HOMEBREW Digest #728 Fri 20 September 1991

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


Contents:
  re: more uses for the hydrometer (Darryl Richman)
  re: plastic carboys (Darryl Richman)
  scales (Tony Babinec)
  homegrown hops (HERREN)
  NY Times article on Munich (OCONNOR)
  Hop growing and drying... (night)
  Hop Sex (wasn't he the cook on Bonanza?) (krweiss)
  aeration at bottling time (mcnally)
  Scales (Don McDaniel)
  Hop sex, scales and extract efficiency, Momily (Andy Leith)
  male and female hops (HERREN)
  using fresh frozen hops (HERREN)
  Dry Hopping (Norm Pyle)
  re: momily (Bob Mastors)
  weiss question (Bergman)
  Reply to Homebrew Digest #727 (September 19, 1991)  (rsd)
  Many Hoppy Returns ... (Martin A. Lodahl)
  California Small Brewer's Festival (Gary D. Archer 8-284-6387)
  Original Gravity Corrections (Bryan Gros)
  Re: Momily (MIKE LIGAS)
  Request (Jeff Frane)
  Tips for first time all-grain brewing.
  Iodine (Jack Schmidling)
  HELP!!! How do you download archives to mac? (ANDY HILL)
  RE: Dry ice priming .... (ANDY HILL)
  Brewing As Alchemy (MIKE LIGAS)
  Re: hop comments (korz)
  Hydrometer use (Shannon Posniewski)
  Plastic Carbouys (hersh)
  Hop Drying (wbt)
  Homegrown Hops (Scott P. Greeley )
  LA Times article (Tom Hamilton)
  Hydrometers (Martin A. Lodahl)
  Small Brewing Scales, for Small-Scale Brewers (Martin A. Lodahl)
  Dry hopping? (mike_schrempp)
  Hop Growing (pt 2  in Seattle) (Norm Hardy)

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 05:46:23 -0700 From: darryl at ism.isc.com (Darryl Richman) Subject: re: more uses for the hydrometer Since Russ Gelinas pointed out that there are some other reasons to use a hydrometer, and since we've been discussing the extract efficiency of mashing, I thought I'd point out how I use a hydrometer to get a good idea of how well my mash went before I start sparging. Let us suppose that I've mashed and transfered into my lauter tun, and am starting to recirculate for clarity. I take a sample of the sweet wort and cool it down and take a reading. Of course, this reading is not going to be anywhere near my expected original gravity. But, assuming that my newly created sugar is all in solution, I can take that reading and multiply it by the ratio of mash water to batch size and get a maximum prediction for my original gravity. For example, I have 10 gallons of mash, 25 lbs. of grain, and my batch is intended for 15 gallons. If my reading is 1.075, then 10/15 * 75 is 50, so my maximum OG is 1.050. So, 15 * 50 / 25 = 30, or my extract efficiency is 1.030 specific gravity points * lb. / gal. Naturally, I have other losses in my system that prevent this maximum reading from being obtained at the finish, but the more you know about where the losses occur in your system, the more prepared you are to have an effect on them. One can do this at each stage if one knows the correct volume. I must admit that it is a bit depressing to see a really great extract being whittled away to mere mediocrity... --Darryl Richman Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 06:13:43 -0700 From: darryl at ism.isc.com (Darryl Richman) Subject: re: plastic carboys Dave Ros asks about using the plastic (polycarbonate) carboys that more and more of the water companies are switching to. I've been using them for three or four years now and I love them. * They don't break. * They're very lightweight. * I sanitize them with boiling water so I don't care whether they have scratches; I figure that if the polycarbonate is about 200F, it doesn't matter whether the evil nasties are in direct contact with the water or not. (And it works, no infected batches in that time.) In fact, I brew entirely in plastic fermenters for this reason. * Rodney Morris claims that they are moderately impermiable to to oxygen, but I lagered my Bock Aasswards doppelbock for about 5 months in them, and the judges seemed to like it. ;-) * If I really don't like the looks of a carboy, I trade it in for a new one. * Because they are not completely rigid, you can have problems when you move them because they will suck the airlock sterilant after you set them down. I have found several other uses for them, like transporting grain to/from having it crushed, and bring in mash and sparge water to the brewery (no running water in the garage). --Darryl Richman P.S. Dave, if you use the left arrow key instead of the delete key, it leaves "escape codes" that direct the cursor left rather than actually deleting the character. You won't see this on your PC since it can interpret the escape code correctly, but most folks are reading this on UNIX systems and they see each of the codes instead. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 9:22:24 CDT From: tony at spss.com (Tony Babinec) Subject: scales I have two scales. For weighing grains, I have a Krups scale that ranges from 0 to 5 pounds in increments of an ounce, and also has a metric scale. It comes in two pieces: the scale part, and a bowl. The bowl easily holds a couple of pounds of grain. I typically weigh and then grind as I go. The scale can be found in gourmet food stores or gourmet sections of large retail stores, such as Marshall Field's in the Midwest. It cost under $20. For weighing hops, I broke down and bought one of those counterweight "science" scales, along with a set of gram weights. I believe one should calculate hop additions in grams, as this is a more precise scale. Spring scales, diet scales, and the like, simply aren't scaled to enough precision. This scale must have cost about $50-$60. You can find it in "science" stores (American Science Center in Chicago) or some homebrew supply stores. Having just made a case for precision in measuring hops, I find that after doing the hop addition calculations, I can often round things a bit so that additions are conveniently done in units of one-half ounce, which conforms to the packaging of the wonderful Crosby and Baker compressed hops! If you have never used them, they are packaged in 5 ounce volumes with alpha content printed on the package, and are indented so that they break off in half-ounce chunks. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1991 10:41 EDT From: HERREN%midd.cc.middlebury.edu at mitvma.mit.edu Subject: homegrown hops I put in my first batch of hops this past spring here in Vermont (down the road from Greg Noonan's place!). I planted Hallertau, Fuggles, & Cascade. I couldn't find any rhizome cuttings so I bought actually cuttings just barely rooted. Things were slow to start, but the Cascades took a very early lead. The fuggles were very slow (they had poorer light) and Hallertau somewhere in the middle. That was until about halfway through the summer (in Vermont, halfway through the summer means the first of July!). The Cascade stopped growing, put out all their flowers, coned, and then just sat there, about 6-10 feet high. Meanwhile the Hallertau started to spurt. They eventually hit 22 feet high (my roof off the back of a walk out basement house), went over the edge and crawled up the roof. I've not seen so much vegetation from any vine. They produced easily 4 times what the other varieties did and were less susceptible to pests (the Cascade were quite eaten). More about pests. I can't quite tell why or what they did, but my vines were often covered by wasps. They didn't eat anything as near as I can tell. I would often watch one buzzing around (looking out the window of my house so as not to disturb them) and I never saw them munch anything. Yet there were dozens of them on each vine. Could it be they were lying in wait for hop-eating insects? -David Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1991 10:45 EST From: OCONNOR%SCORVA%SNYBUFVA.BITNET at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: NY Times article on Munich For those interested, Sundays edition of the New York Times had an article on Munich specifically about beer and where to drink it. Might be good for those traveling there soon. Look in the travel section. Kieran oconnor at snycorva.bitnet Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 08:23:56 -0700 From: night at tekig7.map.tek.com Subject: Hop growing and drying... In HBD#727 Ihor Slabicky wrote: >You really should have one or two male plants and many female plants >to have a lot of hops. A local commercial purveyor of hops told me that you do not need any male plants. The female produces the hop buds, the male does not. The only reason to have a male plant is to pollinate the female in order for the seeds to have the ability to germinate. We, as homebrewers, want the hops for the buds and not the seeds... therefore, don't waste your time with male plants. In HBD#727 Norm Hardy wrote: >I put each variety on a window screen and placed in inside my car, sitting >in the sun for the day (inside temp 115f). Only a few hops were in direct >sunlight. The windows were obviously closed. Seemed to work quite well >and the bagging into the freezer bags (with Seal-a-meal) went well also. I have a pamphlet provided by a commercial hop grower in Oregon which explains the growing and harvesting of your own hops. It says DO NOT dry the hops at over 105f, otherwise, the aromatic oils (which we are most interested in!) will go away. In fact, another book I have on drying herbs (yes, hops are herbs.) states not to dry them at over 95f. Essentially, the higher the drying temperature the more of the volitile aromatic oils you lose. I dried this years crop in a food dryer at room temp. and have never smelled more aromatic hops! Ahhhh... the life it is!... Living in Washington and growing hops! Mark Nightingale night at tekig7.MAP.TEK.com Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1991 08:31:56 -0800 From: krweiss at ucdavis.edu Subject: Hop Sex (wasn't he the cook on Bonanza?) Ihor writes: >Hops have male and female plants. You >really should have one or two male plants and many female plants >to have a lot of hops. I'd be curious to know more about this. I believe hops are a polyploid (maybe a diploid?) of marijuana... Marijuana flower and resin production is optimized by having NO male plants at all. Since the hop rhizomes will re-germinate every year, unless you're trying to grow new hop plants from seed I don't think you'd want male plants. Ken Weiss krweiss at ucdavis.edu Computing Services 916/752-5554 U.C. Davis Davis, CA 95616 Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 09:06:17 -0700 From: mcnally at Pa.dec.com Subject: aeration at bottling time I would say that it's unlikely that the foam on top of the beer is formed by CO2; if there's that much CO2 in solution, it's probably not ready to bottle. Although you're correct that the stream of liquid has only a limited surface area, remember that that splashing noise means that air is being carried into the wort by the collision of the stream with the surface of the fluid already in the carboy. Think of what happens when you pour a stream of water into a bucket of water containing a little detergent: you get bubbles, right? This happens because the detergent has increased the foamability of the water, and the air dissolved into the water is trapped by the surface tension. I would probably agree that the aeration won't do to much damage, but I also doubt it's necessary. Aeration is important at pitching time because it's important to propagate the yeast. At bottling time, even though a lot of yeast has settled to the bottom, there's still plenty in suspension. Thus it's not necessary to induce another respiratory "breeding" phase; all you want is more fermentation. It *is* possible to damage beer by oxidation (though it's never happened to me), so I feel that if it can be avoided, one might as well. - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike McNally mcnally at wsl.dec.com Digital Equipment Corporation Western Software Lab Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 09:26:50 -0600 From: dinsdale at chtm.eece.unm.edu (Don McDaniel) Subject: Scales Russ, I use a 16 oz. diet scale (available at any cookware store and many grocery stores) to measure my grains. Most of my recipes run about 6-7 lbs. of grain, so the one-lb. limit is bo big deal. Further, the hopper on my Corona mill holds only about 1.5 .bs. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 11:13:57 CDT From: andy at wups.wustl.edu (Andy Leith) Subject: Hop sex, scales and extract efficiency, Momily re. hops comments Ihor Slabicky Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1991 11:19 EDT From: HERREN%midd.cc.middlebury.edu at mitvma.mit.edu Subject: male and female hops I have to take issue with the suggestion that you _want_ both male and female plants. Wrong. Only females produce the cones, and if they are fertilized, they will produce seeds, which you DON'T want in your beer. When one buys rhizones or cuttings for their first planting, they can be assured that they get only females. Also, since hops are a rhizome producing plant, you can get more hops than you need letting them reproduce asexually. All in all it's a situation very similar to another somewhat popular plant grown under lights in many places, though without the rhizones... -David Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1991 11:33 EDT From: HERREN%midd.cc.middlebury.edu at mitvma.mit.edu Subject: using fresh frozen hops The book I used to get me started on hop growing suggests that "wet" hops are not as easy to use since they are variably "wet" and therefore produce variable "alpha" levels. Dry hops are thus easier to measure since they is less variation. -David (sorry, the name of the book slips my tongue right now, but it's a self- published thing from Oregon) Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 09:40:43 MDT From: pyle at intellistor.com (Norm Pyle) Subject: Dry Hopping I recently brewed a bitter/pale ale recipe and its got me to thinking about dry hopping to improve the finish even more. I have heard a lot about dry hopping but don't know how many of you have done it. Do you just throw fresh hops in the brew after primary fermentation? How long do you leave them in? Do you prepare them in any way? Blah, blah, blah? I'd love it if we could get several different views on your dry hopping methods for the digest. Please: details! Thanks. I'd like my Christmas batch to make me a hop-head in hop-heaven... Norm Pyle pyle at intellistor.com Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 09:26:17 MDT From: mastors at Central.Sun.COM (Bob Mastors) Subject: re: momily ... > He refused to believe that the beer made in the video could > have been drinkable because I let the syphon outfall drop > into the priming vessel. (Great shot, beautiful billowing ... > 1. The amount of surface area exposed to air in the narrow > column of falling beer is trivial and steadily shrinking. > 2. The CO2 blanket keeps rising to cover more and more of > the column making exposure to air, near zero near the end. ... Since you asked: a) Your momily is no better then his momily. At some point you have to put aside the theory and do some experiments. b) If you have ever heard a master woodworker comment on another woodworker's technique it would sound similar. Same goes for stock brokers, landscapers, stereo reviewers, and software engineers. c) The only thing that matters is how the beer tastes. Bob Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 14:32:03 GMT From: Bergman <iceberg at sctc.af.mil> Subject: weiss question Howdy, OK, so here I am in Germany. Got two questions: 1. What is the difference bettween a weiss and a weizen? I know that weiss translates to 'white' and weizen as 'wheat', but what's the deal. I've been told every thing from they are the same, to one is just a light beer while the other is made from wheat. I'm sooo confused. Also, why does my local barkeep through a wedge of lemon into my weiss? 2. Does anyone know of a local german distributer for homebrew supplies? I hadn't planned on continuing the hobby, but I'm hooked and my freinds can't wait to try a home brew. How 'bout a US dist. who ships to an APO address, as opposed to UPS.?? BTW, I got a big kick the 2nd day I was here, visiting the local castle. when I looked over the side of the wall, there were several dozen wild hop vines growing. I think I could learn to like this place... Thanks, | | Johnny B. | - And I felt like a pickled | iceberg at sctc.af.mil | priest who was being flambed. | | P. Townsend | Standard Disclaimer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 10:55:28 -0400 From: rsd at silk.udev.cdc.com Subject: Reply to Homebrew Digest #727 (September 19, 1991) I appologize to everyone if this is the fourteenth Jack Schmidling flame that you've waded through today. It is a huge credit to the digest and its subscribers that the SN ratio is consistently so high, and that the contributions so consistently valuable (at least to me). In this vein, If you do not wish to be further persueded that Jack is probably not qualified to produce the video "BREW IT AT HOME", go on to the next article. Jack asks: 1. The amount of surface area exposed to air in the narrow column of falling beer is trivial and steadily shrinking. Initially there will be no CO2 and lots of splashing. This initial phase alone will probably damage the beer. Furthermore, The question presumes that air is being transported into the beer only by diffusion into the falling column of beer. This is not, in fact, the case. The falling beer molecules are not falling through air molecules that are fixed. The falling beer is actively transporting the air immediately surrounding the falling column into the beer. The average velocity of an average air molecule immediately adjacent to the falling column of beer will be the same as the velocity of an average falling beer molecule. (The velocity of an average air molecule will be a function of the distance of the molecule from the column, and the distance of the molecule from the end of the siphon.) Furthermore, the turbulence created by the beer falling into the priming bucket will help to disolve the air that has been introduced. Finally, if the falling column of beer is not "coherent" It will have a far greater surface area than Jack's question suggests, introducing still more air into the beer. 2. The CO2 blanket keeps rising to cover more and more of the column making exposure to air, near zero near the end. The CO2 blanket is only helping to keep air from diffusing in through the surface of the beer in the priming bucket. Diffusion is slower than molasses anyway. The problem this solves is not nearly as great a problem as the others you have created. 3. If the pros inject oxygen while pitching yeast and homebrewers are supposed to splash it around to oxygenate at pitching time, what harm can a little oxygen do when we want to re-invigorate the fermentation at bottling time? This is the question I found most infuriating. It would not be infuriating if asked by a novice home brewer. It's a good question. The problem I have with Jack asking it is that it means he has zero familiarity with the yeast life cycle. This means he has done essentially no reading on the subject of home brewing. He is making this video without trying to understand his subject. Jack has demonstrated that he is making this video without making a good faith effort to understand his subject matter. It seems to me that Jack plans to deceive people into thinking that his video is a useful guide to home brewing. It also seems to me that Jack plans to profit from sales of the video that arise from this deception. In Minnesota, this combination of deception and profit is what constitutes the legal definition of fraud. It probably won't matter. I imagine that most reputable homebrew outlets will quickly recognize the amateurishness of Jack's technique and refuse to carry it. Sorry for raving. Richard Dale rsd at silk.udev.cdc.com Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 10:36:12 PDT From: Martin A. Lodahl <hpfcmr.fc.hp.com!hplabs!pbmoss!malodah> Subject: Many Hoppy Returns ... HOMEBREW Digest #727 seemed inclined toward hops questions. Ihor W. Slabicky: > ... I just finished reading a book >about an old English garden at Barton's End, in Kent, England. >They mention that hops were grown by the Barton's and other >Kentish farmers. The hop fields used to be burned to get rid >of aphid infestations. Hops have male and female plants. You >really should have one or two male plants and many female plants >to have a lot of hops. > >Aphid infestations have been mentioned here, but I don't think >that anyone has mentioned anything about the male/female plants. >When you order hop rhizomes, are you give the choice of which >you get? Do you get whatever happens to be there when they pack >your order? You get female plant rhizomes. Only British varieties (notably Fuggles and Kent Goldings) are commercially marketable with the kind of seed content you'll get if male plants are present. Unless you plan on growing several acres of hops, you probably shouldn't have a male plant at all. Jeff J. Miller: >... I think the string idea might work better in that I would imagine >that you coule simply cut the string and slide the vine off of it (comments >from anyone?) Yes, you could do that, but you don't need to. David Beach mentions in his book (Homegrown Hops) the techniques most of my club's hop growers seem to use, that of training a few (3, usually) vines up the string and cutting the rest back, then when those vines reach the top, train 3 more, etc. Harvest then, isn't a single operation, but consists of picking the cones that are ripe, a couple of times a week for as long as the vines still produce. You get a lot of cones from a single plant that way, but you need access to the whole plant, which often means having a good ladder. > probably half of this harvest was mounded around the top. My entire harvest was right at the top. Fortunately, I'd trained my vines up to the railing on the deck, so I picked in comfort! >Another problem is that as the root gets larger it pops new growth EVERYWHERE! ... thanks to the rhizomes. These can be cut off and used to propagate new plants. They make great trade goods! And Norm Hardy: >I used rabbit droppings for occasional fertilizer ... Now why didn't I think of that? I knew the stuff had to be good for something! I use chicken manure & straw, but will add the rabbit dung forthwith! = Martin A. Lodahl Pacific*Bell Systems Analyst = = malodah at pbmoss.Pacbell.COM Sacramento, CA 916.972.4821 = = If it's good for ancient Druids, runnin' nekkid through the wuids, = = Drinkin' strange fermented fluids, it's good enough for me! 8-) = Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 11:12:47 PDT From: Gary D. Archer 8-284-6387 <archer at STLVM2.vnet.ibm.com> Subject: California Small Brewer's Festival For SF Bay-area readers and those coming to the area, the CA Small Brewer's Fest from 11am-5pm. Its at the cornerof Franklin/Evelyn Streets, near the Tied House Brewery. Last year they had representatives from about 30 local (and some not so local) small brewerys. They usally set up a large tent at the street intersection with the brewers setting up small booths for tastings. Usally the owner or brewmaster is present and quite willing to chat about their brews.. get there early, and go on Saturday, as Sunday is much more crowded. Tickets are $10, which gets you a festival mug and 5 drink tokens. To order in advance call 800-479-2739, or you can go to the Tied House in Mt. View and purchase the Mug/Tokens in advance of the event. It's a great time... go support your local micro-brewerys. Gary Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 11:45:43 PDT From: bgros at sensitivity.berkeley.edu (Bryan Gros) Subject: Original Gravity Corrections I made my wheat beer last weekend. my first partial mash. After cooling, i racked into the carboy and added the yeast (first time to use liquid yeast...worked fine). I grabbed a bit of the stuff left in the bucket to measure the original gravity. It came out to about 58. This seemed pretty high. The wort had a lot of trub in it, though, and would this be making the reading much higher? It is also a little high, since I added about 2 qts of water to the carboy to bring it up to about 5 gals. I mashed two lbs wheat malt, and one lb pale malt, and added three lbs wheat extract and one lb pale extract. What's the theoretical OG?? Thanks. - Bryan p.s. the main difference i noticed between the liquid yeast and the red star i'd been using is the bubble size. the liquid gave much smaller bubbles in the wort and the krausen seems much finer. The wort was not as active during fermentation as it seemed to be with the dry yeast. I used a starter and it worked fine. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1991 12:05:00 -0400 From: MIKE LIGAS <LIGAS at SSCvax.CIS.McMaster.CA> Subject: Re: Momily In HD727 arf at ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) writes: > I was roundly criticized by the first "expert" to review the > preliminary cut of "BREW IT AT HOME" and I am wondering if > the fraternity is suffering from another "momily". (That's > one of those things we believe because mom said so.) > He refused to believe that the beer made in the video could > have been drinkable because I let the syphon outfall drop > into the priming vessel. (Great shot, beautiful billowing > foam, nice splashing sound.) > He was particularly outraged at the foam. When I reminded > him that the foam was CO2 and building a nice anerobic > blanket over the beer, he just shook his head and dared me > to bring him a bottle of the beer but that is another story. It is unclear from the above description if you are racking into a secondary fermenter or into a priming vessel at bottling time, but in either case the beer would unlikely be producing sufficient CO2 to form a protective blanket against oxygen. If the end of the syphon hose is not submerged during the racking process then oxygen is coming into contact with the surface of the stream of beer even before it hits the bottom of the vessel and calculations are not needed to deduce that a large surface area is exposed to air. > My thoughts on the subject are as follows: > 1. The amount of surface area exposed to air in the narrow > column of falling beer is trivial and steadily shrinking. The narrower the column of falling beer the larger the surface area:volume ratio and the greater the extent of oxidation. > 2. The CO2 blanket keeps rising to cover more and more of > the column making exposure to air, near zero near the end. As mentioned above, beer syphoned at later stages of fermentation or at bottling time is susceptible to oxidation due to a reduced degree of CO2 production or its absence altogether (which would hopefully be the case at bottling time to prevent glass grenades). I'd be concerned therefore that a CO2 blanket is either non-existent or fairly thin and easily disrupted by the air turbulence generated by syphoning. The foam is more likely a result of splashing. > 3. If the pros inject oxygen while pitching yeast and > homebrewers are supposed to splash it around to oxygenate at > pitching time, what harm can a little oxygen do when we want > to re-invigorate the fermentation at bottling time? The harm is that fermentation has produced many compounds which are readily oxidized and whose oxidation products produce off-flavours. Yeast require O2 initially during the respiration phase of growth in order to utilize the various nutrients available for cell growth and division as well as to produce a variety of molecules which will serve as a source of energy during the anaerobic fermentation phase. Once the nutrients in the wort are spent and cell density is optimum additional oxygen will not be quickly utilized by the yeast and will be available to initiate redox reactions. If sufficient oxygen is in the wort at the time of pitching then the yeast will synthesize enough energy reserves for primary, secondary and bottle fermentations. The processes of oxidation of fermented beer have been well documented. Here are a few examples: 1. Fatty Acid Oxidation -oxidation of fatty acids produces aldehydes (eg. oxidation of oleic acid) which taste 'soapy'. 2. Oxidation of Phenolics -oxidized phenols produce an 'astringent' taste which can be harsh and burning. Furthermore, oxidized polyphenols contribute to chill haze. 3. Oxidation of Acetohydroxy Acids -produces diacetyl in amounts which can exceed the yeasts diacetyl reducing capacity during aging. 4. Oxidation of Amino Acids -produces fusel alcohols, esters and aldehydes. Can result in harsh off- flavours and excessive fruitiness. Aldehydes are particularily nasty. > P.S. He also claims that a tsp of vitimin C at bottling > time will cure the ills of oxygenation. Any thoughts? Vitamin C is an antioxidant but to claim it will "cure the ills of oxygenation" is false. Although ascorbic acid (Vit. C) is an oxygen scavenger, it is not a strong one. Ascorbate (oxidized ascorbic acid) can be an oxidizing agent if sufficient iron is present in the beer! I'm not attempting to raise the level of worrying amongst HD readers about oxidation. If your beer tastes good then be happy. If you desire better beer then there are an endless variety of ways to improve your homebrewed nectar and reducing oxidation is one of them as borne out by experience, scientific analysis and of course, Mom. ;-) Return to table of contents
Date: 19 Sep 91 14:57:34 EDT From: Jeff Frane <70670.2067 at compuserve.com> Subject: Request Please put me on your mailing list for HomebrewDigest. Jeff Frane <70670.2067 at compuserve.com thanx Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 12:38:34 PDT From: dannet!bruce at uunet.UU.NET (Bruce Hill) Subject: Tips for first time all-grain brewing. or "I kinda wish I'd thought of that before I started this..." Hi, My brewpartner and I are about to try all-grain brewing for the first time. I would like to hear from all you experienced mashers about the mistakes you made during the first time you brewed all-grain and your solutions. This includes what you found lacking in your equipment, technique, planning and execution of mashing grain for the first time. I am going to condense all of this wonderful wisdom into a summary that will be eventually posted to this esteemed forum. Our immediate goal is to get our equipment ready and our procedures down before we make our first batch. Any information on equipment design and techniques will be greatly appreciated. Please send your tips via e-mail to me (this digest is getting too long). Thanks, Bruce T. Hill Danford Corp. voice: (213) 514-9334 Project Manager 350 W. 5th St. FAX: (213) 831-0454 uunet!dannet!bruce San Pedro, CA 90731 USA or dannet!bruce at uunet.UU.NET P.S. Keep up the good work Rob! I know how busy they keep you. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 11:43 CDT From: arf at ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) Subject: Iodine To: Homebrew Digest Fm: Jack Schmidling Date: Mon, 09 Sep 91 08:37:02 EDT From: JWHITE at maine.maine.edu (Jim White) >Iodine testing: >Did I use the right stuff? This iodine was like what we used to apply to cuts, etc. Is there a colorless iodine I should've used? You used the right stuff but you need to dilute it but you need to dilute it about 50:1 with water. jack Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1991 08:46:14 NZST From: ANDY HILL <violator at matai.vuw.ac.nz> Subject: HELP!!! How do you download archives to mac? hi can anyone help me download some of the archives (esp. cats_meow) on to the mac? I have access to PC's but i'm pretty ignorant on how to use them Any help would be much appreciated.... please!?!?!?! Cheers Andy Return to table of contents
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1991 08:56:08 NZST From: ANDY HILL <violator at matai.vuw.ac.nz> Subject: RE: Dry ice priming .... g'day! i have tried dry ice priming, but only to a few bottles. Really, we had a try and it was quite dangerous. We put one pellet of dry ice into the bottle, capped it, and shook it like hell to dissolve the pellet. My friend reckoned he had done it before and was sitting there shaking this bottle saying "you have to shake it real well otherwise the top comes off and ..." you guessed it, beer all over the kitchen! Why are you trying dry ice? It would take ages to bottle a batch using this method - maybe we did it wrong - it was still bloody funny though!!! Hope this may have been of some use... Andy Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1991 15:11:00 -0400 From: MIKE LIGAS <LIGAS at SSCvax.CIS.McMaster.CA> Subject: Brewing As Alchemy It seems that a single letter on the importance of a hydrometer has stimulated a series of replies and counter-replies in the past few issues and these have evolved into discussions of "Brewing as a Science" versus "Brewing as an Art". Well, I can resist no longer. I submit that the "versus" concept be dropped. IMHO brewing is a wonderful marriage of Science *AND* Art. My personal pursuit in brewing is much like that of an alchemist, trying to find the panacea by transforming base ingredients into something precious. A brewer knows his/her objectives, be it a dry stout, a malty porter, a fragrant pilsner or a tart weizen. One's perception of what constitutes perfection within these loosely described styles is personal and is one of the many artistic components of brewing and tasting beer. Fine tuning a successful recipe and procedure to achieve a desired end requires understanding the scientific component of brewing. An attempt, for example, to brew a pale ale with the dry bitterness of Double Diamond could be frustrating without an understanding of the influence of water hardness and calcium on the perception of hop bitterness. Other attributes like colour, body, aroma and flavour to name a few (along with the diversity inherent within each attribute) should all be appreciated for both the artisitic component of their perception, balance and appreciation and the scientific components of the brewing process which affect their final outcome. When designing a recipe I find that the creative process must work with the scientific process or the pen should be put down...and another homebrew should be consumed. Maybe that is why homebrewers are such a fun and unusual lot. Every homebrewer that I have met is independent minded, creative and unique. It is the uniqueness that makes defining a homebrewer singularily impossible. Thank Gambrinus for that. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 13:51 CDT From: ihlpl!korz at att.att.com Subject: Re: hop comments Ihor-- Male hop plants do not produce cones. The rhizomes, which you get from distributors, are all females. Pollinated females will produce seeds which we don't want in our beermaking hops, so keep male hop plants away. Al. Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 12:08:24 EDT From: imagesys!shannon at uu.psi.com (Shannon Posniewski) Subject: Hydrometer use Here's our two cents from the Congress Street Brewery: We use a hydrometer during brewing... sort of. We take the S.G. at all the appropriate times, but we have never used the S.G. readings to determine when it is ready for bottling. When it stops bubbling, we give it a couple days, take the S.G. (out of curiosity, more than anything else), and bottle it. In most circumstances, it comes down .040 or so. If it doesn't, we note that it's a little odd, and bottle anyway. The best thing (and the major reason why we still do it) about taking the S.G. is that it yeilds about 4oz of beer/mead/whatever that is simply _waiting_ to be tasted. So we do. Sometimes we think that we took the (unused) gravity wrong and have to do it all over again. Rats. We calculate the % alc, but we find that the numbers don't come out very well. We find that tasting gives a better measure of the alcoholic content than any S.G. eq'n. Shannon Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 18:06:02 EDT From: hersh at expo.lcs.mit.edu Subject: Plastic Carbouys Well we've been over this before in the past. I just looked at the ones on our water cooler here at work. They are #7 (whatever plastic that is) and specifically say FOR WATER ONLY, DO NOT REFILL WITH ANY OTHER LIQUIDS. While the results of our previous discussion indicated that there are plastics that are supposed to be safe for alcohol (there are some alcohol products sold in plastic bottles), my personal suggestion is to exercise caution and be sure of what type of plastic you have and that it is safe for holding alcohol, since there was a problem in the past with the FDA recalling certain types of plastic containers from use for holding alcohol because they leached carcinogens. - JaH Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 17:05:48 EDT From: cbema!wbt at att.att.com Subject: Hop Drying When you folks who grow hops dry them, how do you know when they're dry enough? When I buy (leaf) hops, my dealer has them bagged and chilled to prevent oxidation. When I get them home I bag them, going so far as to suck the air out of the ziploc bag, and chill them in the 'fridge. In drying, y'all heat them and expose them to air. Seems like a mighty fine line in between... Seems to me (here I go again) that the safest way to go would be as follows: Harvest your hops, all at the same time, so you can assume they have a similar moisture content. Draw a small "random sample" and freeze the rest(*). Weigh the sample, dry it, and re-weigh, so you can say "X ounces of wet hops equals Y ounces dry weight." Any time you need to weigh the hops, weigh the frozen(wet) hops and apply this conversion. If you oxidize and ruin the sample, no big deal. (*) Freezing isn't be a problem, is it? If anything, it might cause the lupulin sacs to burst or be weakened and actually improve utilization. Sunlight, as we know, reacts with hops once brewed; obviously, it can't have a harmful effect on living, growing hops. I would presume that it has no effect on harvested hops, either. Right? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bill Thacker AT&T Network Systems - Columbus wbt at cbnews.att.com Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 16:57:15 PDT From: greeley at kermit.boeing.com (Scott P. Greeley ) Subject: Homegrown Hops I have been growing my own hops for several years now here in the Kent Valley, whence the Kent Golding hops were named. I have five varieties that entwine themselves on 1/4" braided nylon rope on the South side of my house. Four of the varieties annually make it to the top of the rope two stories up. Actually, they grow past the second story, but that's another story. I get more hops than I can use annually (I'm a better gardener than a drinker), mostly from a Nugget plant. I usually don't get any appreciable quantity from my Wilamette plant but I don't know why. I never bother to dry the hops because I think it's too much work. I stuff the fresh hops into tupperware and ziplocks and store them in the freezer. I've never measured the moisture of my hops but I have found that using four times more undried hops (by weight) than the amount of dried hops you would normally use gives the right amount of hopiness. This appears to work because I've got a five-gallon keg in my basement now that is so hoppy that even Bert Grant would be proud of me. Harvest is relatively simple. At harvest time, I unhook the rope where it attaches to the roof eaves and cut the vines at the bottom. I then take the whole assembly to the deck, drape it over my lap, grab a mug of homebrew and pick and sip, pick and sip... and plan the next batch of beer. Scott Greeley Boeing Aerospace Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 18:21:21 PDT From: Tom Hamilton <tlh at ISI.EDU> Subject: LA Times article Just thought ya'll might find this interesting. Found it on page 2 in the business section of the Sept. 19 edition of the LOS ANGELES TIMES. All typos are probably mine. >From ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON- Agriculture Department scientists are finding that if you brew a better beer, the world will beat a path to your door. They have developed some new, American varieties of hops and barley that they say provide Old-World flavor and superior malting qualities, and are working on several more. Last spring, plant geneticist Alfred Haunold said he released the newest hop, call Liberty, said to have the desirable aroma qualities found in its parent, a popular German hop called Hallertauer Mittelfruh. "Yet Liberty isn't troubled by the disease problems and poor yields that have all but wiped out plantings of Hallertuaer bred in Europe", said a report in the September issue of the USRDA magazine Agricultural Reasearch. Liberty thrives in the temperate Pacific Northwest and produces double the yields of the Old World variety. A similar hop, Mt. Hood, was released in 1989 in Corvallis, Ore. About 58 million pounds of hops are harvested each year in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Cheers Tom Hamilton U of So Cal Info Sci Inst Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 12:34:12 PDT From: Martin A. Lodahl <hpfcmr.fc.hp.com!hplabs!pbmoss!malodah> Subject: Hydrometers In HOMEBREW Digest #727 the hydrometer thread continued. Time to put in my ha'p'orth: Russ Gelinas: > Another good use for a hydrometer is to check the results of a > mash ... [ excellent example deleted ] Absolutely! Many also use the SG of the runnings to determine when it's time to stop sparging. Yep, IMHO, thermometers, hydrometers, and careful record keeping are the brewers' friends ... Guy McConnell: > ... I am an > extract/adjunct brewer and I think I can see where a hydrometer > would be of a great deal more service for all-grain brewers. I respectfully disagree. The usefulness of a hydrometer for extract brewers is in monitoring the drop in SG during fermentation, so you have a fighting chance of determining whether the airlock has stopped glupping because it's all done, or because fermentation is "stuck". This is traditionally more of a problem in extract batches, and we now know it's due to lower levels of free amino nitrogen in extract worts. Its usefulness as a tool increases as you use it, if you keep records. Extracts have different degrees of fermentability, yeast have different degrees of attenuation, and both can be affected by temperature and water composition. It will probably take several batches before you can accurately assess your wort and beer using the hydrometer, but it's worth the trouble, when things don't go according to plan. = Martin A. Lodahl Pacific*Bell Systems Analyst = = malodah at pbmoss.Pacbell.COM Sacramento, CA 916.972.4821 = = If it's good for ancient Druids, runnin' nekkid through the wuids, = = Drinkin' strange fermented fluids, it's good enough for me! 8-) = Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 12:46:35 PDT From: Martin A. Lodahl <hpfcmr.fc.hp.com!hplabs!pbmoss!malodah> Subject: Small Brewing Scales, for Small-Scale Brewers In HOMEBREW Digest #727, Chris Shenton asked: >OK, my turn: what do people use to measure the small stuff, like hops or >chemicals? I use one of those cheesey drug scales (no comments, please) >with the alligator clip and the quarter-circle ruler-guage thing, but doubt >it's accuracy. Oh, I dunno. It is, after all, intended to measure commodities with very high cost:weight ratios, for a clientele celebrated for its intolerance of ripoffs ... ;-> For hops I use a cheesy plastic WeightWatchers food scale I got for a dime at a yard scale. For water salts, or anything else requiring more accurate measurements, I use a shooter's reloading scale. I have no idea what these cost these days; I've had mine 25+ years. They're compact and very accurate, but are, unfortunately, calibrated in grains, so you'll need to pull out the ol' CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics and look up the conversion factors for the units of your choice. = Martin A. Lodahl Pacific*Bell Systems Analyst = = malodah at pbmoss.Pacbell.COM Sacramento, CA 916.972.4821 = = If it's good for ancient Druids, runnin' nekkid through the wuids, = = Drinkin' strange fermented fluids, it's good enough for me! 8-) = Return to table of contents
Date: 19 Sep 91 17:00 -0700 From: mike_schrempp%42 at hp4200.desk.hp.com Subject: Dry hopping? > Drying was novel this year: > put each variety on a window screen and placed in inside my car, sitting > in the sun for the day (inside temp 115f). > Finally, the car smelled great for a week. > Norm Hardy WOW! Now I am going to grow my own hops, just for air freshener. I can picture Norm saying, "Honest officer, I haven't been drinking, I've just been drying my hops." Cop replies, "Sure, just step out of the car please..." Return to table of contents
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 91 21:21:32 PDT From: polstra!norm at uunet.UU.NET (Norm Hardy) Subject: Hop Growing (pt 2 in Seattle) Some interesting responses arrived in my emailbox about my drying system in the automobile. I tried to respond to them and two got bounced back. Two items of interest I would like to relate: (1) I allowed 3 vines from each plant to start the climb up the twines. I trained each climber on its own twine so I could evaluate the progress. String or twine works better for me than poles because the hops can better grab on and more quickly make revolutions to be secure to the twine. For the Hallertau, there were twin poles each 15 feet high. At 8 feet I strung horizontal twine each about 8 inches from the next one. As the hop came up I trained the vine around one of the lines. Then I made sure the growth continued along the horizontal twine. Labor intensive yes but very effective at avoiding a thick brush of vines. Also very pretty to look at when in full bloom with cones. (2) A trellis system worked better for the multiple Herzbruchers. After growing for 10 feet, the vines were allowed to meander over the trellis with its crosshatched twine about 8 inches apart. Maintainance was low and the thick leaf growth was impressive. Harvesting was a chore until I just cut the twine and let it all come down. Return to table of contents
End of HOMEBREW Digest #728, 09/20/91 ************************************* -------
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