HOMEBREW Digest #5294 Mon 11 February 2008


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  New BJCP Style Guidelines (Ed Westemeier)
  Ballantine Info (Steven Parfitt)
  Gruit ale (Thomas Rohner)
  Help: off-flavor (leavitdg)
  Re: Overnight mashing (stencil)
  Results for Las Vegas Winterfest 2008 are up (Scott Alfter)
  Polarware and efficiency (leavitdg)
  Re: Help: off-flavor ("Craig S. Cottingham")
  Re: Gruit ale ("Craig S. Cottingham")

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 06:12:47 -0500 From: Ed Westemeier <hopfen at malz.com> Subject: New BJCP Style Guidelines The 2007 annual report and the 2008 revision of the style guidelines are now available on the BJCP website, www.bjcp.org. Ed Westemeier BJCP Communication Director communication_director at bjcp.org Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 11:21:49 -0800 (PST) From: Steven Parfitt <thegimp98 at yahoo.com> Subject: Ballantine Info Here is some interesting info on Ballantine beer from 1939: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/Ballantine Too bad there isn't any analysis for hop bitterness. Steven, -75 XLCH- Ironhead Nano-Brewery http://thegimp.8k.com Johnson City, TN [422.7, 169.2] Rennerian "There is no such thing as gravity, the earth sucks." Wings Whiplash - 1968 Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 07:13:27 +0100 From: Thomas Rohner <t.rohner at bluewin.ch> Subject: Gruit ale Hi Randy and all Thank you very much for posting this i was thinking on and off to make a witches berw for years. I made some batches of "high-flyer" beers with the cannabis plant. But i don't like the taste of it.(we watered the plants for 3 days to get the water soluble stuff out) We never had any problems to get it drunk... but then i brew with the idea to drink it myself in the back of my head. We used to put some 2000 bucks (street value) into a 13 gal batch. I got it for free. (some bottles went to the provider of course) But then, it's a lost day to brew something you don't like to drink yourself... We tried potato beer with a very bad experience. It went down the drain, because we couldn't lauter it in a reasonable time. I thought, never again but then... who knows. If new knowledge comes my way... it's still in the back of my head. We made a pumpkin beer, it almost ended up the same way as the potato batch, but my brew buddy had a longer fuse... "Witches Brew" is a Miles Davis record as well, as many of you surely know, so it will be a double pleasure to listen and brew... Maybe we put up a special lighting and call the local media. Thanks again Randy And yes, i know that ledum palustre is known to be poisonous, but alcohol is it as well. Keep up the nice things in life Thomas Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:18:35 -0500 From: leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu Subject: Help: off-flavor Last night my wife tried a Czech lager that I made in november, and while I thought that it tasted just fine, her tastebuds told her that there was "vanilla" in it. It was a very simple recipe: 9lb Pils malt, Saaz hops, 90% distilled water, 4th use of a Czech Bud yeast. If this is an "off flavor", what could it be? I try to be real sanitary, and all that, but I suppose I could have a mild infection? Any help with this flavor would be appreciated. Darrell Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:34:26 -0500 From: stencil <etcs.ret at verizon.net> Subject: Re: Overnight mashing On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:57:30 -0500, in HOMEBREW Digest #5293 Paul Shick wrote: > > > An easier solution, at least for me, is to schedule >my brew sessions for very early weekend mornings. >Setting up the night before (milling, filtering water, >etc) [ ... ] >allows me to do 10 gallon batches [ ... ] without >too much loss of control >over fermentabilty, etc. > > This is my approach too, with the additional final step of doughing-in with about half the strike water (say, 6 quarts for 10 pounds of grist.) After eight hours or so of sitting on the cellar floor the mash is at 55F, and I like to think that the starch grains have imbibed very much more water than they would do in the usual case. There is the additional minor benefit that the dust has settled, and one is wearing freshly-laundered clothing. Of course I use a metal tun and supplement infusions with direct heat. gds, stencil Return to table of contents
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 20:44:54 -0800 From: Scott Alfter <scott at alfter.us> Subject: Results for Las Vegas Winterfest 2008 are up 113 entries from 35 brewers and meadmakers in nine states, with 22 judges (including a few who made the trip from Arizona and southern California) makes this our biggest competition in the past few years. Without entrants and judges, we would've had nothing, so thanks to everyone involved! Complete results are posted here: http://www.nevadabrew.com/twiki/bin/view/Competitions/Winterfest08Results We had a big-enough turnout that it made sense to split the Best of Show into separate beer and mead rounds. The highlights: BoS Beer Mead ====== ============================ ==================================== First Jay Carr, English Barleywine Steve MacMillan, Other Fruit Melomel Second Eric Armstrong, Eisbock Steve MacMillan, Metheglin Third Jon Griffin, Munich Helles Jon Griffin, Sweet Mead Awards will be presented at SNAFU's next meeting, scheduled for 14 March 2008 at the Freakin' Frog Whisky Attic. Scoresheets (and awards, where applicable) will be mailed after the meeting. Scott Alfter scott at beerandloafing.org Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:31:20 -0500 From: leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu Subject: Polarware and efficiency I have a Polarware mashtun ( 10 gallon), and not unlike someone who posted a few weeks ago, have found that the underlet/ area under the false bottom does have a lot of volume. I believe that there is a full gallon left under the false bottom, after completing the sparge. I had also thought of putting something under the bottom (like marbles, etc) but had not done so, and this is perhaps good (due to the scorching that was reported). What I have done, so as to have an effect on my yield, is to add a touch less water to the sparge, and then to drain more from the bottom at the end, ie to tip the tun and get a little bit more out of it. This has worked for me, in that my efficiency went up from the mid 70s to 80 percent or so. But, I noticed that I have over done this in that now my brews have become more cloudy, due to, I believe, getting more of the draff/ crap that had been filtered out. The moral of this story is, I believe, to get more out of the area under the false bottom, but not to get greedy, in that this can result in un-clear beer! I would rather have clear beer at a lower level of efficiency. Has anyone else experimented with this? Happy Brewing! -Darrell Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:21:03 -0600 From: "Craig S. Cottingham" <craig.cottingham at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Help: off-flavor On Feb 09, 2008, at 10:18, leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu wrote: > Last night my wife tried a Czech lager that I made in november, and > while I > thought that it tasted just fine, her tastebuds told her that there > was > "vanilla" in it. It was a very simple recipe: 9lb Pils malt, Saaz > hops, 90% > distilled water, 4th use of a Czech Bud yeast. > > If this is an "off flavor", what could it be? I try to be real > sanitary, and > all that, but I suppose I could have a mild infection? > > Any help with this flavor would be appreciated. If you're going strictly by the BJCP guidelines, vanilla flavor in a Czech pils is an off-flavor, and you'd likely get comments to the effect that it should be called a spiced beer. Since only one of you could taste it, chances are the concentration of whatever is tasting like vanilla is down near the human threshold, so it may not be that big a deal. That's not necessarily the question you were asking, though. :-) Vanillin (the primary flavor compound in vanilla) can be synthesized from ferulic acid, which occurs in abundance in beer grains. Ferulic acid is best known in brewing circles as the precursor to 4- vinylguaiacol, which then is converted to the clove-like phenols usually associated with wheat beers. Very limited academic research (i.e. Google and Wikipedia) turns up references to ferulic acid in barley, and the fact that a company named Rhodia sells vanillin biosynthesized from ferulic acid. So, the short answer appears to be, yes, that vanilla taste might not be a product of your wife's imagination. Whether said taste is just a byproduct of an otherwise normal ferment or due to some form of infection is beyond me. When you say "4th use" of the yeast, is it possible you're overpitching? If you're using the same yeast cake in its entirety after three batches, that could be possible. I don't know what the effects of overpitching a Czech pils would be, as I have never brewed a true lager (no reliable temperature control yet) and have a bad habit of underpitching, myself. - -- Craig S. Cottingham BJCP Certified judge from Olathe, KS ([621, 251.1deg] Apparent Rennerian) craig.cottingham at gmail.com Return to table of contents
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:59:13 -0600 From: "Craig S. Cottingham" <craig.cottingham at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Gruit ale On Feb 09, 2008, at 07:13, Thomas Rohner <t.rohner at bluewin.ch> wrote: > "Witches Brew" is a Miles Davis record as well, as many of you surely > know, The Miles Davis recording is named "Bitches Brew". Which is still a good name for a beer. :-) - -- Craig S. Cottingham BJCP Certified judge from Olathe, KS ([621, 251.1deg] Apparent Rennerian) craig.cottingham at gmail.com Return to table of contents
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