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


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Contents:
  Beer clarity ("Jason Gazeley")
  oak chips ("Darrell G. Leavitt")
  Fwd: Gravity measurements (Fred L Johnson)
  Re: Measuring Gravity (Fred L Johnson)
  Re: Oak Chips (James Anciaux)


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Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:48:56 -0600
From: "Jason Gazeley" <jason.gazeley at gmail.com>
Subject: Beer clarity

Would someone who knows please go over the types of haze and appropriate
finings for each? I am interested in Hop Haze, Chill Haze, Yeast Haze and
anything else that
I have forgotten.

Cheers,

Jason


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Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:48:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Darrell G. Leavitt" <leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu>
Subject: oak chips

Let's see what others say, but I have added them to the secondary, after
boiling.  Cleaning the carboy is a little bit more of a challenge,
afterwards.

Darrell



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Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 07:06:28 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Fwd: Gravity measurements

Kai is seeing the specific gravity of his wort DECREASE when he cools  
his wort in his boil kettle and wonders what could have caused this.  
Kai didn't mention whether he was using a hydrometer or a  
refractometer for the measurements, but I'll assume a hydrometer for  
now.

I think there must be some error in one of Kai's gravity  
measurements. I would have guessed (as Kai has already considered)  
that some water was getting into the wort from the immersion chiller,  
but I trust Kai has ruled this out as he said.

Try putting some of the wort samples through a dry coffee filter just  
to remove any big chunks that could interfere with the measurement  
and measure the samples at near-calibration temperature of the  
hydrometer.  (Particulate matter in the wort really does not  
contribute to the gravity measurement unless the material settles  
onto the shoulder of the hydrometer and weighs it down.

Also find a refractometer and see how the values from the  
refractometer compare with the hydrometer readings, but cloudy  wort  
is difficult to read in a refractometer.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA




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Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 07:15:41 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: Measuring Gravity

I forgot to mention another source of error in taking gravity  
measurements from a boil kettle.

If you take the sample from the first material coming out of your  
kettle through a valved opening in your kettle, the dip tube (or  
valve) might contain water, dilute wort, or concentrated wort, that  
will contaminate the collected sample. If I am sampling from a ball  
valve connected to a dip tube in the kettle, I always flow a several  
hundred milliliters out of the ball valve and return it to the kettle  
before collected the sample I use for measuring gravity.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA



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Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:43:04 -0500
From: James Anciaux <janciaux at lancaster.ne.gov>
Subject: Re: Oak Chips


    From: "Dave Larsen" <hunahpu at gmail.com>
> Subject: Oak Chips
>
> I'm thinking of doing a porter with some oak character.  How do you
> use oak chips?  I imagine you boil them before you toss them in.  Do
> you also toss in the boiled liquid? Do you do it in the secondary?
> How long do you leave them in there?
>
> Dave
> Tucson, AZ
>  
> Hi Dave,
>  
> I brewed a robust porter (5.5 gal) early this summer using oak
> chips.  I had a difficult time finding any definitive info on doing this
> so I had to kind of wing it.  I ordered a 4 oz package of french oak
> chips (medium roast) off the web and soaked them in about 6-8 
> oz of cheap bourbon for 10 days in a sanitary sealed jar.  I then
> dumped the chips and bourbon into my secondary fermenter and
> racked the beer right onto them.  I left this to "age" in the carboy
>  for another 4 weeks.  (I know some people steam their oak
> chips, however I worried that some of the aromatics would be lost) 
> The beer turned out real good and had a nice
> bourbon/vanilla/ toast/spicy oak undertone
> (but certainly nothing overpowering).  If I had it to do over again
> I would have either let it age another two weeks or used 1-2 more
> oz of oak chips to impart a slightly more prominent roasted oak
> character to the porter.  Hope this is helpful and good luck!  Let
> me know how it turns out and what you learn in the process.
>  
> Jim Anciaux
> Lincoln, NE
>
>  
>  
>
>


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