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


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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




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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




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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


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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



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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



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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



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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



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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



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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



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