HOMEBREW Digest #5547 Tue 05 May 2009


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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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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 Return to table of contents
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 Return to table of contents
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 Return to table of contents
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