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


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Contents:
  Yeast culture from Erdinger Weissbier ("Sasha von_Rottweil")
  Beer podcasts (Stephen George)
  Light Absorption in Beer (Tony Barnsley)
  Where oh where did my efficiency go? ("Michael Eyre")


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Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 08:28:31 +0000
From: "Sasha von_Rottweil" <sasharina at hotmail.com>
Subject: Yeast culture from Erdinger Weissbier 


>   Re: Yeast culture from Erdinger Weissbier
Hi,
Erdinger uses a lager yeast in the bottle.

If you have access to Erdinger then maybe you can get some other German 
Weizens that do have a true weizen yeast.

The following breweries should have a proper weizen yeast in the bottle:
Maisel's Weisse
Schneider Weisse and Aventinus (used to be bottle fermented in the past at 
least)
Riedenburger Weisse
Pinkus Weizen (a bio-beer)
Flensburger Weizen
Prinzregent Luitpold Weissbier (hell)

Prost,
Marty




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Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 10:07:11 +0100
From: Stephen George <sageorge at gmail.com>
Subject: Beer podcasts

Alexandre Enkerli posted about beer-related podcasts, with the comment
"some of them are rather interesting." Would anyone care to be more
discriminating in tackling that list?

I listened to a couple and found them a complete waste of time - one
from some guy drinking Harp in a bar in Muncie, IN, and one from some
Aussie homebrewers.  I don't want indie music with my beercasts.  If
there are any that are really useful, I'd be keen to add them to my
subscriptions.  I currently listen to Grape Radio and Winemaking
Radio, both of which do live up to expectations.  There are also
occasionally some good beer and brewing comments on Eat Feed, which
seems to have gone into hiatus.

Alexandre made the comment about people making the transition from
homebrewing to craft brewing.  If you listen to the winecasts, you'll
find the same trend.  Hey, you've got to start somewhere...

Cheers,

Stephen George
London (but dreaming of Bamburg)



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Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 14:19:35 +0100
From: Tony Barnsley <tony.barnsley at blackpool.gov.uk>
Subject: Light Absorption in Beer

Hi all,

I am looking at several ways to control the rate at which wort is pumped
from my under back back to the mash tun and off to the boiler. The rate of
pumping should depend on the level of wort in the under back (which is a cut
down corny keg). I am happy having two rates, one when the wort level is low
which allows the under back to fill, and fast when the wort level rises
above a set point which empties the under back until the low level is
reached.

Ideally it should have no moving parts which cuts out float switches. One
idea I have had is to have a LED at the top of the under back with two light
sensitive resistors at the high and low points (All suitably encapsulated).
These would act as triggers to a logic circuit that would switch high / low
depending on the level.

What I am wondering is what colour of LED would be best to use? I'm thinking
Blue, but what I really want is the one that gives light that is absorbed
most by beer. Anyone any ideas?

What I want to do is to use the logic circuits to drive two latching relays
that switch a different resistance value in and out of a circuit that drive
my pump motor. This circuit works fine, but currently has a variable
resistor to control the pump speed. What I thought I could do is have two
variable resistors so that I can fine tune high speed and low speed as
required.

The other thought is light absorption has to be dependant on beer style;
pilsners for example having a different absorption spectrum compared to
Imperial stout, so I should also have the sensitivity of the detectors
adjustable as well.

On the other hand I could just eyeball it as I do now :)

Regards

le Man ( The Brewer Formerly Known As Aleman ) 
Mashing in Blackpool, Lancashire, UK
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http://www.blackpool.gov.uk/EmailDisclaimer/

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Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 08:46:58 -0700
From: "Michael Eyre" <meyre at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Where oh where did my efficiency go?

Got a question for you all that I can't quite wrap my head around...

My friend and I do 10 gallon batches of allgrain beer, of various types.
We split the batch 50/50 and call it OK about once or twice a month. So
we never really have any problems until one of us invents one... and
this is how our latest problem came about. My pal get's this nifty
program called Promash, and plugs in our last beer to it's inner
workings and determines that or efficiency is extremely low.. so he
says. Something on the order of 56-58% efficient. I should mention that
this is a 3 tier gravity feed 1/2 barrel keg setup, that we occasionally
use a cooler to mash in instead of the keg, depending on our whims of
that session. We batch sparge as well, using two sparges. Our last beer
that he plugged in was an American style wheat with 60% malt 40% wheat,
and the first runnings were about 1.060 and the second sparge was about
1.040. We got an average of 1.053, which was right where we wanted to be
on a 12 gallon pre-boil pull. Later boiled down to 11 gallons and split
two ways. Excellent! Anyway, when he starts talking about rotten
efficiency a coupe days ago, which is a few weeks after the brew, I'm
wondering... is our system just bad? Does it matter if it is, cause it's
still cheap to run. But my main question is... what would have happened
if we had done a third sparge, would it have some out somewhere neat
1.020, which is still viable to use, properly boiled down in the kettle,
and is THAT where the lost efficency went? Another question is, why
wasn't the second sparge 1.060 as well, since isn't that the idea of the
batch sparge, to get one big run of evenly mixed wort/sugar? Hell, I
don't know the maximum solubility of water for sugar/wort... so I guess
that's what I'm having difficulties with.. why doesn't all the sugar
come out of the grain into the second sparge, did we not wait long
enough, stir long enough, etc. to make the second sparge work? We
stirred and waited about 10 minutes before we opened the drain for the
second run. I think I'm babbling now, so I'll end this, but I think I
got my idea across... I guess I'm just wondering how to get the
remaining stuff out of the grain that we apparently missed.

Mike



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