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


Contents:
  Mildew (gkushmer)
  Evil water jugs;  supplies in Boston area ("Roger Deschner  ")
  Celebrator (Stuart W. Pitner)
  fresh yeast! ("Spencer W. Thomas")
  Re:  Homebrew Digest #884 (May 19, 1992) (pmiller)
  berries and chlorine (steve porter)
  Brewing in Plasitc Water Jugs (GEOFF REEVES)
  Re: Homebrew Digest #899 (June 10, 1992) (Tom Hoff)
  RE: Evil water jugs (Homebrew Digest #899, June 10, 1992) (Darryl Richman)
  dry hopping rates (Sean J. Caron)
  Thumper blues (CCASTELL)
  growth curve ("Brett Lindenbach")


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

Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 8:26:45 EDT
From: gkushmer at Jade.Tufts.EDU
Subject: Mildew


Hello everyone, I've a question on airborne nasties:

Starting next week, I'm moving into another house.  This house has a 
basement that stays cool all through the summer (or so I've been told
by the current occupants) so that I can make ale without needing to 
worry about heat.

BUT (there's always a hitch) the basement floods on occassion meaning that
it can be very humid.  Because of that, there is an ongoing battle against
mildew and mold.

My question is - how safe would it be to put a carboy in the basement
with an airlock?  My initial impression is that the carboy with an airlock 
would be a sealed environment.  However, the mildew and mold spores are
everywhere.  When I go to bottle/keg or generally open the carboy for
readings, don't I risk airborne contamination?

Advice/suggestions will be most appreciated!

- --gk

(gkushmer at jade.tufts.edu)

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Date: 10 June 1992 09:25:00 CDT
From: "Roger Deschner " <U52983 at UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Subject: Evil water jugs;  supplies in Boston area

The plastic water jugs are made of PETE, a modern polymer. The problem is
not that the beer can do ANYTHING to it - in fact, PETE plastic was
designed to resist almost anything you could put into it. The problem is
that, in the cleaning process, there will always be microscopic
scratches, which will harbor miniscule residues of wort and bacteria, and
which can easily infect your SECOND batch made in the jug. The same
problem can affect any plastic equipment, especially the plastic tubs
(made of softer HDPE plastic) which are common in homebrew starter kits.
This is also a reason to periodically replace your plastic hoses. Glass
does not scratch like plastic, and is therefore more easily sanitized.
You'll just have to put up with its weight, cost, and the possibility of
breakage, but these are manageable issues.


In the Boston area, I recommend THE MODERN BREWER in Cambridge. Phone
number is 1-800-SEND-ALE. (catchy, eh?) Even though I'm in Chicago, I buy
from them by mail order.

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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 10:39:41 EDT
From: spitner at tso.uc.EDU (Stuart W. Pitner)
Subject: Celebrator

Hello fellow brewers!
 
Can anyone out there provide a recipe for Celebrator Dopplebock?
(or a facsimile thereof?)
 
Stuart Pitner
spitner at tso.uc.edu

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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 11:30:31 EDT
From: "Spencer W. Thomas" <Spencer.W.Thomas at med.umich.edu>
Subject: fresh yeast!

This weekend I went to my supplier to buy stuff (including yeast).  He
had a new shipment of Wyeast just in.  I bought a packet of 1007
(German Ale) dated June 3.  It was fully puffed within 6 hours of
breaking the inner packet!  Lag time?   What lag time???

=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: Wed, 10 Jun 92 10:37:27 CDT
From: pmiller at mmm.com
Subject: Re:  Homebrew Digest #884 (May 19, 1992)




















































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Date:         Wed, 10 Jun 92 09:59:52 CST
From: steve porter <PORTERSC at MAX.CC.UREGINA.CA>
Subject:      berries and chlorine

Good'day fellow brewers;
      I have been brewing beer for over a year now and have finally decided
  to get a bit more adventursome.  In some of the Beer guides that I've
  read there is mention of adding fruit to beer, especially the likes of
  raspberries, blueberries (here in the great white north we have another
  berry called saskatoons, very much like a blueberry but tarter), straw-
  berries, chokecherries etc.  So I would ask that anyone having recipes or
  knowledge of such a method of beer making to send me some information.
  I will submit a compilation of info and recipes.  As I sometimes do not
  have time to read every issue of HBD personal messages would be appreciated
  at bitnet: portersc at uregina1
      Another question that has had me wondering for some time is sterilization
  at present I am using the Hydrogen Metabisulphite recommended by the local
  brewstore.  However, I have read of using simple bleach.  Has anyone out
  there done this?  If so what strengths of bleach!  Rinse after!!  I read
  the discussion a few digests ago on the diff between sterilized and sanitized
  but I don't believe I saw any mention of the use of bleach.  Let me know if
  I'm wrong.  Again please send responses to my personal address.
                                          Thanx, Steve
                                          Bitnet: portersc at uregina1

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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 10:17:26 -0600
From: 105277 at essdp2.lanl.gov (GEOFF REEVES)
Subject: Brewing in Plasitc Water Jugs


I guess I can claim to be something of an authority on this subject. I
brewed 50 batches of beer this way. The first thing I would say is don't
worry about toxicity too much. I'm not dead yet :-) The second thing
I would say is don't do it. The big problem is sanitization. In our first
50 batches my brewing partner and I had quite a few contamination problems.
Some of this stems from the fact that we had inadaquate knowledge about
sanitization. For example we tried to sterilize with sodium metabisulfate
which isn't the best thing to use. We also never sterilized the water jugs
before using them figuring that they'd only been exposed to pure water. Of
course this isn't really true. Sure some of the water was purified by
reverse osmosis but some of it was just spring water. Even the purified stuff
doesn't guerentee that the jug was clean before the water was put in it.

You can probably use these jugs without infection if you treat them with
bleach water and don't re-use them but I wouldn't count on it. Glass is
much more reliable. Another problem is that the jugs aren't that sturdy.
You haven't lived until a full one has rolled off the counter on a warm
day and exploded all over your kitchen or laundry room! 

If you really want to make small batches that will fit in your refridgerator
why don't you use 1 gallon apple juice bottles or something? You might
even be able to find a 2-3 gallon bottle somewhere.

Finally, why are you worried about Mountain View water? I brewed in Menlo
Park and the water was pretty good for brewing and great for drinking. Does
Mountain View get Santa Clara well water instead of Hech Hechy (sp) reservoir
water?

See Ya
Geoff Reeves
Atomic City Ales

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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 9:29:46 PDT
From: Tom Hoff <hoff at sdd.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Homebrew Digest #899 (June 10, 1992)

Please delete me from this mailing list.

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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 09:49:47 PDT
From: Darryl Richman <darrylri at microsoft.com>
Subject: RE: Evil water jugs (Homebrew Digest #899, June 10, 1992)

tpm%wdl58 at wdl1.wdl.loral.com (Tim P McNerney) writes:
> I have had a number of replies to my posting yesterday warning of the
> danger of using the plastic water jugs for fermentation.  I had heard
> these also (which is why I asked about it), but I haven't received
> any information more specific than that it was bad.

Although I can't tell you specifically about the 2 gallon water bottles 
you are buying, I can tell you that there is a strongly held prejudice 
against any form of plastic in the homebrewing world.

The things to be aware of:
*  Many plastics are much more permeable to oxygen than glass
*  Non-food grade plastics may be made with plasticizers that can be 
leached out by ethanol, and besides what these may do to you after 
years of imbibing, they can taste pretty bad.
*  Plastic scratches easily, and those scratches can harbor infectious 
organisms.  It may therefore, be difficult to santize with contact 
sanitizers like iodophor, b-brite and bleach.

Ignore the AHA statistic that indicates that glass is over represented 
and plastic is under represented in the winners circle.  Although true, 
this does not necessarily mean anything about the qualities of glass 
and plastic.

I use a food grade trash can for my primary and 5 gallon plastic water 
bottles (made from polycarbonate, which is safe from attack by ethanol, 
although it is somewhat oxygen permeable) for secondaries.  I sanitize 
with boiling water, which doesn't need direct contact to work (the heat 
will get the little suckers), and doesn't need any kind of a rinse 
afterwards, either.

Glass is a good way to go, and I do use it for starters (although I 
just acquired a plastic baby bottle that I can pour boiling wort into 
and allow to cool).  But it can be dangerous to handle in wet and 
slippery environments, and the chemicals used to sanitize can be 
difficult to remove without compromising the sanitization.

My advice is to choose a method that fits in with what you want to do 
and then work to eliminate any problems that occur in your environment. 
 Good luck, and good brewing,

		--Darryl Richman


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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 17:12:47 EDT
From: Sean J. Caron <CARONS at TBOSCH.dnet.ge.com>
Subject: dry hopping rates



Ok, you dry-hoppers (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE):

I'm bitting the dry-hop bullet. Sign me up, i want that awesome dry-hopped
aroma. I ordered the ingredients for my latest batch and ordered a package
of Hersbrucker compressed hop plugs. I brewed up my batch last night as
follows:

	6lb	Laaglander extra-pale DME
	1lb	corn sugar
	.5oz	fuggles pellets a=4.0 (begging of boil)
	.5oz	Willemette leaf a=4.2 (  at  20 minutes)
	.5oz	    "       "     "   (  at  40 minutes)
		#1056 - American Ale

	OG = 1.060

The boil was a full 6 gallons (in my shiny new 10gal ss brewkettle! ;-), 
yeilding 5 gallons after the boil. It's merrily fermenting away in the 
primary now.

So how much of the Hersbrucker (a = 2.6) do i throw in the secondary? Is 
there some rule-of-thumb for amount of malt (SG?), amount of bittering hops,
and amount and/or alpha of the dryhop being used? Or is it as simple as
just throw in 1oz at transfer to secondary?


                                         thanks!
                                           sean

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Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 13:19
From: sherpa2!CCASTELL.ELDEC%mailsrv2 at sunup.West.Sun.COM (CCASTELL)
Subject: Thumper blues

In partial reponse to Russ Gelinas' question:

The 1989 CAMRA Good Beer Guide states that "Old
Thumper" has an original gravity of 1058 and describes
it as a "well-hopped strong bitter".  (These one line
descriptions leave a lot to the imagination!)



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Date: 10 Jun 1992 17:56:46 -0600
From: "Brett Lindenbach" <Brett_Lindenbach at qms1.life.uiuc.edu>
Subject: growth curve

                       Subject:                               Time:5:55
PM
  OFFICE MEMO          growth curve                          
Date:6/10/92
John Cotterill asks:
>Whenever I use Wyeast, I prepare a 12oz starter.  Timing when to pitch
a 
>starter has always been a mystery to me.  The general recommendation
is
>to pitch at high krauesen.  The trouble is determining when high
krauesen
>occurs.  With my starters, I am lucky to get 1/8 inch of foam on top,
and
>that is a best case!  What sort of krauesen do you get, and at what
point
>do you pitch the starter?

John, the idea behind this is that you want to pitch when the yeast are
most active. Here's a quicky on  how yeast (and other microorganisms)
grow (usually):
(monospace)

# |
  |               ---------
C |            +++
E |          ++
L |         +
L |        +
S |       +
  |     ++
  |=====
  ----------------------------
            TIME
   = lag phase
   + log phase
   - stationary phase

High krausen will occur during mid- to late-log phase, evidenced by the
healthy head. During this period, the yeast is gorging on all that nice
sugar, and dividing rapidly. Consequently, it will be able to take over
the wort very quickly. Thus, the yeast will be happy, and risk of
infection minimized. Happy brewing!
 :BDL




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End of HOMEBREW Digest #900, 06/11/92