---

	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator


Contents:
  Inhaling sodium metabisulphite (Desmond Mottram)
  Taking the pith (Desmond Mottram)
  Company Confusion (John DeCarlo)
  Steel wort chillers (John Otten)
  Re: Yeast Confusion (John DeCarlo)
  re: Lovibond (Darryl Richman)
  re: Beer and Marxism (Darryl Richman)
  re:  Soda Kegs (Darryl Richman)
  Re: Homebrew Digest #716 (September 04, 1991) (Madelon Halula)
  Carboys in England (Loodvrij)
  pith off ("KATMAN.WNETS385")
  Re: Pith Off (Rob Malouf)
  Don't pith in your wort (Carl West)
  Mead help! (Chad Epifanio)
  they're everywhere (Russ Gelinas)
  Re: HBD #716 Used soda kegs (larryba)
  yeast (Russ Gelinas)
  The Controversial Enzymatic Power of Wheat Malt
  Purdue is spelled <- (larryba)
  Keep it Cool (C.R. Saikley)
  Looking for reasonably priced Grain ... (Jim White)
  HD Appreciation (MIKE LIGAS)
  Flaming makes the mainstream media (again, I guess) (Charles Forsythe)
  Explosives and homebrewed soda (STROUD)
  Red Baiting, Address Hell, and Pressurization (FATHER BARLEYWINE)
  Barley Recipes (Donald Conover)
  Good/Bad Mail Order Experiences (Jeff Mizener  at  Siemens Energy)


Send submissions to homebrew at hpfcmi.fc.hp.com
Send requests to homebrew-request@ hpfcmi.fc.hp.com
[Please do not send me requests for back issues!]
Archives are available from netlib at mthvax.cs.miami.edu


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 10:20:18 BST
From: des at swindon.swindon.ingr.com (Desmond Mottram)
Subject: Inhaling sodium metabisulphite

> Date:         Mon, 02 Sep 91 02:11:21 CST
> From: Roger Selby <SELBYROG at MAX.CC.UREGINA.CA>
> Subject:      Sodium metabisulfate
> 
> What are the consequences of inhaling sodium metabisulfite?
> 
>  Do you have any suggestions for avoiding inhaling it?
> 
>  Roger Selby
>  Selbyrog at uregina1

Sodium metabisulphite when dissloved produces sulphur dioxide fumes which 
are good for sterilising but bad for breathing. This reaction is often 
speeded up by adding a little citric acid and the fumes can get very 
unpleasant. It won't do a lot of permanent harm to a healthy individual but
I suspect an asthma sufferer could be very badly affected.

Always use it in a well ventilated area. Don't sniff it or stick your head 
into a large container cleaned with it. Personally I don't like it and 
always use a proprietory chlorine cleaner. This makes no fumes at all and 
cleans as well as sterilising.

Desmond Mottram
des at swindon.ingr.com

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 11:21:13 BST
From: des at swindon.swindon.ingr.com (Desmond Mottram)
Subject: Taking the pith


> Date: Tue, 3 Sep 91 23:06:07 EDT
> From: Paul Bigelow <bigelow at waterloo.hp.com>
> Subject: Pith Off
> 
> It's time to get started on my Christmas brew, so I have been collecting
> the peels from my oranges. However I'm having a tough time scraping
> the white pith off of the orange peel.
> 
> Does anyone have a tool or technique for making this job less tedious?
> 
> Paul Bigelow	bigelow at waterloo.hp.com
> 

The simplest thing to do is peel the orange skin off the pith with a 
potato peeler BEFORE cutting up and eating the orange. I've done this many 
times with lemons when making Elderflower champange.

Desmond Mottram
des at swindon.ingr.com

Return to table of contents


Date: Wednesday, 4 Sep 1991 09:16:58 EDT
From: m14051 at mwvm.mitre.org (John DeCarlo)
Subject: Company Confusion

>From: Martin A. Lodahl <pbmoss!malodah at PacBell.COM>

>Just a thought -- When I spoke with the Rapids people a couple
>of years ago, they were very receptive to the idea of selling to
>just reg'lar ol' folks.  Russ, could you be thinking of the

Just to add to the confusion, when I talked to the Foxx people
about kegging equipment, they were happy to talk to me as an
individual.  *Until* they found out where I lived.  Then they
told me a local homebrew shop was their local distributor where I
lived and to go through them.

Internet: jdecarlo at mitre.org
           (or John.DeCarlo at f131.n109.z1.fidonet.org)
Fidonet:  1:109/131

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 09:15:02 EDT
From: otten at cs.wm.edu (John Otten)
Subject: Steel wort chillers

Ok, Thanks for the advice on buying/not buying an aluminum cooling coil to
make a wort chiller. After talking to a Dr. friend of mine, who told me
that aluminum MAY be related to early stages of Alzheimer's disease, I 
decided I would forget the aluminum (better safe than sorry, at least until
the final verdict is in).

So, I'm all set to go to the hardware/plumbing supply store to buy copper
tubing, when my roommate notices a cooling coil ad in a catalog (picked up in
the store where we saw the aluminum coil) that has three kinds of coils. Two
are steel tubing with steel cooling fins and one is copper tubing with
aluminum (again) fins. The prices range from $10 to $12.50, and all three
types are unused merchandise.

Now, my question...
I do not imagine that the steel coils are actually stainless steel, but if
I were to use regular steel tubing, would there be a chance of making the
wort taste like steel also? Will the fins on the coils, be a plus or a minus
on the actual use? If regular steel is ok, I could see using the coils as
both immersion and syphon type coolers, although the copper coil could only be
a syphon type.

If using one of these coils is a good idea, I can post the catalog #'s and 
the phone number of the mail-order place if anyone is interested.

Thanks in advance,
John

otten at cs.wm.edu
or
otten at icase.edu



Return to table of contents


Date: Wednesday, 4 Sep 1991 09:22:07 EDT
From: m14051 at mwvm.mitre.org (John DeCarlo)
Subject: Re: Yeast Confusion

>From: Martin A. Lodahl <pbmoss!malodah at PacBell.COM>
>Subject: Yeast Sprinkling

>In HOMEBREW Digest #713, such worthies as C. R. Saikley and Jay
>Hersh seem baffled by Conn Copas' terminology:

>Conn Copas writes :
>>It's bemusing to read posts in which people describe how they have
>>conscientiously chilled the wort, then pitched the yeast straight in
>>on top!

>And CR retorts:
>>OK, I'll bite.
>>What's unusual about chilling wort and putting yeast on top??

>What I think Conn was saying is that we'll
>often take great care in producing our wort, only to entrust it
>to dry yeast which we haven't so much as rehydrated.

OK, here is *my* interpretation.

Rapid chilling of the boiling wort gives a good cold break.
Removing the wort from the cold break before starting the
fermentation makes the beer taste a lot better.

*Therefore*, if you chill the wort and pitch the yeast directly
on it, *without* racking to a new container and leaving the cold
break behind, you are losing much of the benefit of rapid cooling
of the wort in the first place.

John "Just my guess" DeCarlo

Internet: jdecarlo at mitre.org
           (or John.DeCarlo at f131.n109.z1.fidonet.org)
Fidonet:  1:109/131

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 06:42:37 -0700
From: darryl at ism.isc.com (Darryl Richman)
Subject: re: Lovibond

Dr. Lovibond was a brewery chemist in the last century, and he developed
a scale for measuring beer color based on standard solutions in 1/2"
vials.  This scale has stood the test of time and proved itself quite
useful, to the extent that even though this is quite obsolete with the
advent of sprectrophotometry equipment, the American Society of Brewing
Chemists (ASBC) have developed a new scale, called the Standard Research Method
(SRM) that closely mimics the Lovibond scale.

A rough, but workable way to predict beer color--for pale colored
beers--is to multiply the Lovibond number by the number of pounds of
grain and divide by the batch size in gallons.  So a pale lager with 7
pounds of Klages 2-row malt and a pound of Munich might be ((1.8 * 7) +
(10 * 1)) / 5 = 4.5.  Budweiser is about 3 Lov.

		--Darryl Richman

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 06:42:54 -0700
From: darryl at ism.isc.com (Darryl Richman)
Subject: re: Beer and Marxism

Bill Thacker suggests some good names for beer in the post-communist
Union of Soveriegn States.  Unfortunately, he's been beat out by a few
years by Gorky's Russian Cafe and Brewery here in Los Angeles.  Their
featured beer is a Red Ale, and they carry a Russian Imperial Stout.
They had a Baltic Ale a few years ago, perhaps they're still serving it.
IMHO, Gorky's is worth going to downtown for the atmosphere, but neither
the food nor the beer is particularly outstanding.  As such, there's
little reason to go to the one in Hollywood unless it happens to be very
convenient.

		--Darryl Richman

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 06:43:16 -0700
From: darryl at ism.isc.com (Darryl Richman)
Subject: re:  Soda Kegs

Charles Anderson asks about kegs and that Pepsi smell.  My advice is to
throw out all of the rubber parts, as I've never been able to remove the
soda aroma (and flavor) from them.  I also clean out the interior of the
kegs and valves by cleaning them with lye--in fact, I use crystal Drano.
This may sound pretty drastic, but if you can smell the soda pop aroma,
you are going to get that in your beer.  I've tasted a number of
rooty-toot beers, and all were pretty disappointing to their owners.
Once I have removed all of the soda pop character from the keg and
valves, I then rinse several times, assemble, and fill with boiling
water.  I then use my CO2 tank to push the water out, leaving a
sanitized, CO2 purged atmosphere in the keg, ready for filling with
beer.

		--Darryl Richman

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 09:59 EDT
From: Madelon Halula <HALULA at Ruby.VCU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Homebrew Digest #716 (September 04, 1991)

please remove my name from the mailing list.  Thanks

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 14:54:38 WET DST
From: Loodvrij <csc228%central1.lancaster.ac.uk at hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Carboys in England

I've just started Homebrew, guided partly by Papazian's book, the beginner's
guide produced by this list, and instructions on the side of kits. Sad to say
my first couple of batches were disastrous - both got seriously infected. I
sanitised everything with all the loving care I could, but no. I used a plastic
fermenting bin bought from a homebrew shop, but I had to leave the lid slightly
ajar to let the CO2 out. (I least I presume I had to...) Unfortunately I think
this is where the bad guys got in. Reading Papazian, and the beginners guide,
they both recommend the use of carboys rather than open bins, and I can
quite see why, it sounds pretty sensible to me. Only problem is, you
can't seem to get them in this country. Does anyone know where I can get
one, and how much it would cost? Alternatively, I could bore a
cork-sized hole in the lid of the bin and fit a lock to it, but that seems
decidedly second rate as a solution to me.

Comments?
- -- 
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|              Bruce J. Keeler, Lancaster University,  United Kingdom.         |
|		            JANET : csc228 at lancs.cent1                         |
|                        INTERNET : csc228 at lancaster.ac.uk                     |
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 14:03 GMT
From: "KATMAN.WNETS385" <6790753%356_WEST_58TH_5TH_FL%NEW_YORK_NY%WNET_6790753 at mcimail.com>
Subject: pith off



     Date: 04-Sep-91      Time: 10:06 AM       Msg: EXT01814

Hi there,
To get nice orange peel without pith for putting into recipes it is easier to
get the orange off the pith, rather than the other way round. Before you eat
the orange use a paring knife or veggie peeler and peel all the orange layer of
peel off (make sure to wash the fruit first). Then you have a layer of pith
surrounding the orange flesh. If you save the peels and then try to scrape off
the pith it will be more difficult and harder yet if you let the peels dry.

Lee Katman == Thirteen/WNET == New York, NY

=Do not= use REPLY or ANSWERBACK, I can not receive mail in that fashion.
Please send all mail to
INTERNET katman.wnets385%wnet_6790753 at mcimail.com
OR
MCIMAIL EMS: wnet 6790753  MBX: katman.wnets385



Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 10:53 EDT
From: Rob Malouf <V103PDUZ at ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: Pith Off

>It's time to get started on my Christmas brew, so I have been collecting
>the peels from my oranges. However I'm having a tough time scraping
>the white pith off of the orange peel.
>
>Does anyone have a tool or technique for making this job less tedious?
>
>Paul Bigelow	bigelow at waterloo.hp.com

What I do is I rub a whole, unpeeled orange on a cheese grater.  That scrapes
off the orange part of the peel and leaves the pith on the orange.  It's a
whole lot easier than trying to whittle chunks of orange peel.  Also, the
oranges will last for quite awhile in this de-oranged state (though they look
kind of funny), so there is no need to OD on oranges on brewing day.

I bottled my weizen last week (no oranges in that one).  It was an all-grain
brew that I fermented with Wyeast #3056.  Someone on HBD said that a high
temperature fermentation would increase the clove esters in the finished
product, so I tried it despite the August heat.  After three weeks in 85-95
degree heat, the finished product is certainly estery.  Unfortunately, the
dominant aroma and flavor is banana.  I haven't seen anything like this since I
stopped using Red Star yeast!  I just mention this as a warning to others:
don't let your weizen get to hot.

Rob Malouf
V103PDUZ at UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 11:22:34 EDT
From: eisen at kopf.HQ.Ileaf.COM (Carl West)
Subject: Don't pith in your wort

Instead of trying to remove the pith from the zest, try removing the 
zest from the pith. A vegetable peeler will do a fine job, it'll be 
easiest if you do it before opening the orange. When I'm making mead 
and I want *just* the zest and *no* pith from a lemon, I use a fine 
grater, and grate off just the yellow. It's more work, but I get to 
avoid adding any of the bitter pith.

CW


Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 08:41:04 PDT
From: chad at mpl.UCSD.EDU (Chad Epifanio)
Subject: Mead help!

OK, so I'm worried...so sue me.
I'm seeking advice from veteran mead brewers.  I've read up on the subject, but I need experienced advice.  Infact, there may be no problem at all; I just don't know.

How fast(slow) does mead ferment?  I made a 5.5 gal batch the other day, and
so far I see NO signs of active fermentation(from a homebrewers point of
view).  Here is all the details:

8lb.  Orange blossom honey
8lb.  Clover honey
2oz.  Tartaric acid
2oz.  Malic acid
1/3oz Grape tannin
6tsp. Yeast Nutrients                   pH:  ?
Montrachet dry wine yeast               OG:  ?

This was a variation on the traditional dry mead in "Making Mead", p.31.
The yeast was rehydrated and thrown into a 12oz. starter solution of steril
wort for pitching later.
All ingredients except yeast were combined in my brew pot with enough water
to bring it up to 6.25 gal.  The water was held at 170F for half an hour, 
dumped into my plastic primary fermenter, and allowed to cool somewhat.  Eight
crushed up Campden tablets were stirred into the must and allowed to sit for
24 hrs.  Approximatly 0.75 gal of must was siphoned off and saved for future
topping off, leaving 5.5 gal in the fermenter.  The active starter was pitched
into the must, and the fermenter fitted with a fermentation lock.

All this was Sunday afternoon.  So far, I haven't seen that damn fermentation
lock bubble once!  Whats the deal?  If you tell me this is normal for meads,
I'll go home a happy, non-worrying, homebrew-slugging man.  Otherwise, advice
would be much appreciated.


Chad Epifanio--> chad at mpl.ucsd.edu  |  "There are no bad brews.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography |   However, some are better
Marine Physics Laboratory           |   than others."
================================================================
CA disclaimer:  "All words and ideas are my own, etc., etc..."

Return to table of contents


Date:    Wed, 4 Sep 1991 12:55:04 EDT
From: R_GELINAS at UNHH.UNH.EDU (Russ Gelinas)
Subject: they're everywhere

  The plumbing supply man behind the counter says "So what are you going to 
be using that copper tubing for?".  I say to cool my beer, and he says "I 
make beer too", and he shows me a recipe he has on his computer, mixed in
between the invoices and stuff.  He says the shop's bookeeper's husband got 
him started, and he gives me the name of someone in town here who is getting
"real close" to a Sam Adams clone.  He also said he mashes (in the winter 
only) by setting his brewpot on a wood stove, and moving it around to keep 
the right temp.  Seems like a good idea, nice even heat.

  There's brewers everywhere!

Russ

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed Sep 04 10:06:10 1991
From: microsoft!larryba at cs.washington.edu
Subject: Re: HBD #716 Used soda kegs

Charles Anderson notes a Pepsi smell to his recycled soda keg...

I soaked my kegs for an hour or overnight with lye or washing soda (sodium
carbonate - in the blue box at your local supermarket) and replace as many of
the gaskets as I could (all, eventually).  That removed the "coke" house
flavor just fine.  I also dissassembled the quick disconnects; there are
o-rings within that need replacing as well.

Automatic dish washing detergent would be a reasonable substitute for washing
soda since that is the primary ingredient.

Larry Barello



Return to table of contents


Date:    Wed, 4 Sep 1991 14:12:39 EDT
From: R_GELINAS at UNHH.UNH.EDU (Russ Gelinas)
Subject: yeast

  Re. yeast slurry:  I got the Wyeast Chico ale yeast to settle out by
putting the carboy in cold water for 24 hours.  The water was only 5 degrees
colder than the air (68 vs. 72), but it worked.  I bottled, and saved about
a pint of the slurry.  Haven't used it yet, but it looks ok.  
  The beer is tremendous: clean, crisp, bread-like, malty, and hoppy.  I 
"dry-hopped" it by making an infusion of hops, vodka, and water, gently 
heating it, letting it stand over night, and then straining into the carboy.  
It really worked, and there were no hops to worry (er, be concerned) about
in saving the slurry.  Without a doubt, my best beer.

Russ

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 08:01 PDT
From: alm at brewery.intel.com (Al Marshall)

To: homebrew at hpfcmi.fc.hp.com
Subject: The Controversial Enzymatic Power of Wheat Malt


In TCJOHB, Papazian states that wheat malt is weak in diastatic
enzymes and must be mashed in conjunction with barley malt
of great diastatic power.  I have seen this opinion stated elsewhere
I think; Gary Bauer's article in the Zymurgy All-Grain Issue comes
to mind.

I am aware of some dissenting opinions and (I think) some counter
examples:

Miller, Fix and Foster in their books on Continental
Pilsener, Brewing Science and Pale Ale respectively state that
wheat malt has plenty of enzymes (Miller and Foster say this in
text, Fix shows the DP of Wheat Malt in a table).

The Widmer Brewing Company of Portland Oregon mashes Briess wheat malt
and Klages 2-row pale in a 50/50 ratio without any diastatic crutches
that I am aware of.  Anchor uses an even higher ratio of wheat/barley
according to their outstanding tour-guide and only has problems
with the runoff, not the mashing.

I have only mashed tiny amounts and ratios
of wheat/barley up to now; and so am without direct experience.

Are Papazian and Bauer completely wrong?  Do I understand the problem? 

================================================================
                                    |
R. Al Marshall                      | Insert clever aphorism here.
Intel Corporation                   | 
alm at brewery.intel.com		    |
                                    |
================================================================




Return to table of contents


Date: Wed Sep 04 11:42:15 1991
From: larryba at microsoft.com
Subject: Purdue is spelled <-

Oops!  Ahemmm, cough, cough.  I finally figured out my problem with the kind
help of Matt at Intel.  Sorry for the noise.  Must have had too many
homebrews. ;=D

|Neither of the following worked:
|
||550 <uunet!rransom at aclcb.prudue.edu>... Host unknown
||550 <uunet!rransom at bchm1.aclcb.prudue.edu>... Host unknown


Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 12:21:32 PDT
From: grumpy!cr at uunet.UU.NET (C.R. Saikley)
Subject: Keep it Cool

In HOMEBREW Digest #714, Ted Amsel repeated:

>>  OK, I know that temperature is important during fermentation. Part of my
>>question was HOW DO THEY BREW GOOD BEER IN THE TROPICS? I know they don't
>>AC the whole plant, for I've been to several breweries in Mexico, Belize and
>>Honduras. I also like "fresh" SINGHA. Is it water? (;-{)

To which Martin Lodahl responded :

>I doubt it.  I've noticed that most tropical beers are lagers, which
>require artificial refrigeration of the fermenting vessels virtually
>everywhere.  That being the case, the only difference between the
>physical plant required to produce Belikan and that required to
>produce Molsen's, is the size of the refrigeration system, as the
>temperature differential between the air and the beer is greater
>in Belize than in Canada.  The temperature outside the vessels 
>is otherwise irrelevant, I would imagine.

A conversation with Roger Bergen confirms Martin's reasoning. Roger is
the head brewer at the Anderson Valley Brewing Company who formerly
worked at a major brewery in the tropics (may have been Red Stripe,
not sure). Since he was considered an expert on the topic, he was asked 
to give a talk on warm weather brewing at a meeting of the East Bay Fog 
Society (a now defunct homebrew club).  His response was that he had no 
knowledge that would be practical for homebrewers, and that they had a 
monster refrigeration system to cool their fermenters. Other than that,
nothing special was required to brew in the tropics.

On a related note, I recently had the pleasure of touring the Blitz-
Weinhard Brewery in Portland. (It was a great trip, we visited 13 
breweries between SF and Seattle in 9 days!). They have these *enormous*
blue tanks outside which are actually fermentation vessels. Although 
Portland's climate is moderate, it can reach the high 90's. Nonetheless,
Henry's is fermented in these outdoor tanks. All it takes is sufficient
cooling capacity.

CR

Return to table of contents


Date:    Wed, 04 Sep 91 15:49:19 EDT
From: JWHITE at maine.maine.edu (Jim White)
Subject: Looking for reasonably priced Grain ...

I'm looking for phone numbers of places where I can buy 2 row, modified
pale grain (crushed).

William's (CA) sells one for $1.39/lb. + shipping .
A couple other local places are about the same, sans shipping.


This seems high. Is it? I seem to remember earlier threads where
(discussed) prices were far less. I'm a right coaster, so (possibly)
eastern places may save me some shipping.


Thanx in advance for any help. If I get some responses, maybe I can post them
as a help to other aspiring grain brewers.


Jim White

Return to table of contents


Date: 	Wed, 4 Sep 1991 16:06:00 -0400
From: MIKE LIGAS <LIGAS at SSCvax.CIS.McMaster.CA>
Subject: HD Appreciation

Every now and then I think it is important for all of us HD readers to take a
moment to appreciate that we belong to and maintain a civil, intelligent
interest group forum. The level of conversation is high in HD and the odd bit
of heresy and misinformation is tolerated in the name of freedom of speach and
exchange of ideas. Many electronic forums are quite the opposite and are
a waste of people's time and energies. 'Flaming' is the norm in those cases and
is most often counter-productive. The following is an article which reached me
after many forwardings and I decided to post it in HD to stimulate a little
thought. It is not intended as an attempt to initiate discussion on a non-beer
related issue. Enjoy! :-)

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

******* Forwarded from RISKS-Digest **********

Date:    Tue, 27 Aug 91 21:11:00 -0600
From:    forsythe at track29.lonestar.org (Charles Forsythe)
Subject: Flaming makes the mainstream media (again, I guess)

FLAME THROWERS: Why the heated bursts on your computer network?  by Doug
Stewart (copied without permission from Omni magazine Sept 1991 issue)

"You are a thin-skinned reactionary jerk," begins the computer message sent
from one highly educated professional to another.  "I will tell you this,
buster, If you were close enough and you called me that, you'd be picking up
your teeth in a heartbeat."  There follows an obscene three-word suggestion in
screaming capital letters.

The writer of the above message, sent over the Byte Information Exchange, was
apparently enraged after a sarcasm he'd sent earlier was misinterpreted as
racist.  In the argot of computers, his response was a "flame" -- a rabid,
abusive, or otherwise overexuberant outburst sent via computer.  In
networking's early days, its advocates promised a wonderful world of pure
mind-to-mind, speed-of-light, electronic conversation.  What networks today
often find instead are brusque putdowns, off-color puns and screenfuls of
anonymous gripes.  The computer seems to be acting as a collective Rorshach
test.  In the privacy of their cubicles, office workers are firing off
spontaneous salvos of overheated prose.

Sara Keisler, a social psychologist at Carnagie Mellon University and Lee
Sproull, a Boston University sociologist, have observed that networking can
make otherwise reasonable people act brash.  In studies originally designed to
judge the efficiency of computerized decision-making, they gave small groups of
students a deadline to solve a problem.  Groups either talked together in a
room or communicated via isolated computer terminals.  The face-to-face groups
reported no undue friction.  The computerized sessions frequently broke down
into bickering and name-calling.  In one case, invective escalated into
physical threats.  "We had to stop the experiment and escort the students out
of the building separately," Keisler recalls.  Kiesler and Sproul documented a
tendency toward flaming on corporate electronic-mail systems as well.  At one
large company, employees cited an average of 33 flames a month over the email
system; comparable outbursts in face-to-face meetings occurred about four times
a month.

Keisler and Sproull attribute the phenomenon largely to the absence of cues
normally guiding a conversation -- a listeners's nod or raised eyebrows.  "With
a computer," Keisler says,"there's nothing to remind you there are real humans
on the other end of the wire."  Messages become overemphatic -- all caps to
signify a shout; "(smile)" or ":-)", a sideways happy-face, to mean "I'm
kidding."  Anonymity makes flaming worse, she says, by creating the equivalent
of "a tribe of masked and robed individuals."

In real life, what we say is tempered by when and where we say it.  A remark
where lights are low and colleagues tipsy might not be phrased the same under
flourescent lights on Monday morning.  But computerized messages may be read
days later by hundreds or thousands of readers.  Flaming's ornery side is only
half the picture, says Sproull, who co-authored _Connections: New Ways of
Working in the Networked Organization_ with Keisler.  "People on networks feel
freer to express more enthusiam and positive excitement as well as socially
undesirable behavior," she says.  Sproull finds it ironic that computers are
viewed as symbols of cool, impersonal efficiency.  "What is fascinating is the
extent to which they elicit deeply emotional behaviors.  We're not talking
about zeroes and ones.  People reveal their innermost souls or type obscenities
about the the boss."  What, she asks, could be more human?

Mr. Benson
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1991 08:52 EST
From: STROUD%GAIA at sdi.polaroid.com
Subject: Explosives and homebrewed soda

With all of the recent postings about homebrewed soda and detonating hand 
grenades, it seems that there are two obvious solutions:
1)  Keg your soda and artifically carbonate. Don't use any yeast.  Just sugar, 
water, and extract (or flavorings) into the keg (using normal sanitation 
procedures), then pressurize.  After all, isn't this how real soda is made?
2)  If you insist on bottling, follow the "Jack Schmidling Productions" 
instructions, the important thing being USE PLASTIC BOTTLES!  The one-liter 
ones with the screw caps that Pepsi or Coke or whatever come in are perfect, 
are reuseable, and as Jack points out, you can tell when they're carbonated by 
squeezing them.

 -Stiv Stroud-

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 04 Sep 1991 17:56:10 EDT
From: FATHER BARLEYWINE <rransom at bchm1.aclcb.purdue.edu>
Subject: Red Baiting, Address Hell, and Pressurization

Hey There Brewsters!
	First, I must say that the posting by Bill Thacker about proposed names
for hot new Socialist Brews (remember Bill, you can't use Communist anymore
'cause it's ILLEGAL) had me rolling.  Your wit must be well aged, and properly
carbonated.  Seriously, they are looking for new 'free' enterprise over in
Confusion land and especially Western technological assistance....
	Sorry Larry, I probably made a great point of giving you the proper 
address and misspelled the name of the university I've been going to for 6
years....it's P-U-R-D-U-E, not prudue, as in:

		rransom at aclcb.purdue.edu

I hope this finally clears up the Great Address Mystery, and that your computer
can now talk to mine.  Don't you just love literal-mindedness in your mail?  I
think we put down the US mail system too much...I got several pieces of email
and would like to ask the senders (listed below) to send me a short bit to 
confirm THEIR addresses since my mailer refuses to send to them:

		Michael Bass-------lg562 at pnl.gov
		Stephen Russell----srussell at snoopy.msc.cornell.edu

Are these the right addresses?  Are you on bitnet?  Thanks...
	On kegs...and pressure...and priming:  I would recommend using _20_ 
psi of pressure to start, and priming with 1/3 - 1/2 cup corn sugar, 
especially if you are using a well-fermented beer with low residual sugar 
level.  You can always bleed later (I usually leave all that initial pressure
on) unless your beer gets way way too carbonated, but if you miss the inital
carbonation through leakage or insufficient priming, the beer will never 
carbonate properly.  Even if you like a more British style of carbonation, you
want to have a good concentration of dissolved CO2 which can be released 
later to inhibit over-heady brews.  20 psi insures that the seals are made;
you might also toss the seal in the boiling water you use to make the final
cleaning ('sanitization'?  Oh no!) to get it softened up...makes a better seal.
	Finally, when I make the beer to be wanked onto the old yeast cake, I
run it right from the chiller into the carbouy without letting the trub settle.
I let the stream fall the height of the carbouy (my hose runs into a stopper 
which fits loosely in the mouth of the carbouy) which provides good aeration,
and give the first few quarts a swirl to break up the cake.  The resulting 
wort looks rather nasty, especially since a few of the pieces of dried yeast
ringing the carbouy at the level of the old beer always fall into the new beer,
giving the whole thing that "Oooooo, what _did_ you do to your beer?" look,
but I put it in a dark place right away to keep people who might be bothered
from looking at it.  I use an immersion chiller and chill with my tap water,
which leads me to believe that my cold break is not the best, but chill haze 
never bothered me much anyway.
	Thanks for the support of my admittedly extreme postings, and keep up
the snide and nasty comments.  I'm not in love with my opinions, just extremely
fond of them.  There's room here for disagreement (and possibly for roasting
your detractors over a roaring Cajun cooker and basting them with rock salt).

				Kiss kiss, glub glub,

				Father Barleywine

				[rransom at aclcb.purdue.edu]

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 20:20:45 -0400
From: conover at c1south.convex.com (Donald Conover)
Subject: Barley Recipes


To Father B. :
	I have a friend that is real interested in botent homebrew.  Would you 
please send a couple of recipes?

	Does the high alcohol content prevents the *nasties* ?  My buddy keeps
using 5 cups of brewers sugar with one can of a light malt to 6 gals of H2O.
Age seems to lessen the *cidery* taste.  I assume it is from the sugar!?

	Have a good day.......thanks in advance.....don

Return to table of contents


Date: Wed, 4 Sep 91 15:05:52 EST
From: jm at sead.siemens.com (Jeff Mizener  at  Siemens Energy)
Subject: Good/Bad Mail Order Experiences

Sehr geehrte Bierfreunde,

I have yet to brew my first batch, but both my wife and I are Very Excited
about trying it.  There appears to be no Homebrew dealer in my area (correct
me if I'm wrong), which is Raleigh NC, so we'll resort to Mail Order.

1) I have two catalogs -- Alternative Beverage and Hennessy Homebrew.
   Any comments?  Any other suggestions?  I _promise_ I'll summarize.

2) How good are the True Brew Ingredient Kits?  (or any other ingredient
   kits for that matter...)  I suppose it wouldn't
   hurt for a FirstTimer to start out with a "just add water" kit, but
   not if the results don't justify the efforts.
   Again, any suggestions for The Rank Amateur?

3) How much _space_ do these brewing activities take up?  Should I get
   another (1/2 size) fridge??  Where the hell do I put it?  We have
   no basement.  Does my freshly minted HomeBrew need to be refridgerated?

4) Pick 2 books without which the FirstTimer should _NOT_ attempt to even
   _THINK_ about doing this mystical task.

5) Does Wyeast Yeast Come From Oregon?  "Wyeast", or better "Wy'east" is
   the Indian name for Mt. Hood in Oregon.  There is magic in the name...
   
Pleeeeeeeze reply by mail and I'll summarize.

Thanks,

Jeff

Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalt's!  Und so geht's weiter...

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Mizener / Siemens Energy & Automation / Intelligent SwitchGear Systems
Raleigh, NC / jm at sead.siemens.com / (919) 365-2551 / 

Return to table of contents



End of HOMEBREW Digest #717, 09/05/91
*************************************
-------

---