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


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Contents:
  RE: Brewing Software & Vista (IT)" <stjones@eastman.com>
  Re: mash temperature (Kai Troester)
  Brix & Plato ("A.J deLange")
  Re: Cold Conditioning a Wit (Matt)
  re: A.J., yur killin' me!  :o) - GABF ("Chad Stevens")
  from "Margaret Gee" ("Margaret Gee")


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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 07:32:27 -0400
From: "Jones, Steve (IT)" <stjones at eastman.com>
Subject: RE: Brewing Software & Vista

Tom Puskar asks what brewing software is compatible with Vista,
specifically mentioning ProMash.

I've been running Vista for a year, and promash has performed flawlessly
during that time. 
I suspect that most/all of the other 'Windoze' brewing apps will work as
well.

- -------------------------------------
Steve Jones, Johnson City, TN 
[421.7, 168.5deg] AR





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Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:22:43 -0400
From: Kai Troester <kai at braukaiser.com>
Subject: Re: mash temperature

>  I ask in that I have operated under the assumption that if I wanted to
> get the most out of my malt, and unless I was brewing a malty stout or
> Scottish style ale, I could get the most out of the grain by stopping in
> both the lower and then the upper range.  I believe that I got this from
> Fix and Fix, but also, perhaps here on the HbD.

 From my experience, a mash at 65C is generally able to fully convert  
within 45-60 min. This means that there is not much to get in terms of  
efficiency (i.e. unconverted starch) when the temperature is raised to  
a rest in the upper range and then to mash-out. But Fix and other  
authors mentioned a body and head retention benefit of an extended  
rest around 68-70C. While I have brewed many good beers that way  
(first rest at 63C and then at 70C for up to 60 min) I have yet to  
make a good side by side experiment to see the benefits of this rest.

If you hold the first rest at 63C, or lower, you may need a  
"dextrinization" rest close to 70, although you can also use your  
mash-out for that by mashing out a little lower (~73 C). An iodine  
test will tell you when your conversion is complete.

>  Or is it the case that in mashout one passes through the upper range, and
> the alpha amylase doesn't need as much time, so this would not be needed?

Yes, if you heat to mash-out, the alpha amylase activity increased and  
the mash converts pretty quickly. But even at mash out temps the alpha  
amylase enzymes don't denature that quickly and you'll convert the  
starch that has not been converted yet (as long as it is accessible to  
the enzymes).

Kai





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Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:05:45 -0400
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Brix & Plato

Dan has suggested that ProMash may be trying to compensate for the 
differences between Brix and Plato to account for the fact that the 
former is usually applied to simple sugar solutions while the later is 
traditionally used in the brewing industry. That's an interesting 
thought but not the case here. The Balling, Brix and Plato scales are 
all intended to be descriptive of sucrose solutions for the reasons I 
cited in my last post (there is little difference between the solids 
content of a beer or wort and what its Plato strength predicts; if some 
other sugar or mix of sugars were to be used one would have to be chosen 
which would not be more representative of the variety in beers and worts 
in general than sucrose; sucrose is easy to purify and work with). The 
differences between the scales represent progressive improvement. 
Ballings original scale (1843) was innacurate to the extent that adding 
an equal weight of water to a weight of particular Balling strength did 
not always result in a halving of the strength as measured with a 
pycnometer using Ballings table's (DeClerck, Vol II p30). The Plato 
tables are not subject to this error. As I noted in the last post at the 
10.00 P level the Brix strength of a sucrose solution comes out to 
10.00. The Balling strength would be 9.90  as between 7 and 13 P Balling 
= P - 0.1 (DeClerck Vol II p32 but note that this table is not printed 
in some editions of the book appearing on an Errata sheet instead).

There are lots of additional nuances in this business of tying extract 
to specific gravity. One is that specific gravity is the ratio of the 
density of the solution to the density of pure water each of which 
depend on the temperature. The Balling scale used 17.5C for both wort 
and water as did the Plato-Doemens scale but the Plato 
Normaleichungskomission scale, on which the ASBC scale is based, were 
apparently 20/4 (wort/water). Then there is the issue as to whether the 
specific gravity is apparent (based on weighings made in air) or true 
(based on weighings made in a vacuum). None of these amounts to 4% 
though and, as I don't have ProMash running I don't even know 4% of 
what. Does it mean that 10.00 Brix is being converted to 10.40 Plato (or 
conversely) or is this a correction applied only to refractometer readings?

A. J.


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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 07:41:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Cold Conditioning a Wit

"At what gravity should I cold condition?"

At terminal gravity!  (whatever that ends up being)

"And then, how long at what temp?"

Short answer: do as most Belgian brewers do and cold condition
for a few weeks, as cold as is reasonably possible (31F is not
unheard of).  "A few weeks" might be 4-8 weeks for very strong
beers, but more like 1-2 weeks for a light beer like your wit.

Long answer and a question: Depends on what you hope to gain
by cold conditioning.  What do you hope to gain by cold
conditioning?  

Invariably, when I have asked (a lot of) Belgian brewers why
they choose to cold condition, the sole reason given is that
they wish to drop the yeast out of the beer.  This opens up a
question that was discussed once, but not resolved, on HBD...
  
Certain physical "laws" imply particles should drop out
faster in warm beer than in cold beer.  But of course yeast
are of course not ordinary "particles", because certain
conditions cause them to flocculate into larger clumps,
which settle faster than individual cells.  The idea of
cold conditioning would seem to be to create such conditions.

However, someone once maintained that if you let the
fermentation truly reach completion (terminal gravity) then
crash cooling would *decrease* the speed at which yeast settle
out.  The yeast would already have flocculated (because
the ferment is over), so if the cold temps do not cause
increased flocculation then they will SLOW settling because of
the physical law mentioned above.  I don't know whether to
go along with this--does the addition of cold really cause
zero increase in flocculation?  Even a small increase would
probably more than trump the effect of temp on a settling
particle.

Regardless of the answer to that question, there are a few
reasons you might wish to cold condition anyway.  First,
some yeasts, especially Belgian yeasts, may continue to
chew slowly on tiny amounts of obscure polysaccharides in
the wort--crash cooling will terminate this extended 
fermentation without necessarily changing the character
of the beer much.  Second, chemical reactions such as oxidation
will go slower if you crash cool, probably more than making up
for a potential increase in the time it takes the yeast to settle.

For me, the easiest time to cold condition is in the bottle
or keg.  I feel the faster I can get the beer in the package,
the less flavor deterioration I'll suffer due to what is almost
inevitably a fair bit of oxygen in the headspace of homebrewed
beer.

Matt



      


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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 09:36:05 -0700
From: "Chad Stevens" <zuvaruvi at cox.net>
Subject: re: A.J., yur killin' me!  :o) - GABF

>>A.J., yur killin' me!  :o)

>AJ; Please don't dumb down (to my level) your posts....

Alas, I should always remember humor gets lost in plain text...or .html for 
that matter.  A.J. and I worked together on the BJCP color chart that got 
mailed out to the judges about six months ago for - how long A.J.? - we 
worked on that thing for about a year and a half along with Jamil Z. and 
Gordon S.  If anyone in the room appreciates A.J.'s technical expertise, 
it's me!  I just couldn't pass up a juicy opportunity to rib him in public.

It is the uber-geek that sets HBD apart from other forums, and I wouldn't 
have it any other way.  It is what will secure its continued presence in 
cybeerspace.

Those of you who can pull yourselves away from posting on HBD long enough to 
attend GABF, visit the "You be the Judge" booth Saturday 2:30-3:30 and I'll 
buy you a beer!  It's always nice to meet HBD'ers in the flesh.

Chad Stevens
QUAFF
San Diego 



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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 23:57:49 +0300
From: "Margaret Gee" <dwwilmam at wilma.de>
Subject: from "Margaret Gee"

Have you ever tried pheromones?
Hey baby, might want to check this out
Hey bro, you really should check this out
Hey man, you ever try pheromones?

http://www.detujie.cn/?arfksmltq




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