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


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Contents:
  Breweries in Japan ("Ben Dooley")
  Metabisufite (Fred L Johnson)
  using plastic carboys (Andrew Kligerman)
  Amarillo vs Amarillo Gold Hops (Fred L Johnson)
  sundry ("steve.alexander")
  Missing digests ("Spencer W. Thomas")
  RE: Missing Digests ("Pat Babcock")


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JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning,
                  and Spencer Thomas



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Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 16:12:51 +0900
From: "Ben Dooley" <bendooley at gmail.com>
Subject: Breweries in Japan

Hello all,

Backpacking around Japan, and I was wondering if anyone can suggest
breweries worth a visit while I'm here. I speak Japanese, so no
worries on that front.

Thanks in advance.

Best,
Ben Dooley


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Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 08:16:00 -0500
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Metabisufite

Brian has asked us to post our results on using metabisulfite in the 
mash to reduce oxidation.

I regularly use metabisulfite in my mash, perhaps out of superstition 
more than for any real reason, and would be happy to report results if 
only I had an objective way of measuring its effect. In my not so 
humble opinion, it serves little purpose to simply hear of folks 
unobjective, even biased, opinions about their unblinded, subjective 
observations. There is already too much misinformation in the 
homebrewing literature, and I don't want to add to it, so I'll wait 
until I have a real way of testing the hypothesis.

On that point, I'd welcome some way of doing this experiment. Anyone 
out there willing to do some HPLC (or whatever method it would take) to 
measure the oxidation products? Surely someone has published this stuff 
in the professional literature.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA



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Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 13:04:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Andrew Kligerman <homebre973 at yahoo.com>
Subject: using plastic carboys

I have been using glass carboys for secondary
fermentation for over 20 years.  I have just 
broken by next to last carboy by putting cool 
wort in a warm carboy.  I was wondering if anyone 
has any problems with using the plastic clear 
carboys for secondary fermentation, as they are 
cheap and prevalent in water coolers now?  Do 
these sterilize well with diluted bleach well?
  
Thanks,

Andy from Hillsborough


 


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Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 07:48:29 -0500
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Amarillo vs Amarillo Gold Hops

Is there a difference between the hops called Amarillo and the hops 
called Amarillo Gold?  I've seen both described but never in the same 
place, so I'm thinking these are the same hops and that "Amarillo" is 
someone's lazy way of saying "Amarillo Gold". The descriptions of these 
hops certainly are similar.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA



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Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 10:40:42 -0500
From: "steve.alexander" <-s at adelphia.net>
Subject: sundry

Well - apparently the janitors are enjoying the week off - I seem to have
missed #5095, 5096, 5097 for no apparent reason.

A few quick replies ...

/ Metabisulfite is a much better anti-oxidant than ascorbic acid in beer.
/ HCL is reputedly a good brewing acid, but where to get food-grade HCl
is the issue.  I would not use HCl except food grade or ultra high purity in
brewing.

/Bacteria and Methanol
 >Someone told me that I was taking a risk by homebrewing because there's a
 >risk for bacteria contaminating my batch of mead and metabolizing the 
sugar
 >into methanol alcohol, which is toxic, instead of the ethanol that yeast
 >produces.
 >He said that commercial brewers hire chemists and scientists to make sure
 >there batch is safe and that supposedly in Mexico people have died from
 >drinking stuff that was actually methanol. Is this true or a common 
problem?

Please tell "someone" that he should return to scaring little children 
about the
bogeymen under their beds instead of bothering brewers and winemakers.
He's ignorant and spreading ridiculous unsupportable claims.  I find it
puzzling  that in an age of such great access to information and such great
communication resources, that paranoiac beliefs spread so readily.

The methanogenic bacteria primarily produce METHANE  and some of
these are common human gut bacteria.  The amount of methanol which
can possibly be produced anabolically under brewing conditions is ignorable
small.

Most of the methanol (and quite  lot of the methane) produced "naturally"
involves the release of methyl residues from plant material.  Yeast may
enzymatically reduce carbos attached to methyl groups freeing these.
The thing is that grain/wort have virtually zero  methyl groups and the same
is true for honey.   Fruits are variable and some pome fruits and also
bramble fruits are relatively high in these methyl  groups.  The seeds
are often much higher than the fruit, so fermenting grape pomace (as
for grappa or vinegar) produces more methanol than others.   Still the
level of methanol in the worst raspberry wine made is well below any
rational safety limit.

IF a 'wine' from a fruit rich in methyl groups attached to carbos is 
distilled,
(brandy or grappa) then the methanol fraction comes through the still early
and is concentrated in the "heads".  If the concentrated heads is consumed
alone, then yes - methanol poisoning is possible.  OTOH  methanol poisoning
is unlikely if the heads are re-mixed into the brandy (but produces
unacceptable risk and flavor).

Much of the urban legends about methanol poisoning from *bad whiskey*
are impossible.   These cases are either  scare-stories  from the BATF or
else involve chemical adulterants added to the whiskey.  Undistilled
conventional brews and wines and meads are unconditionally safe from
methanol poisoning.

I believe that there is a gross misunderstanding about the metabolic
pathway for methane(methanol too) noted by Dylan Tack, listed at
http://www.genome.jp/dbget-bin/www_bget?path:sce00680
This diagram lists ALL metabolic paths related to methanol, BUT only
the 5 colored blocks represent enzymes that are know to appear in
S.cerevisiae(yeast).  IOW there is no evidence (there) that brewing
yeast have the enzymes to create methanol.  The SGD  (Saccharomyces
Genome Database) returns ZERO hits on methanol biosynthesis.
Doesn't happen.

 -S




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Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 11:00:43 -0500
From: "Spencer W. Thomas" <hbd at spencerwthomas.com>
Subject: Missing digests

I'm replying on-digest because maybe some others of you had the same
thing happen.

 -S writes:
> I seem to have
> missed #5095, 5096, 5097 for no apparent reason.

Well, not having access to the server logs, I'm not sure why you didn't
get digests.  One possibility is this: all three of those messages
included at least one spam that slipped by us in the recent flood of
stock spams.  If you've got a really agressive spam filter, it might
have triggered on those messages.

You can find the missing digests for download on hbd.org, of course.

=Spencer (backup janitor)


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Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 17:52:08 -0500 (EST)
From: "Pat Babcock" <pbabcock at hbd.org>
Subject: RE: Missing Digests

Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager...

Yeah! What he said!

 -p



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