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


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Contents:
  Re: Hop Support (bill keiser)
  Calcium loss in mash (Fred L Johnson)
  Re: Flag poles for hops?? (steve alexander)


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Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 07:14:31 -0400
From: bill keiser <bk2 at sharpstick.org>
Subject: Re: Hop Support

 It depends partly on how sturdy your poles are, but more importantly, 
how the stress is distributed. If you string a horizontal cable from top 
to top and suspend the vine ropes from that, the stress will be 
approaching infinite. Raw physics says that when a weight is suspended 
from a horizontal line, the stress is infinite. Try tying a heavy book 
to the middle of a rope and try to hold the ends in your hands and pull 
it horizontal to see how this works.
 If there is some sag in the line, it will be better. Also some guy 
lines on the outer ends will distribute some of that stress down to the 
ground.
bill keiser


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Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 07:39:20 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Calcium loss in mash

Many thanks to A.J. for explaining how calcium can be lost in the  
mash. I had suspected that the references I had heard to "mineral  
loss in the mash" were referring to calcium, and I had suspected that  
the sources may have been referring to the reactions with phosphate  
that A.J. cited. (I hadn't considered the phytin reaction. Thanks  
again, A.J.) However, I had never heard that there would be such a  
loss that one would need compensate for that if there was an  
appreciable amount of calcium in the mash to begin with, i.e., >50 ppm.

Some had said that "half" of the calcium is lost in the mash, but, of  
course, the amount lost will depend upon the absolute amount lost in  
the reactions A.J. described. The absolute amount lost will not be  
based on the concentration in the mash but on the absolute amount of  
monobasic phosphate and phytin in the mash, and the percentage of  
calcium lost in the mash will vary depending on the absolute amount  
of calcium in the mash, so "half" of the calcium would be lost only  
under a specific set of conditions of calcium concentration in the  
water, volume of water used in the mash, and amount of grain in the  
mash.

If one wishes to target a specific calcium concentration in the final  
product for yeast health, flocculation, taste, etc., it seems one  
does need to have some understanding of approximately how much  
calcium (absolute amount) would be lost per unit weight of malt/grain  
in the mash. Surely there are some figures floating around out there.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA



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Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 08:51:22 -0400
From: steve alexander <steve-alexander at roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: Flag poles for hops??

Hi Doug  ....
> I have planted six hop mounds - in a single line, spaced about five feet 
> apart (center to center). I was thinking about putting in two flag poles 
> (one at each end) and running a line between the two, with the hop twine 
> dropping vertically to each mound. (Advantage: I can use the flag pole 
> pulleys to lower the bines and twine for harvest time.)
>
> I don't want to spend much money, but I don't want to go too cheap that they 
> don't hold up to the wind.
>
> I won't be flying a flag so that's not a risk. I wouldn't imagine that the 
> weight of the hops would be problematic, even in strong winds.
>
> The cheaper 20' models are sectional, with a 2" diameter. Would that be up 
> to the task?[...]
> Any thoughts from hop growers?
>   

I use 6"x8" (x20') treated timber for the poles, and I string a fairly 
heavy galvanized wire from pole to pole.   I use the cheap sisal twine 
farmers use for hay bailing. If makes things easy to throw a double 
strand of sisal over the wire,  (one from the fixed end and the other 
from the spool).  Then I stake it on the far side, near side and then 
throw another pair over.   Difficult to describe but it makes a running 
WWWWW pattern and you don't have to cut the sisal except at the ends.

I tried several variants before the 6"x8" timber and all failed.   The 
galvanized wire pulls down pretty hard when the hops are full, and when 
the wind blows even the 6x8's bend.

>  I wouldn't imagine that the 
> weight of the hops would be problematic, even in strong winds.
THAT is the big error - (I know, I've made it myself) !  My first 
(second?) attempt was based on a a suggestion on this forum made from 
welded, joint reinforced 1.25" steel conduit(the heavy gauge stuff) - a 
sort of trigonal structure and only ~13ft tall.  I welded together pairs 
of 8' conduit  (to 16') and joined three of these at the top of a 
trigonal shape and put one trigon at each end of a row.  Seemed strong.  
Wind and hops weight bent the 1.25" conduit like a pretzel in late 
summer - really !    ~90+ degree curves bent into a couple conduit 
sections  (no loss at the reinforced welds).  This wasn't some amazing 
high wind either - just a good breeze in a summer drizzle.

Your poles (6 mounds, 5ft apart) sounds like ~30ft between, (mine are 
now ~35ft IIRC), but after a few years my hops are spread all along the 
length.   IMO your' 2" flagpoles are very unlikely to work.   The 
deflection of a tube of a given material w/ given forces is proportional 
to L^3/(4*t*D^3) where L is length, D is diameter and t is wall 
thickness (note this is an approximation good for thin-walled tubes 
only).   So the point is there is a big strength advantage for shorter 
and larger diameter tubular poles.  If you double the tube diameter at 
the same weight (half the wall thickness) then the tubing will only have 
1/4th the deflection.   If you cut the height by 20% you halve the 
deflection.  A very lightweight 6" tube would probably be far better 
than your 2" poles.   My solid wood pole is inherently weaker material 
(Youngs modulus ~25 times lower), but for a solid pole deflection is 
roughly proportional to L^3/D^4 ,so we gain a factor of ~D/4t for the  
solid pole.

It probably is smarter to use a central pole with several spaces twines 
from the top to a circular planting mound around, May-pole style..   At 
least the weight is evenly spaced and the substantial wind forces might 
be modestly offset by the twine or yo could support with guy wires 
agains the direction of the wind.

Another thought - the forces will drop about linearly with height (less 
weight & less wind cross section), so making the poles 20% shorter 
decreases forces and increases strength for a combined improvement 
around 2.4X.  So perhaps it makes more sense to try to get ~12ft above 
ground and accept a little lower production.

 -S



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