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


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Contents:
  Katrina (Bob Wilcox)
  faster chilling / esters (Matt)
  Re: Aeration (Scott Alfter)
  Guess the Contaminant ("Jeff Tonole")
  Counterflo (sort of) chiller... (Chuck Doucette)
  hose problems (Matt)
  Homebrew in New Orleans ("Chad Stevens")
  Yeast strain equivalency? (Paul Kensler)


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JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning,
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Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 21:20:21 -0700
From: Bob Wilcox <bobw at budget.net>
Subject: Katrina

Has anyone heard anything from Ron LaBorde. From his posts I know he is 
from Metairie, La



Bob Wilcox
Grants Pass,Or
Draughtboard Homebrew Club


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Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 09:45:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com>
Subject: faster chilling / esters

Michael Eyre wants to chill his 10 gallons of wort in less than the 45
minutes he's getting with his current immersion chiller, and is
considering counterflow or other designs.  Here is another simple,
cheap solution: use 2 immersion chillers (or 3 or 4) in parallel.  If
the cooling rate of a chiller is at any moment proportional to the temp
difference between the wort and your tap water (a good first
approximation), then some math shows that two chillers will indeed cool
in half the time that one will (22.5 minutes for you).  Three chillers
will cool in 15 minutes.  

This is true IF your tap can maintain a "standard" flowrate through 2-3
chillers, which it probably can.  Easy to check using cheap nylon
fittings and vinyl hose.

I use two 20-ft copper immersion chillers (3/8 diameter) to chill 4
gallons of concentrated wort to 15F above my tap temp in 10 minutes. 
Also, Phil Yates once said something about a "parallel immersion
chiller," so maybe he has some suggestions.

- -----

Nathaniel Lansing asks if the FOY sages ever answered an ester
question, which I think was mine.  I assumed they didn't answer because
I had certainly exceeded the limit on how many questions are reasonable
for one person to ask.  But Dave Burley says they did answer--I must be
blind because I can't find it in the archives.  I asked if they could
explain the condtradictory statements that "increased yeast growth
leads to decreased esters" (because Acetyl-CoA is being used for growth
and not ester production) and "increased yeast growth leads to
increased esters" (because yeast growth requires more Acetyl-CoA
production and eventually this Acetyl-CoA abundance leads to more ester
production).

Was this question indeed answered?  Is is even possible to answer
definitively?  Is it possible to answer definitively if we only
consider acetate esters?  Is is possible to answer definitively if we
only consider ethyl acetate?  Anyone?

If ethanol is never the limiting factor, then my uneducated guess is
that ester production is at any moment proportional to growth rate,
with perhaps a spike when growth stops.  But then the only reason we'd
have more total ethyl acetate production at higher temps is if the rate
of reaction were increased or something.  And I don't think I buy that.

Matt

 




	
		


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Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 10:21:35 -0700
From: Scott Alfter <scott at alfter.us>
Subject: Re: Aeration

John Schnupp wrote:
> I found that I really didn't like the 3L flasks.  One thing I found was that
> it was very easy to get the flask to foam over.  The flask is basically an
> inverted cone and as the foam gets higher the volume gets smaller and it
> pushes the foam out even faster.

I make starters in a 1L flask.  Starters made with malt extract tend to foam
over, but starters made with sugar (ordinary white table sugar) don't have this
problem.  I measure 3.5 oz. (by weight) of sugar into the flask, add water to
make 950 mL (close enough to a quart for government work), bring to a boil, and
boil for 10 minutes.  It won't boil over unless you have the burner turned up
too high (flames shouldn't come up the sides of the flask).  After the boil,
start cooling with a sink full of cool water (borosilicate glass can handle the
temperature shock).  After a minute in the sink, add some yeast nutrient and/or
yeast energizer according to their directions.  If your tap water isn't cool
enough, you can finish cooling in the freezer until the starter is down to
pitching temperature.  Toss in the yeast and let it go to town.

I've used this method to make starters for everything from best bitter to wee
heavy to sack-strength mead, starting with either a White Labs pitchable tube
or yeast salvaged from a previous batch.  One step is usually enough, but I
made a second step for the wee heavy I now have in secondary.  The first step
used 5 oz. of sugar and a tube of WLP028; the second step used 10 oz. of sugar
in the flask, with water to make 950 mL.  It was boiled, cooled, and added to
the growler along with some more yeast energizer and yeast nutrient.  When
pitched into the wort, this starter knocked the gravity down from 1.090 to
1.025 in four weeks.

(I started using sugar starters for my mead batches, figuring it'd have more of
a neutral character than a starter made with malt.  When I found that they
tended to not boil over nearly as easily, I started using them for beer as
well.)

  _/_  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, 6 Sep 2005 15:32:21 -0400
From: "Jeff Tonole" <jtonole at twcny.rr.com>
Subject: Guess the Contaminant

After 13 years of brewing, I have my first infection problem.
And it's arrived at a particularly bad time, since I've been in
a bit of a brewing frenzy recently (5 batches in the past few
weeks, and most of them appear to have this problem). So,
I was hoping that someone out there could help me identify
the problem and figure out how to prevent it in future batches.

A search through the HBD archives turned up this
description (from 1990!), which is very similar to what
I see in my fermenters:

> a sort of bluish-green "skin" over the surface, patches of
> what looked like bread mold floating here and there, and
> a few gigantic bubbles that lasted for days.

I would modify it to say that the "skin" is more white than
bluish-green and looks like an oil slick on the surface of the
beer. Another post in the archives (by a biologist) described
a similar problem and identified it as bacilliform bacteria.
(Would that be something like lactobacillus?)

Each batch has a somewhat unpleasant aroma, but I did not
taste any blatant off-flavors. However, the flavor of each had
definitely changed from the previous time I tasted them. They
were also kind of bubbly, like they were full of CO2.

I brew outside, but everything else -- fermentation, racking,
cleaning, etc. -- happens in the basement. We had a hot and
muggy summer, and the basement got pretty musty. We have
a dehumidifier, but it wasn't running all the time. It's possible I
picked up some kind of airborne contaminant while racking.

I'm also wondering about my sanitizing solution.  I use Star San,
but the bottle I currently have is about three years old. Does
Star San lose its effectiveness after a few years?

Another possible source -- I made a batch of wine and used some
of the same equipment (racking cane and hoses, one fermenter) as
I use for beer. The wine is fine, but are there bacteria or wild yeasts
that may have migrated from the wine and caused problems in beer?

I'm replacing all of my hoses and racking canes, and I'll be giving
my fermenters an intense cleaning. Is there anything else I can do
to prevent the reoccurrence of this infection?

Apologies for the long post, and thanks in advance for the help.

jeff tonole
Ithaca, NY



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Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 14:53:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuck Doucette <cdoucette61 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Counterflo (sort of) chiller...

Mike,

I have been using a similar setup since I started
brewing and have had few problems with it. My setup is
housed in a 5 gal. bucket obtained from Home Depot. I
used 20ft. of 3/8ths copper tubing. The coil was
formed using a gallon paint can, and fixed in the
bucket with 1" PVC pipe sections as spacers between
the coil and bucket. I can fill the bucket with ice
and water and cool 5 gal. of wort to approx. 75 deg.
in 5 or 10 minutes (or as fast as it will drain
through a 3/8ths tube). Now that I am brewing 10 gal.
batches, I have added a plastic spigot and just add
more ice after draining a small amount of water. I am
considering building a new one with more copper in a
larger bucket, because the final temp. has not been
getting down to the 75 deg. mark with the 10 gal.
batches.
It is no harder to clean or sanitize than a
counterflow chiller, and has been quite easy to use.

Chuck
O'Fallon, IL


	
		


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Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 15:28:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com>
Subject: hose problems

Recently I had two batches ruined by infection.  Because of some
bottle-to-bottle variation, increasing nastiness with time, and because
the beers tasted great in the fermenter, I suspected my vinyl bottling
hose was the source of the infection.  The hose smelled suspect, looked
suspect, and was discarded.  Beers bottled with a new hose did not
suffer from infection.  

I'm not confident that I can keep standard clear vinyl hoses clean and
free of both microorganisms and chemical residues for more than a few
batches.  They seem porous and unreliable, and don't smell good even
when new.  So I ordered some high-temp thermoplastic rubber hose, which
can be boiled to sanitize.  Unfortunately, this 3/8" ID hose does not
make a tight seal when slipped over a standard 3/8" acrylic racking
cane, so it entrains air into the finished beer if you try to siphon
with it.  Bad.  I tried steel hose clamps--they don't solve the
problem.

My questions are these:

1. Is it safe/advisable to boil regular vinyl tubing to sanitize it? 
Will it leach unsafe or untasty chemicals into my beer?

2. Does anyone know a convenient/sanitary way to make 3/8" ID
thermoplastic tubing seal tightly on a 3/8" acrylic racking cane?

3. Can anyone convincingly state a regimen for keeping standard vinyl
hoses clean for more than a few batches?



	
		


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Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 15:57:14 -0700
From: "Chad Stevens" <zuvaruvi at cox.net>
Subject: Homebrew in New Orleans

>From time to time my job takes me away from home.  Just about everywhere
I've gone, homebrewers have taken me under their mash tuns and kept me safe
and sound.  Well, in about a week I'm being deployed to New Orleans to bat
clean-up.  I'm not sure how mobile I'll be, but if any of you from New
Orleans to Biloxi (most likely Baton Rouge area) would care to help me keep
my sanity...send me an email off-line.

I look forward to mashing in with you (or helping you drink your warm brew
before it goes bad),

Chad Stevens
QUAFF
San Diego



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Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 17:10:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Kensler <paul_kensler at yahoo.com>
Subject: Yeast strain equivalency?

I seem to remember somewhere, that somebody had been
keeping up a yeast strain equivalency table that
documented which yeast strains were the same across
various yeast suppliers. I've googled and googled, but
I can't seem to find it.  I'd like to track down the
Wyeast or White Labs equivalent or comparable strains
for some old Yeast Culture Kit Co. and Brewtek yeasts
I used to brew with...


Thanks in advance,

Paul Kensler
Tampa, FL


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