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


Contents:
  pilgrimage to mecca (Davis McPherson)
  Re: Calories in homebrew (Daniel Roman)
  Hops in SN Pale Ale (Keith Winter)
  Re: yeast questions (korz)
  simple yeast-starter recipe, cherry mead (Chuck Coronella)
  Re: Bending Tubing (Larry Barello)
  nastyeast (DAMON_NOEL/HP0800_01)
  Wyeast 3056 (Dennis J. Templeton)
  Brewpub Crawl, San Francisco Bay Area (James Margeson)
  Beer Head (fjdobner)
  G.W. Kent ("Spencer W. Thomas")
  hops, water (Donald P Perley)
  Re: Re: State with most micros/brewpubs per capita (martin wilde)


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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 10:31:58 EDT
From: davism at hns.com (Davis McPherson)
Subject: pilgrimage to mecca


Greetings fellow brewers,

	i will be travelling to Seattle in early june for a week of RnR
	and hanging out in beer joints.  if some you northwest USA type
	of guys could email your favorite joints (bars or micro-brewies)
	i will raise my glass and toast you all while i'm there.


	thanx in advance

	davis

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 9:44:18 EDT
From: tix!roman at uunet.UU.NET (Daniel Roman)
Subject: Re: Calories in homebrew

I had just recently finally gotten around to trying to decipher the post
about determining calories in homebrew which was presented a few digests
ago.  It seems much to complicated and in some areas does not make any
sense to me.  If I was given a true/false test in chemistry and the
question was "Is this the formula for determining calories in homebrew"
I would have guessed false.

Anyway, that formula really is no good to me since there is too much
work involved to come up with a number just out of curiosity.  Anyone
have a formula which approximates the number of calores just based on
the OG and FG.  I envision something along the lines:

 calories per oz = X * (OG - FG) + Y * FG

where X is the calories per specific gravity unit and Y is the calories
contributed by residuals per specific gravity unit.

The program I use to record my recipes calculates the % alc. (by weight
or volume obviously) from the OG and FG figures already.  I would just 
need an approximation for the value of Y and a number for the value of 
X (number of calories per oz. based on the % alc. as determined from the 
SG scale).

It should be easy to come up with approximations shouldn't it?  After
all, if it's off by as much as 10% that's no big deal (to me at least).
- -- 
______________________________________________________________________
Dan Roman           |     ///          Internet:  roman_d at timeplex.com
Timeplex Inc.       | \\\///              GEnie:  D.ROMAN1
Woodcliff Lake, NJ  |  \XX/ Only AMIGA!      Homebrew is better brew.
======================================================================

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 9:06:51 PDT
From: winter at cirrus.com (Keith Winter)
Subject: Hops in SN Pale Ale


Steven Boege asks:

> Greetings,
>         Would someone please tell me which hop varieties are used in Sierra
> Nevada India Pale Ale and in Dinkel Acker Dark.
> Thanks,
> Steven J. Boege

According to the information I got when I toured the brewery, SN Pale Ale uses 
two forms of Cascade Hops.  The boil uses an experimental, high-alpha Cascade 
and regular Cascade Hops are used for aroma.

A note about the post boil hopping: they use whole leaf hops as a filter stage in 
addition to flavor.  They load a large fitting, that sits in the pipe between the 
boiling vessel and the heat-exchanger cooling apparatus, with the hops and force 
pump the wort through it.  I guess this works because SN Pale Ale sure had a 
strong hop aroma.

The thing looks something like this (please excuse the ASCII graphics):

                                    -------
                                   /       \
                ------------------/         \---------------
  from boiler   ----> wort flow      HOPS        ----->     To heat-exchanger
                ------------------\         /---------------
                                   \       /
                                    -------

	Keith Winter (winter at cirrus.com)


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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 11:19 CDT
From: korz at iepubj.att.com
Subject: Re: yeast questions

Al Taylor asks about yeast:
>        1)  Is there a significantly better dry finishing (high or low
>            attenuating, I can never remember the nomenclature) ale yeast
>            than Chico Ale (Wyeast 1056).  I have heard good things about it.

I've found that Wyeast Irish Ale (#1084) is one of their most attenative,
but it does take a while to finish (i.e. the last few points take a few weeks).
Attenuation is a measure of how much of the sugars a particular yeast will
eat.  Highly attenuative yeasts will eat even very big sugar molecules, whereas
less attenuative yeast will will eat only the simplest sugars (like glucose
and maltose).  There is a two or three page sheet that you should be able to
get from your supplier -- heck, it's no secret, maybe if I remember to bring
it in, I'll post it.

>        3)  (This one is unrelated to my own yeast concerns)  If the yeast
>            used for trappist ale is a mixture of several species and/or
>            strains, how would one go about making a trappist from pure
>            culture?  Stated differently, what sort of pitching ratios of
>            the different strains should be used.

Trappist Ales are generally made with single-strain cultures.  It's Lambics
that are made from a variety of strains of yeast as well as bacteria.
Generally speaking, most pseudo-Lambic homebrewers use only the three
primary organisms, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (I use Wyeast #1056),
Brettanomyces Lambicus and Pediococcus Cerevisiae.  If you want to be
even more close to the "real thing," then you can buy some Brettanomyces
Bruxellenis (sp?), but it will cost you a good $50 or so.  The other
two can be purchased from G.W.Kent through your retailer.

You may be speaking about the fact that Orval bottles with 5 strains.  This
is true, but they ferment with only one.  I cultured the dregs of several
Orval bottles and got starters that tasted very different from each other.
I chose the one that tasted most like Orval and brewed a batch with that.

Al.



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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 11:49 MTS
From: Chuck Coronella <CORONELLRJDS at CHE.UTAH.EDU>
Subject: simple yeast-starter recipe, cherry mead

Greetings 

Two quick question for the readership: 

1)  Can someone post a _simple_ recipe for a yeast starter?  I know that I
can just use a liter or so of wort, but what if I don't want to brew an
entire batch?  I know the ingredients; it's the quantities about which I'm
concerned.  How much extract (prefer volume), how much hops, for, say a
quart of water?  Can corn sugar (dextrose) be used?  (It's easy to measure
small quantites, compared to malt extract, which is gooey, and is generally
a mess.)  I've tried bottling wort, but nasties always manage to get in the
bottle, and in a few months I've got a glass grenade on my hands. 

2)  As a result of the unusually warm spring we've had here in Utah, the 
cherries are almost ripe already.  I'm looking forward to making my third
annual cherry beer, and have no shortage of ideas for that one, let me tell
you. But, I brewed my first mead this past December, and was thinking that
a cherry mead might be nice.  Suggestions? 

Thanks to everyone for all the great info that comes out in the HBD, and
especially thanks to Rob for maintaining the digest.  I'd like to mention
that I'm grateful that this digest is still being distributed by email,
since I have no access to all these r.c.b.-type forums (fora?). 

Cheers,
Chuck

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 10:27:15 PDT
From: polstra!larryba at uunet.UU.NET (Larry Barello)
Subject: Re: Bending Tubing

One thing I didn't see mentioned about bending copper tubing is that
you can't just bend any old piece of tubing. You need to get tubing 
that is sold for bending. Then you can use a tree limb, you hands or
a tubing bender to make your racking tube.

Another nifty little gadget you can make with 6" of surplus tubing:
Drill several 1/16" holes around the tubing about one inch from one 
end.  Stick that end into the outlet of your chiller/racking hose.
WHen racking the holes will suck in air and aerate your wort.  No need
to shake the carboy after using one of these gizmos.  

 - Larry Barello

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 11:56:40 -0600
From: DAMON_NOEL/HP0800_01%mailhub.cs.itc.hp.com at cs.itc.hp.com
Subject: nastyeast

Thanks for all the feedback on copper coils and yeast care.  The answer to
the problem I posted a couple issues back is now clear.  The batch brewed in
the new mash tun with copper coil finally went into the static phase at an
FG of 1.006, down from OG of 1.054.  VERY strong phenol smell/taste.  It
seems a fair conclusion that my free liquid yeast culture was contaminated
since standard sanitation procedures were followed. 5 gal>>>drain.  I think
the lesson learned is to plate out any yeast of possibly suspect origin.  I
am reasonably sure that wild yeast strains somehow entered the original
culture.  In the plating process do wild yeasts look significantly different
from the good guys?  I'm sure that bacterial infections would show up but
how about the odd yeasts?

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 15:04:31 -0400
From: djt2 at po.CWRU.Edu (Dennis J. Templeton)
Subject: Wyeast 3056


In a previous article, wtschant at magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
 (William R Tschantz)wrote:

>A quik question about Bavarian Wheat yeast from Wyeast.  I know that it is made
>of 50 % S. cervisiae and 50 % S. Delbrucki.  My question is when I make a 
>starter culture of this will the S. Delbrucki also grow in regular DME starter 
>or do I have to have some wheat malt included in the starter for the Wheat 
>yeast to grow?
>
>Thanks for the Help,  Bill

Here is a quick and a long answer from my experience of several months

1) it will grow fine on pure malt extract

2) despite being "50%" of each strain, I was not convinced that my original
pack of 3056 was a 50:50 mix  of anything.  I took the original package
(that was 2 weeks past the date on the cover, always refrigerated) and
opened it sterily and streaked it for single colonies on a malt-agar plate.

I got numerous single-colonies, and I expected to be able to tell the two
species apart by their appearance on the plate, at least after several
days, since someone here had advised me so.  However, nearly all of the
colonies looked the same, large, wrinkled (after a week) and very pale
brown.  With some scrutiny I picked out a few that were smaller, and when
re-streaked onto fresh plates this phenotype was retained.  

So I got 2 colony types; large and wrinkled, and tiny.

I then grew up a dozen colonies in 200 ml cultures of wort (unhopped,
sterile) and fermented them out.  Upon tasting, all 9 of the large colonies
seemed identical, estery, slightly sweet, with the characteristic Weissbier
cloveyness.   The three "tiny" colonies were distinctly different, very
dry product with little ester taste.  

I conclude that there were indeed two organisms, quite distinct, in my
3056, but at least by the time I got it opened one was vastly predominant
to the other.

What I've been doing for my weissbiers now is to make two starters, one
with the "Large" (estery) colony and innoculate that upon cooling the wort.
 I then innoculate the fermenting wort with the "tiny" (dry, non estery)
starter at day 3. I want to give the wort a few days to develop the clovy
tang before hitting it with the other culture.

Has anyone out there similar or different experience with 3056? Does anyone
know if wyeast really tries to make it a 50:50 mix?

thanks,
dennis

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 11:14:56 PDT
From: jamesm at chips.com (James Margeson)
Subject: Brewpub Crawl, San Francisco Bay Area


I thought this might be of interest to people who live in or near the San
Francisco Bay Area:


Brewpub Crawl
Sunday, June 14

Breakfast buffet, 9 am, at Winchester Brewing Co., 820 S. Winchester Blvd.,
San Jose.  The tour visits:
     20 Tanks
     Marin Brewing Co.
     Bison Brewing Co.
     Pacific Coast Brewing Co.
     Buffalo Bill's
     Brewpub-on-the-Green
and ends up back at Winchester for a dinner buffet.  Winchester's Red and 
Porter will be served on the bus.  Price is $50.

Call Frank or Tam at (408) 243-7561 for a reservation.  Deadline is May 31 
and it may fill up quickly.  Tell them I sent you, and ask them for a tour.


Jim Margeson


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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 15:23 CDT
From: fjdobner at ihlpb.att.com
Subject: Beer Head


Would anyone happen to know if allowing beer to ferment with trub present 
cause a deleterious affect on beer head? I have serious staying power problem
with beer head. It is not detergent, it is not grinding grain too fine, it
has nothing to do with oils present (since I eliminated all of these). Has
water quality anything to do with head?

Frank Dobner

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 16:49:54 EDT
From: "Spencer W. Thomas" <Spencer.W.Thomas at med.umich.edu>
Subject: G.W. Kent

korz at iepubj.att.com writes:
 > You can get two of the most dominant beasties from G.W.Kent in Ann
 > Arbor Michigan.  You'll have to go through your retailer.  My
 > retailer charged me $8 each for Brettanomyces Lambicus and
 > Pediococcus Cerevisiae.

G.W. Kent has a small retail outlet at the warehouse in Ann Arbor.
They just won't sell retail by mail.  Prices are generally a little
lower than the same product in a retail store, but higher than
wholesale.   (e.g., Coopers Light extract 1.7kg was about $9 at Kent,
and $12 at a local HB store).  It's open 9-6 M-F and 12-4 Sat.  Take
Morgan Rd. west from Platt just south of the landfill (about a mile
south of I-94).  They're located at the end of the road, right by US
23.  

One question, Al.  How do you keep the Brettanomyces and Pediococcus
from infecting your other brews?

=Spencer W. Thomas 		HSITN, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
spencer.thomas at med.umich.edu	313-747-2778

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 19:28:22 EDT
From: perley at easygoer.crd.ge.com (Donald P Perley)
Subject: hops, water

>  Re. a question on hops: The first year will not yield any hops to speak
>of; it takes at least 2 years before you get any measurable harvest, and it
>is also dependent on the type of hops.  Cascade grows faster in general than

My hops, of questionable descent, but somewhat Saazish were obtained from
the farm of a family of Czech descent.  They had been growing on their farm
since prohibition :-).  Anyway, it yielded 8 ounces the first year.
That is, I planted the root in the fall, and harvested 8 ounces the next
September.  They claimed the fall is the best time to take root samples and
plant them.  I guess the commercial guys take them in the fall and sell them 
in the spring?  I have never heard of commercial roots being available 
in the fall.

 -don perley

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Date: Fri, 29 May 92 19:32:04 GMT
From: martin wilde <martin at daw_302.hf.intel.com>
Subject: Re: Re: State with most micros/brewpubs per capita


Not to be outdone:

> As I understand, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong :-),
> Vermont has the largest number of micros/brewpubs per capita:
> 
> Population: circa 550,000
> Micros/Brewpubs:
>  Catamount
>  Vermont Pub & Brewery
>  Mountain Brewers (Long trail ale)
>  Otter Creek
> 2 others in brattleboro I believe, but only counting the 4 above,
> we get about 1 micro/brewpub per 150,000 residents.

> Rich

Oregon ---

Population: circa 3,250,000
Micros/Brewpubs:
 Widmer Brewing/BrewPub (2) - Portland
 FullSail Brewing/BrewPub (2) - Hood River, Portland
 Bridgeport Brewery/BrewPub - Portland
 Oregon Trail Brewery/BrewPub - Corvalis
 SteelHead Brewery/BrewPub - Eugene
 Deschutes Brewery/BrewPub - Bend
 Umpqua Brewery/BrewPub - Roseburg
 Rogue Brewery/BrewPub (2) - Ashland, Newport
 Portland Ale/BrewPub - Portland
 McMenamins - (10) - Hillsdale, Salem, Eugene, Roadhouse, Oak Hills, Edgefield, 
             Lincoln City, Fulton, Highland, Murray Road.

There maybe 2 others I believe, but only counting the 22 above,
we get about 1 micro/brewpub per 147,000 residents...

If you just look at Portland metro area alone: 
 15 Micros/BrewPubs/1.5 million people, you get 1 micro/brewpub per 100,000 
 residents.  People have said there are more McMenamins Pubs/Brewpubs in
 the Portland area than McDonalds...  (better food at least - A pint of
 ale beats a BigMac anyday!!!).


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #892, 06/01/92