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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator


Contents:
  Wine and Brew by You (Geoffrey Sherwood)
  Head Retention (Mike Charlton)
  Blowoff tube backflow; multiple yeasts ("FEINSTEIN")
  Green Bubbles = Blecch!! (Martin A. Lodahl)
  Backwash ("John C. Post")
  Raspberry Imperial Stout Yeast, Bottle Culturing (Dan Miles)
  Backwash & high EtOH Yeast (jay s hersh)


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Archives available from netlib at mthvax.cs.miami.edu


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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 90 08:41:27 PDT
From: sherwood at adobe.com (Geoffrey Sherwood)
Subject: Wine and Brew by You

Well, this topic is probably beaten to death by now, but as a former
customer of theirs I thought I would jump in.  Craig's store is (was?) the
only one in Miami -- and his prices reflect it ($13.50 for a 3.3lb can of
malt extract, more for a 4 lb can).  He always has several beers on tap (up
to 6) for tasting.  I find their quality to be mediocre.  Not too badly made,
really, (although he would occasionally use some rather strange recipies), but
too young yet to be decent.  It was free and a good way to get some indication
of what the beer would taste like when you make it at home.  I am sure he
feels he has to go for volume to keep the taps running, but the quality suffers.
I certainly would not start homebrewing so I could make a beer that tasted
like his samples.  I expect he loses some potential brewers because of it.
I don't think this makes good business sense (and aging beer is not a
particularly strenous activity!).

As another poster pointed out, he does consider himself a leading expert on
beer brewing.  He has been doing it for a long time, but repetition does
not expert knowledge make.  My personal reading is that if it has alcohol
and you can get it down he thinks it is great.... 

The fact that he was at least half-crocked every time I was in there may have
had something to do with his contentiousness.  I am not putting him down for
it -- we all slide through life the best way we can -- but drunken arguments
alway seem a little stronger on passion than reason (mine included!).

All in all, it was not a bad place.  I enjoyed going there (I would sample a
bit, buy some ingredients, then talk/discuss/argue for a while).  His prices
are high, but he has a fairly good selection (not to mention being the only
game in town).  He has a couple of fish tanks and cats running all over the
place.  A nice hole in the wall atmosphere.  As long as you don't take him
too seriously it's worth the trip.  There are a lot cheaper places to mail
order from, though.

	geoff sherwood

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Date: Wed, 5 Sep 90 08:39:28 CDT
From: Mike Charlton <umcharl3 at ccu.UManitoba.CA>
Subject: Head Retention

I've been having some problems with head retention in the past and decided
to look into it to see what the problem was.  I figured the first thing to
do was to make sure that I had a glass that was grease free.  I rinsed it
with hot water 3 times and dried it out all 3 times with a clean towel.
I then polished the glass a while with the sam towel.  After convincing
myself that it was clean I poured a bottle of my latest batch of stout
based on Dave Miller's recipe.  Sure enough there was a nice voluminous head
that stayed put in the glass.  Thinking that I'd found my problem, I 
prepared to take a well deserved sip of the beer.  Unfortunately, as soon
as my lips touched the beer, the inch high head dissapeared within seconds.
Now, I'm not an overly greasy person (I do wash regularly).  Is there a
reason why this beer should be so sensitive to grease?
                  Thanks,
                       Mike

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Date: 5 Sep 90 10:36:00 EDT
From: "FEINSTEIN" <crf at pine.circa.ufl.edu>
Subject: Blowoff tube backflow; multiple yeasts

Hi there!

RE:  Bill Crick's query about water being sucked up his blowoff tube-- what is
the _elevation_ of the vessel holding the water the blowoff tube goes into,
with respect to the carboy?  If the wort is near/at room temp, then the only
explanation I can think of is that the vessel holding the water is elevated
enough for a siphoning action to occur. 

My blowoff tube is pretty long, so that it can go down into a jar of water and
bleach sitting on the table next to the carboy.  I've had no problems. 

RE:  mixed yeasts-- the one time I made an Imperial Stout, the basic ale yeast
I used (don't have my record book here so can't cite brand) did just fine.
However:  a fellow brewer told me once that he had heard of a yeast meant for
high-alcohol content brews.  It sounded like it was essentially a mixed yeast.
The way he described it, the first yeast got the fermentation going, and when
the alcohol content got high enough to kill it off, the second yeast kicked in
and finished the fermentation.  On the other hand, I've never seen such a
thing advertised. 


                         Yours in Carbonation, 

                                      Cher 


"With one tuckus, you can't dance at two weddings." -- Yiddish proverb
============================================================================= 

	Cheryl Feinstein              INTERNET:  CRF at PINE.CIRCA.UFL.EDU
	Univ. of Fla.                 BITNET:  CRF at UFPINE 
	Gainesville, FL 


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Date: Wed, 5 Sep 90 7:52:36 PDT
From: Martin A. Lodahl <pbmoss!malodah at PacBell.COM>
Subject: Green Bubbles = Blecch!!

Dear Digesters,

Several moons ago I posted an account of seeing a batch of porter
with a weird green growth on it surface.  Its principal feature, you
may recall, was one huge bubble that stood without bursting for
days.  I asked if anyone had seen anything like it, and what it
might be.

I visited that brewer last night, and tasted the porter.  Friends,
it was horrid.  The infection was clearly fungal in nature, leaving
a strong mildew taste (nearly 12 hours later I still can't get rid
of the aftertaste) and giving me a raging headache.

The moral of this story is that if your beer develops a green scum
on the surface with a few big bubbles, dump it and start over!

= Martin A. Lodahl    Pac*Bell Minicomputer Operations Support Staff =
= malodah at pbmoss.Pacbell.COM       Sacramento, CA       916.972.4821 =
= If it's good for ancient Druids, runnin' nekkid through the wuids, =
= Drinkin' strange fermented fluids, it's good enough for me!  8-)   =


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Date: Wed, 5 Sep 90 11:01 PDT
From: "John C. Post" <POST at VAXA.llnl.gov>
Subject: Backwash

Somebody recently asked about the blowoff tube sucking water back up into the 
carboy.  This has happend to me several times.  Even though you *think* you have 
your wort at room temperature, you probably don't.  As the headspace cools, it 
contracts and sucks air back through the tube.  My solution is to use a long 
tube, and suspend the loop about a foot above the top of the carboy.  It may 
suck water up the tube, but a foot of head is a fair amount of pressure to 
develop.  After the yeast kicks in, the CO2 will fix it up.

You can also purge your carboy with CO2, if you have it, and loosely cover the 
mouth with saran wrap until you get good fermentation going.


- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
| post@ vaxt.llnl.gov          |"...It's only MY opinion...Not their's..."|
| post@ lis.llnl.gov           |..........................................|
|John Post, Lawrence Livermore| ....I'm Relaxing...I'm Not Worrying....  |
|National Labs                |..........................................|
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------


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Date: Wed, 5 Sep 90 11:37:36 -0700
From: miles at cs.washington.edu (Dan Miles)
Subject: Raspberry Imperial Stout Yeast, Bottle Culturing


>  My second question regards yeast for very high gravit>y beers. I'm
>  planning to make Imperial Raspberry Stout, and I am wondering what yeast to 
>  use? Looking at all the stuff that is going to go into it, it is going 
>  to have a lot of alcohol (I'm wondering if there will be room for any 
>  water;-) ), and was wondering if garden variety yeast can handle the 
>  high alcohol content? I've not worked with this high an alcohol content
>  before except for a beer that ended up quite sweet like Olde Peculiar.
>  The guy at Defalco's (local shop) suggested I use a yeast by Cordon Brew
>  which is listed as being for stouts, but I have no experience with this 
>  company (haven't heard of them before), and am reluctant to risk the
>  $100 worth of ingredients on a new untried yeast? Any comments on this yeast
>  or suggestions on what to use?

I used Sierra Nevada's yeast for my batch of Raspberry Imperial Stout
and it worked very well.  Fermentation was almost completely over in a
week, yielding a final gravity of 1.022, which is the low end of
Papazian's expected final gravity.  As previously mentioned in the
digest, Sierra Nevada uses one strain of yeast for all of their brews,
including their barley wine.  If it can handle Bigfoot, it ought to be
be able to handle the Raspberry Imperial Stout.

Wyeast sells this yeast as Chico Ale Yeast.  If you can get a bottle
of Sierra Nevada (I use the Pale Ale) you can culture the yeast in the
bottle.  First, you sterilize the top of the bottle by swabbing around
the cap with an isopropyl alcohol soaked cotton ball, then *carefully*
light it.  It flames briefly and extinguishes.  Then the cap is
removed and almost all of the room temperature beer is poured off
(into a frosted mug to cool it), leaving the yeast in the bottom of
the bottle.  A cup of preboiled and cooled wort is poured into the
bottle, not touching the top or sides of the bottle (a sterilized
funnel would be nice here).  Then shake it up well to mix the yeast
and aerate the wort, affix a fermentation lock, and wait a day or
three for fermentation to start.  I almost always see activity within
36 hours.

I usually wait for the head to fall in the bottle before pitching,
though my brewing schedule has forced me to use a starter a couple of
days earlier or later with no ill effects.  Pitching is easy.  Shake
up the yeast, flame the top again, remove the lock, and pour into a
batch of beer.  The lag time is usually between 12 and 36 hours.  A
batch I started two days ago started bubbling after 18 hours.  

A good, pure culture for $1.50 and a beer to boot.  Not bad.  See the
article "Isolation and Culture of Yeast from Bottle-Conditioned Beers"
in the special yeast issue of Zymurgy for more info.

					Dan Miles

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Date: 05 Sep 90 23:58:09 EDT
From: jay s hersh <75140.350 at compuserve.com>
Subject: Backwash & high EtOH Yeast

I have used single stage with a blow-off for years and never ever
encountered the back pressure problem detailed by Bill C (well at 
least not when the wort was chilled to pitching temps, aerated and
the yeast pitched).

As for high Alchohol Stouts I have made Imperial Stouts and Barley
Wines and have typically used a combination of Ale Yeast and 
Red Star Champagne yeast (an excelent product despite Red Stars
otherwise lacluster reputation) and have found this yields the
desired Ale character with a high alcohol content. I am told 
that one of the wyeast strains also works to quite high alcohol
contents. I would agree though that for something like an Imperial
Stout there are few ale yeasts that will go all the way to 8+ %.


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #490, 09/06/90
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