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


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Contents:
  FOY, 05, More on Methlyene Blue ("Rob Moline")
  FOY, 05-Tobias on Oxygenation ("Rob Moline")
  FOY- Extension ("Rob Moline")
  Running HCCP under Linux...success, anyone? (Scott Alfter)
  "Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005" Yeast starter temp. question ("GRANT STOTT")
  Two yeast questions ("Peed, John")
  Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005 ("Mike Racette")
  Response: FOY, 05- Wine Yeasts ("Rob Moline")


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*   Fortnight of Yeast 2005 - 10 July through 24 July   *
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Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:51:53 -0500
From: "Rob Moline" <jethrogump at mchsi.com>
Subject: FOY, 05, More on Methlyene Blue

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.

Clayton:
My experience with methylene blue is that it ppts. out with time and
requires filtering. The protocol for producing the 0.01% w/v stain:
Dissolve 0.3 grams methylene blue in 30 ml. of 95% ethanol and 100 ml.
citrate buffer (pH 4.6). The stain is toxic to the yeast, so the reading
should be made with in 10 minutes.

We made fresh supplies frequently because we used it up.  We never had
to test the shelf life.  I would imagine that it would be many months.

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Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:06:06 -0500
From: "Rob Moline" <jethrogump at mchsi.com>
Subject: FOY, 05-Tobias on Oxygenation

From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005

Question: Can you please comment on the strategy of trying to
aerate/oxygenate the yeast while they are in a STARTER rather than
aerating the wort itself.  (Please let me abuse the language and science
a bit and just say that yeast need "a big swallow of oxygen" before they
ferment beer.)  I understand that this is exactly your strategy in the
production of dry yeast--i.e. dry yeast can be pitched into unaerated
wort because they have already taken their big swallow of oxygen.  How
feasible is it for a homebrewer to grow up a starter in similar fashion?
Is continuous aeration of the starter required?  A stir plate?  If I
have no stir plate, and no gas transfer equipment of any kind, is there
a practical procedure I can follow to grow yeast whose oxygen
requirements are already met?  Letting air into the starter jug and
shaking it, repeating this over several days, etc?  Any temperature
dependency?  Any minerals or nutrients I can add to the starter to
increase the yeast's efficiency at storing up oxygen-related compounds?
Thank you for sharing your expertise.


Tobias: As Clayton mentioned oxygen is absolutely necessary to produce
biomass. So I would aerate your starter as much as possible (stirrer or
an aeration system used in fish tanks.)As nutrients I would add a
product like FermaidK or GoFerm who add extra nitrogen, minerals and
vitamins which are necessary for biomass production. These nutrients
also contain some precursors that are needed for lipid production. 

The best temperature to build a starter is 20-28 degree Celsius. The
higher the temperature the faster you build biomass. If you use higher
temperatures (28 C) I would recommend separate the yeast from the media
as much as possible (decanting) because at this high temperature you
build up a lot of higher alcohols and esters which you don't want in
your beer.

If you want to pitch your yeast without aerating the wort you need to
prep your yeast in the starter for that. Aerate well so that the yeast
can build enough unsaturated fatty acids. There are commercial breweries
who aerate the yeast before pitching and not the wort. They believe they
can increase the flavor stability of their beer this way.

Tobias
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Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:46:09 -0500
From: "Rob Moline" <jethrogump at mchsi.com>
Subject: FOY- Extension

			FOY- Extension
	Secondary to the unfortunate problems of the hbd server, the FOY panel has
graciously offered to extend their efforts though the 29th of July, 05.
Cheers!
Rob
"The More I Know About Beer, The More I Realize I Need To Know More About
Beer!"
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Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:07:09 -0700
From: Scott Alfter <scott at alfter.us>
Subject: Running HCCP under Linux...success, anyone?

As part of an effort to move more of my everyday computing away from Windows 
and toward Linux, I've tried getting the homebrewing-related software I use 
working under Linux.  ProMash actually works pretty well under Wine (with some 
table-formatting glitches, but that's all).  HCCP, OTOH, has been a bit more 
troublesome.  The error message it produces under Wine indicates that it's 
crashing in a call to GetCommState; the description of this function provided 
by MSDN lead me to think it's trying to do something with the serial ports that 
don't exist on my computer.  (I've not tried running it under WinXP on the same 
machine to see if the problem shows up there as well.)

The author of HCCP mentioned at a conference session in Baltimore that the 
program stands a pretty good chance of getting ported to Linux and/or Mac OS X 
at some point, but I figured I'd let Wine have a shot at running the Windows 
version that's already out.

(More specifically, this is the error returned by Wine:
	err:comm:GetCommState tcgetattr or ioctl error 'Invalid argument'
This leads into an unhandled exception, which then spews out a bunch of 
diagnostic information.)

Has anyone else had better luck getting HCCP running under Linux?  I have a 
competition coming up in a couple of months and can run it under WinXP if 
necessary, but getting it working under Linux would be better.

   _/_  Scott Alfter
  / v \ Visit the SNAFU website today!
(IIGS( http://snafu.alfter.us/      Top-posting!
  \_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden            >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?


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Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:12:53 +1000
From: "GRANT STOTT" <gstott at iprimus.com.au>
Subject: "Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005" Yeast starter temp. question

Thanks again to those responsible for this valuable contribution to
"craftbrewing" knowledge.

My question might have obvious answers for some readers but here goes
anyway.

When making a starter for an ale with liquid yeast the instructions are
typically to keep the starter at 20-24degC. I realise that this helps build
up yeast numbers quickly, which is usually part of the goal.

My question is :- does doing an ale yeast starter at say 14 deg C have any
detrimental effects on the health or viability of the yeast produced? Or to
put it another way are there downsides to doing low temperature starters
other than the obvious lengthened time taken to build up a large population.

Thanks
Grant  Stott
[9906, 260] AR (statute miles) or [15942.2, 260] AR [Km] (Australia)





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Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:44:07 -0700
From: "Peed, John" <jpeed at elotouch.com>
Subject: Two yeast questions


My favorite yeast is Wyeast 1028 London.  It can be a bit of a slow
starter, but once it gets going it performs very well.  Recently I had a
batch of beer using 1028 throw a lot of sulfur on days 2 and 3 of
fermentation.  This yeast has never done that before and there was
nothing abnormal about the batch - it was an average, well oxygenated
wort, pitched with a healthy 2 quart starter (decanted) and the beer
temperature was 68 degrees.  I know that some yeasts are prone to
throwing sulfur and cooler fermentations encourage it, but what would
cause this uncharacteristic behavior with this yeast?  The beer turned
out fine, by the way.

Second, sometimes a yeast starter will turn to what looks like egg drop
soup when it's been on the stir plate for a while.  If the stir plate is
turned off, the yeast settles out almost immediately.  Is this just
normal flocculation?

John Peed
Oak Ridge, TN




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Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:03:01 -0400
From: "Mike Racette" <mike.racette at hydro-gardens.com>
Subject: Fortnight Of Yeast, 2005



Can you please discuss the advantages/disadvantages of pitching onto an
existing yeast cake (assuming the cake, and previous beer, smelled and
tasted clean). Specifically, I have seen it argued that while there may be
obvious advantages such as no starter prep, less cleaning, and perhaps a
shorter lag time,  there may be negative effects created due to too many old
or dead yeast cells, or perhaps maybe even problems with over-pitching? How
might using an existing yeast cake affect the taste and quality of the
resulting beer.



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Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 21:33:33 -0500
From: "Rob Moline" <jethrogump at mchsi.com>
Subject: Response: FOY, 05- Wine Yeasts

			Response: FOY, 05- Wine Yeasts

In today's response on the question of whether there are more or less
"beer yeasts" these days, Dr. Cone mentioned that many yeasts currently
considered to be "wine yeasts" may produce excellent beer.
In his book "Farmhouse Ales," Phil Markowski reports that it is
speculated that the primary Dupont strain descends from red wine yeast.
He also reports that fermentation at Dupont is similar to red wine
fermentation in many ways (temperature, duration, philosophy).  So
experimenting with wine yeasts is something I've been thinking about a
bit.
Can you elaborate on this?  Are there specific strains marketed by your
company that would be good candidates for experimentation?  Are there
any "red flags" or "green lights" that one should look for in commercial
descriptions of wine yeasts, when trying to identify strains for
experimenting?  Is it likely that most wine yeasts will lead to estery,
Belgian-style flavors?  Finally, are there specific wine yeasts you know
of that give brettanomyces-like leathery flavors, but in a more
controlled or predictable way than a pure brett culture would?
I greatly appreciate any guidance you can give.  Thanks,

Matt

Clayton:
Matt,
Thank you for showing an interest in exploring wine yeast for brewing.
There are two basic test that usually separate beer yeast from wine
yeast: 
1. Phenol off flavor or POF test. Most beer yeast are POF negative.  A
few of the wine yeast that I have tested were POF positive. 
2. Ability to ferment maltotriose. Beer yeast usually can ferment
maltotriose, most wine yeast cannot. To me there is no big deal if the
yeast cannot ferment the maltotriose. The mashing procedure can minimize
the amount of maltotriose present in the wort and the unfermented
maltotriose just gives you more body, mouth feel and perhaps a slight
sweetness.

I am sure that there are more fermentation characteristics that tend to
separate wine from beer yeast.

There is one very famous wine yeast that is both POF negative and can
ferment maltotriose.  It is probably the largest selling wine yeast
strain in the world. It is Lalvin K1-V1116. It was used in a beer kit
for several years and it was the yeast of choice in a Canadian brew pub
for several years.

For those that produce garlic beer, honey beer, cherry beer, pumpkin
beer, etc. I would think that you would be willing to experiment with
Lalvin 71B-1112, wine yeast, that is used for the production of Nouveau
Beaujolais wine in the Beaujolais region of France. The fruity nose
definitely comes through in the beer. A purest would not like it, but
someone looking for a new style beer might like it. I liked it.  It was
not my favorite in the tasting, however, I would have ordered a second
glass. 

Let me know if you try any of the wine yeast for brewing and the
results.

I am not aware of any safe brett type yeast.

Tobias:
In addition to Claytons response... there are a couple of breweries that
use Champagne yeast for their wheat beers which results in a more fruity
wine like flavour that is apparently more appreciated by women.  There
were also two breweries in Germany who used the Lalvin 71B in their
wheat beer and got a slight peach flavour. Because these wine strains
don't use maltotriose as Clayton mentioned these breweries used the wine
yeast together with their regular culture yeast. But you have to be
careful because some wine yeast possess a "killer" factor which may kill
your brewing strain. Lalvin 71B is a safe choice because it does not
have this factor. 

Tobias

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