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


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Contents:
  Disturbance in the Froth, you say? ("Pat Babcock")
  I can't follow John Palmer's RA numbers in a recent Zymurgy article? ("stevesveil-hbd@yahoo.com")


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JANITORs on duty: Pat Babcock (pbabcock at hbd dot org), Jason Henning,
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Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:44:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Pat Babcock" <pbabcock at hbd.org>
Subject: Disturbance in the Froth, you say?



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

Well, many have noticed that the HBD seems to have 
"blinked out" of existence. To wit the HBD might 
respond: the rumor of my demise is highly 
exaggerated...

The HBD networks have moved to a new provider, and 
you are experiencing the transition issues. 

Here's why it seems to be taking so long: 

Since our old provider was so slow, the TTL (time 
to live) records in our DNS were set to 48 hours -
this meant that other DNS servers would touch ours 
every 48 hours to ensure they were up to date. 
Unfortunately, it also means that your 
local DNS server likely is still dealing with the 
old DNS record, which now point off into the ether. 
The "48 hours" I'm talking about here *should* be 
expired sometime Friday, 29 August; however 
(there're always "howevers", aren't there?)...

Since we host our own DNS servers, I also had to 
update the IP addresses associated with those 
servers with our registrar. That means that when 
many reach out to touch our DNS servers, they may 
get only air if the change in IP address for our 
DNS servers has not propagated through yet. This 
appears to not be much of an issue as I had remote 
utilities reporting the proper address within hours 
of the change. Some ISPs will take longer to update, 
some already have it.

Finally, and as usual, the persnickety HBD server is 
coughing up some of its own problems, which I am 
working steadily to resolve. These problems may 
cause "within site" referencing errors when visiting 
the HBD, including access to Brews and Views, The 
Recipator, The Fleamarket, and the admin controls of 
any mailing list hosted here.

The GOOD news is that sendmail seems to be humming 
along just fine.

I am redeploying the machines in our network and, 
once completed, our new ISP will create reverse DNS 
records for our IP space - something our last ISP 
claimed to have done, but something that apparently 
never functioned while we were on board. This 
*should* fix all of the domains which were bouncing 
the HBD traffic out of hand because (a) we're finally 
off of the Covad network, whose IPs many ISPs 
automatically reject (they have/had a lot of 
"unsecured" dial-ups, and a lot of 
rogue domains on their DSL, from what I 
understand...) and (b) reverse DNS 
resolution is used by many mail servers today to 
authenticate the incoming mail.

If you have a domain hosted by the HBD network, you 
should be OK in a short period of time, if not 
already. If you are such a person (domain hosted; not 
just a website), please be sure to email me next week, 
as I'll have some changes you'll need to make with your 
registrar once I finish redeploying machines on the 
etwork - I'm planning to separate DNS from any other 
processes, so the you nameservers will need to be 
changed with your registrar.

Plus, in terms of those Brews and Views fans, this line 
should prove to be about 16 times faster than the old 
connection, and a much lower monthly cost.

With that all said, please have a safe and enjoyable 
weekend - holiday weekend, here in the states! 
Hopefully, when we come up on the other side of it, all 
will be well once again with the HBD network!

All the best!

Pat Babcock
Chief of Janitorial Services
Home Brew Digest, Inc.


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Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:22:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: "stevesveil-hbd at yahoo.com" <stevesveil-hbd@yahoo.com>
Subject: I can't follow John Palmer's RA numbers in a recent Zymurgy article?

Hi all,

    In Zymurgy magazine (volume 31 No 4 July/August 2008) John Palmer has a
nice article titled "The Role of Residual Alkalinity".  However in table 6
"Water: Classic Cities and Their Beer Styles" there is a
"RA (ppm as CaCO3)" column that I can't calculate the results for.  Well I
do calculate the RA for Pilsen Ok but none of the other cities.

    I'm just learning about water chemistry for brewing and this is
confusing me.  Maybe I'm not fully understanding something?

    I'm using the last ra equation from A.J. deLange post #4976 Sunday 19
March 2006.

ra = alk - 50*([Ca]/20/3.5 + [Mg]/12.15/7) ppm as CaCO3
where:
ra is in ppm as CaCO3
alk is in ppm as CaCO3
Ca is in ppm
Mg is in ppm

    For example in table 6 John list Dortmund as
Ca (ppm) = 225
Mg (ppm) = 40
Total Alkalinity as CaCO3 (ppm) = 220
RA (ppm as CaCO3) = -3

    When I calculate using these values I get ra = 36.  That not even
close to John's RA (ppm as CaCO3) = -3!
Can someone please help me understand where I've gone wrong?,
Thanks,
Steve Seeley
Shingle Springs, CA (between Sacramento and Tahoe off highway 50)



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