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


Contents:
  Brewing Experience (Brewing Chemist)
  Corona speed (Ed Westemeier)
  Beginner Hop Question (Carlo Fusco)
  specific gravity program ("Ray Brice")
  Stirring, Lupulin, Flour (Jack Schmidling)


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Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 12:02:48 -0600
From: walter at lamar.ColoState.EDU (Brewing Chemist)
Subject: Brewing Experience


Howdy Fellow Brewers,
	You guys had to bring it up didn't you.  I thought back through
my two years of brewing experience, and had never really had a disaster.
Sure there were about three exploded bottles, and some beer that spoiled
over the hot summer in my second story apartment, but nothing really 
major.  Then you guys start talking about such things, and like magic, 
it happened to me.
	Last Friday night I was leisurely cleaning up my equipment, 
getting it ready to brew my peach weizen and the mead I had planned
for the weekend.  I was mostly done, when I decided to rack my pumpkin
ale to a secondary to help it clear, as I was planning on bottling
this weekend also.  Anyway, I was fermenting my pumpkin ale in a glass
fermenter given to me by a fellow homebrewer.  The reason I received
this carboy was thay it had a crack in the neck from pouring hot wort
in it.  Mitch had the right idea in throwing it out, but the male 
instinct in me would not let him throw it out.  I said "I'll take that.
It'll be good for racking into at bottling time."  And this is what
I did with it, until last week.  I used it as a primary because my
other glass carboy was full, and my plastic carboy was dirty.  I know
I should have cleaned the plastic carboy, but I didn't.  Anyway, my
pumpkin ale is now in the flawed glass carboy, and I am carrying it
across the room so I can rack to the secondary.  I am careful of the
neck, and have one hand under the carboy supporting the weight, and the
other wrapped around the side for balance.  The carboy started slipping
so I adjusted the underneath hand, and out of instinct grabbed the top
of the carboy with my right hand to steady it.  When I did this I
knocked the top clean off at the crack, and cut my index finger at
the same time.  Luckily the carboy was just above the table I was
taking it too at the time, so it did not crash to the floor, but
rather just fell a couple inches to the table.  Having no bandaids
in the house, I had to make due with cheese cloth and scotch tape.
The cut wasn't too deep, just painful.  But, it still could have
been worse.

Live long and prosper,

   Brian J Walter               | I ) I I <~ I_I |  |~~|      Relax,     |~~|   
   Colorado State University    | I \ I_I _> I I | (|HB|   Don't Worry,  |HB|) 
   walter at lamar.colostate.edu   |     ROCKS!     |  |__| Have A Homebrew |__|

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Date: 07 Sep 1992 10:48:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: homebrew at tso.uc.EDU (Ed Westemeier)
Subject: Corona speed

Chuck Cox asks:
> Once the mill is electified, how fast can I run it before something
> bad happens?  What are the symptoms of a too-fast grind?
 
One of our local club members did some extensive experimenting with
an electric drill attached to a Corona (after gettting the plates
adjusted to his liking).
 
The result of his research was that anything faster than one crank per
second gave unacceptable results (too much flour).  A cheap adapter
from the local hardware store stabilized his drill at 60 rpm and he is
now a very happy camper who makes some pretty terrific beer.
 
- --  Ed Westemeier  --  Cincinnati, Ohio  --

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Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 14:06 EST
From: Carlo Fusco <G1400023 at NICKEL.LAURENTIAN.CA>
Subject: Beginner Hop Question

Hello,

As a beginner who is just starting to experiment with his brew, I have a few 
questions.  I am an extract brewer and have just finished Charlie's book.  
(I now know there is more to brewing beer than following the instructions on
the tin of syrup)  The first thing I did was to stop using corn sugar and use 
dry malt extract. Also, I am now starting to use hops.

1) I added hops to my last brew for the first time. I did not want the hassel 
of sparging the leaves so I improvised. I boiled the hops in a small pot of 
water for 30 minutes. (I used pellets)  I then used a coffee filter to add 
the hop water to my boiling wort. I stirred it in and transfered it to a open 
primary.  Is this an acceptable way to add the bittering qualities of hops to 
my brew? Or, am I missing something really important by not boiling them in 
my wort? 

2) My last batch of beer is undercarbonated. I used 1 cup of corn sugar to 
prime 5 gallons.  It has been sitting at room temp. for 2 weeks now and still 
the problem persists.  I think it is because I did not leave a large enough 
air space in the bottle. If I pour out some of the beer and recap the bottles 
and leave them for another week, will carbination increase? If I do this will 
the risk of contamination greatly increase? Will there still be enough sugar 
and active yeast in the bottle to further increase carbination?

Thanks for any advice you can give.
Carlo Fusco
g1400023 at nickel.laurentian.ca

P.S. I am posting these questions because I really need help and because of 
the plea not to blast beginners in the last digest. 

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Date: Mon, 7 Sep 92 18:15:53 MST
From: "Ray Brice" <ray at hwr.arizona.edu>
Subject: specific gravity program


For those of you who use a UNIX operating system,
the following program written in AWK will do the
specific gravity conversion for any temperature.
It could easily be converted to "C" if necessary.
Simply remove header information and save to
any directory as spgrav (or name of your choosing), 
then make executable by typing: chmod +x spgrav.

Execute by typing "spgrav" or your new name.

Thanks to C. Lyons for the polynomial fit and
formula.

			<cut here>
- -------------------------------------------------------

#!/bin/nawk -f
#
# spgrav - calculates specific gravity of beer wort
# 				at any temperature
# usage: spgrav <gravity temperature>
#


BEGIN {
if (ARGC != 3) {
	print "spgrav: convert specfic gravity to 60 deg reading"
	print "usage:  spgrav  <gravity  temperature>"
	print "example:  spgrav  1.038  95"
	} # end if
else {

gravity=ARGV[1]
temp=ARGV[2]

if (gravity > 2 || temp < 0 || temp > 220 ) {
	print "error reading input"
	print "example:  spgrav  1.038  95"
	} # end if

else {

temp2=temp*temp
temp3=temp*temp*temp
newspgrav = 1.313454 - 0.132674*temp + 0.002057793*(temp2) \
				- 0.000002627634*(temp3)

	print
	print "specific gravity of " gravity " at " temp " degrees =" 
	printf("%s %5.4f %s\n\n", "specific gravity of",  \
				gravity + (newspgrav/1000), \
				"at 60 degrees.");


	} # end else

	} # end else

} # end BEGIN

- -----------------------------------------------------------
							<cut here>


 -Ray Brice
ray at hwr.arizona.edu


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Date: Mon, 7 Sep 92 16:13 CDT
From: arf at ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling)
Subject: Stirring, Lupulin, Flour

 
 To: Homebrew Digest
 Fm: Jack Schmidling
 
 >From: pmiller at mmm.com
 
 >OK, question #1:  Why is stirring the mash unacceptable?...
 
 >Please, please, somebody straighten this out for me.  I'm hopelessly
 confused.  Thanks!
 
 Your confusion results from the not-so-obvious fact that there are a great 
 many "unacceptable" ways of doing things that work just fine.  This is one 
 technology with few absolutes and this forum and others like it are great 
 ways of finding out what works for OTHERS.  It is up to you to find what 
 works best for you.
 
 Another tip I learned here that has since worked well for ME is called 
 "cutting the mash".  To maximize extraction, I had been stirring it 
 thouroughly AFTER drawing the first 5 gals and letting it settle again before 
 finishing the sparge.  By using a long, thin knife to cut down almost to the 
 bottom, occassionallly during the sparge,  I eliminated this extra delay.  I 
 cut from the outside/in like spokes in a wheel and a few circles in the 
 middle after every gallon or so.  This assures that all the mash is exposed 
 to the sparge water and does not affect the filter bed.
 
 >From: Paul dArmond <paulf at henson.cc.wwu.edu>
 >Subject: Isomerizing lupulin powder?
 
 <When I was packing my recent hop harvest I kept sheets of newsprint under
 the drying screens to catch the yellow resin that falls off the hops
 during handling.  I now have a vacuum sealed bag with 1/2 ounce of the
 orange lupulin resin powder.
 
 Don't know nut'n bout isomerizing but unless you processed "tons" of hops, I 
 would think 1/2 oz of lupulin was a significant proportion of the lupulin 
 originally harvested.  Seems to me you would want to return it to the dried 
 hops to get its true yield.
 
 >From: eisen at kopf.HQ.Ileaf.COM (Carl West)
 >Subject: re: flour catcher
 
 >If you use a Corona grain mill, as I do, you cannot avoid getting some
 >flour along with your cracked grains.  Too much flour can lead to a stuck
 >sparge.
 
 I hate to downplay the importance of having a proper roller mill but 
 according to Noonan, flour should not EXCEED 10% of the total crushed malt.  
 He defines flour as the stuff that will pass through a 100 mesh screen.  
 That's a lot of flour.
 
 It is important to understand that there is a step in the process that is 
 intended to deal with the flour and is known as "doughing in". This is the 
 thorough mixing of the malt with a small amount of warm water prior to 
 commencing the actual mash.  If properly mixed and wetted, the flour  
 virtually disolves and will be held in suspension when the rest of the water 
 is added and becomes the first to convert because it is so readily available 
 to the enzyme-rich water.
 
 If your process does not include "doughing in", you should either figure out 
 a way of working it into your process or get rid of the flour. 
 
 I have been preaching about water temperature being the main cause of "set" 
 mashes but it just occurred to me that I have never seen the term "doughin" 
 used by anyone but me in this forum.  If this means that the plastic bucket 
 gang is not "doughing in", it could be worth looking into.
 
 js
 
 
 
 
 

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End of HOMEBREW Digest #964, 09/08/92