1005 dry enough chaps?

David Edge



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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 10:42:23 +0100
From: David Edge <david.j.edge at ntlworld.com>
Subject: Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005 - methlyene blue

Dear Dr Cone

In the last fortnight of yeast you mentioned the methylene blue 
technique. I use methylene blue, but am not sure how long it lasts or 
what its failure mode is - does it make live cells look dead or dead 
ones look alive when it goes off? It's not easy to find so I'd like 
to use it as long as possible.

Regards

David Edge
Derby, UK



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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 08:55:40 -0400
From: Ken/Jean Schramm <schramk at mail.resa.net>
Subject: Fortnight of Yeast:

Rob;

My questions revolve around mead fermentation.  Q's for the panel:

What is the ideal timing for nutrient additions for mead fermentations?

How do deficiencies of specific amino acids of wine and mead musts
contribute to the production of higher alcohols?  The two approaches to
their production I have seen in print are oxidative deamination and the
carbohydrate route.  Could you provide some input on which one is
correct, and how it proceeds?  

The four higher alcohols that I have seen presented that account for off
flavors in beer and wine are n-propanol, isoamyl alcohol, active amyl
alcohol, and isobutanol.  Are these the culprits in mead?  

Do you feel it is possible to conduct a .100 point SG fermentation of
mead must with a FAN content of 20-40 ppm and no nutrient addition
without the production of off flavors and higher alcohols?  Which yeast
strains might favor nutrient free fermentations, if any? (I am not a
believer in this option, but I am asking on behalf of some I know who
are.)     

Thanks,
Ken Schramm


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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:38:06 +0000
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Wheat Beer/RO Water

Wheat Beers:

Tastes vary with respect to the desired balance between clove and 
bannana and as to the absolute levels of both. The following comments 
describe a Weizen I love. Most important is to be sure to use the 
Weihenstephan 68 strain (Wyeast 3068, White Labs WLP300) which balances 
clove and bannana perfectly to my taste but is heavy on the amyl acetate 
according to others. Two thirds wheat malt with one third Pilsner malt 
insure plenty of head and wheat tang (and also a stuck mash so be sure 
to use 10 - 15% rice hulls in the lauter tun). I use a double decoction 
mash with a high (158) saccharification temperature. This puts the 
sweetness in balance with the tartness. Bittering is just at threshold 
(around 14 IBU) with a noble or near noble variety (e.g. Hallertau). I 
operate the yeast at around 58 F which is a little low but results in a 
clean beer with subtle clove and bannana. If you intend bottling then 
you will need to deal with saving speise and calculating the quantity. 
Best get Warner's monograph for that. Kegging is also a challenge 
because you want  over three volumes of CO2 and that means high keg 
pressures which must be offset by a long, narrow bore draught line.

RO Water:

The simplest way to handle RO water for a Pils is to blend it with a 
little tap water. An RO unit does not produce deinonized water but 
rather water in which the concentration of most ions has been reduced 
appreciably - some more than others. For example, my well water (run 
through a neutralizer) has an alkalinity of about 118 with Mg hardness 
of 61 and Ca hardness of 115.  Blended 1 part to 5 parts RO water (for 
the Pils I did Saturday)  I got an alkalinity of 28.5, Mg hardness of 
12.5, and Ca hardness of 32. Thus my RO unit appears to reject 91% of 
alkalinity (spec sheet says 92.9%), 95% of magnesium (spec says 99.9%) 
and 87% of calcium (no spec). Sulfate in the blend was down to 0.8 mg/L 
and chloride was also at 0.8.  This is acceptable for Pils (I got 65% 
efficiency in the kettle). Clearly there is a little lattitude for the 
addition of some calcium chloride, though.

For an ale one can use the same concept i.e. blending though as some ale 
city waters are so mineral laden one might simply think of RO water as 
deionized and add mineral salts as required. There are dozens of 
articles, books, and posts which will tell you how to do the 
calculations. There are also dozens of calculators and brewing software 
packages that will do the calculations for you.

A.J.


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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 11:25:13 -0700
From: "Rod Prather" <rodpr at comcast.net>
Subject: Turbo Tap

I saw that too.  Damned ingenious.  Making the nozzle would be a snap but
the cost of setup and tooling would be prohibitive unless you wanted to make
a few hundred of them.  Oh, by the way,  I'm involved in the tube bending
industry.   This type of tube is usually made of lead free brass and then
chrome plated or simply formed from stainless steel tube.  The problem is
that it has to be mandrel formed to keep the inside diameter constant and
you can't do that in your home shop without a lot of tooling.  A simple hand
bender will cause the tube to collapse.

Most of us already know that putting the nozzle against the side of the
glass controls the pressure  in such a way that the beer doesn't foam
excessively.  Something about controlling the pressure transfer.  This guy
just puts the nozzle on the bottom of the glass instead of the side.
There is also a formed "bubble" in the middle of the nozzle,   Not sure what
that is.  Perhaps he found some trick in Bernoulli's theory that helps with
the pressure transfer OR it's just a distractrion from the obvious
simplicity of the device.

THE PROBLEM,  IT'S PATENTED.   Don't know how MUCH is patented.  But this
guy  plans on becoming a millionarire really quick.   These nozzles will be
in every Sports Venue and high dispense pub in the country within a year.
1 year times $99 each.  Probably costs like $5 to manufacture including
labor.   I know of a pub that advertises 38 beers on tap.  Don't think he
can justify $3762 a year for a few extra beers per keg.

>"Peter A. Ensminger" <ensmingr at twcny.rr.com>
>SAID

>Seems to me that a HBD gadgeteer out there could reverse-engineer this
>device. Maybe somebody from Listermann Manufacturing Co?




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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:22:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: pulsarxp at earthlink.net
Subject: Ballantine Ale Clone

Does anyone have a clone receipe/formula for Ballantine Ale?
I would really like to hear from anyone who could help me out.
I can't find one searching the web.  Very frustrating! 
Thanks,
Lee


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