Brewing Master

Question:

 Would other’s who have cultured from bottles of SNPA post or mail  your experiences?

         Please post, as I’ve been toying with this idea, too. —  I don’t speak for Fermilab, although my mouth is probably big enough…

Response:

The 2% decline in total beer sales last year is indeed saddening, but bearable considering the small increase of late.  BUT DON’T WORRY, this figure will increase signifigantly starting Sunday(my 21st birthday  :)

Actually, I don’t think that it is saddening.  My own consumption of commercial beer has declined by about 75% this year.  Of course, that is due to the fact that I started brewing my own.  Of course, my consumption of the top 10 beers remained static (at ~0%).  It does make you wonder if homebrewing is becomming a large enough hobby to impact commercial beer sales (of course, I am talking tenths of a percent here). Guido

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(Guido Marx) writes: (Adam Edwards) writes: The 2% decline in total beer sales last year is indeed saddening, but bearable considering the small increase of late.   Actually, I don’t think that it is saddening.  My own consumption of commercial beer has declined by about 75% this year.  Of course, that is due to the fact that I started brewing my own.

i don’t think it’s saddening either. my consumption of commercial brew has dropped by 95% since i started brewing homebrew.  i’ve never been particularly enthused with most commercial brews to begin with, and after experimenting with some of papazian’s recipes i find that even the simplest of them yields a much more tasty and charismatic brew than i can find commercially. i like the slightly sweet, not really bitter, but with lots of interesting flavors and/or spices kinds of beer. a local microbrewery has some nice beer that i used to enjoy very much along these lines, but because of the way they treated a group of us who went there for dinner, we no longer go there.  so i’m very pleased that i can produce some really nice stuff at home, and consequently have stopped my search for an acceptable commercial substitute.  and you know, what with the beer tax and the expense of commercial, it doesn’t bother me a bit!                         stormwind                         hell’s amazon

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The 2% decline in total beer sales last year is indeed saddening, but bearable considering the small increase of late.  BUT DON’T WORRY, this figure will increase signifigantly starting Sunday(my 21st birthday  :)                 Adam

Response:

I’m thinking of using recultured Chico yeast for my next brew. Plan 1: Buy some SN Pale Ale.  Open 3 bottles and pour the dregs        into a starter, treating them as I would a Wyeast culture. Plan 2: Same, but with three bottles of my own pale ale, brewed        from a fresh pack of Wyeast 1056.

 I recently tried both methods: used 5 bottles of SNPA (my wife drank  out of the 6th) in one starter, and 3 bottles of ~month old ale of  mine (pitched with a fresh pack of Wyeast 1056) in another starter.  The slurry from my own ale had ~twice the volume as that from SNPA  and fermented out within 3 days and smells "right". The SNPA starter  took 5 days to ferment out and smells "wrong". The starter was 24 oz.  of water boiled with 3 tblsp of extract, cooled, aeriated, then split  in half.  I brewed a batch last week with the starter of my own dregs, the SNPA  starter is in the fridge. I will taste some of this starter to see if  it’s as bad as it smells. I would reccommend using your dregs if the  beer tastes good to you.  Would other’s who have cultured from bottles of SNPA post or mail  your experiences?  Thanks,  dB

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HOMEBREW Digest #1062                        Mon 25 January 1993         FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES                 Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator Contents:   We are all going to Die (Joseph Nathan Hall)   Brews paper, WYeast date co ("Daniel F McConnell")   Munich malt made me a believer (Scott Bickham)   Motorizing the Corona (Jeff J. Miller)   Grape-Nuts (TM) and German Purity Law ("Hi, you don’t know me, but I play one  on T.V.")   re:Barleywine yeast & high alpha hops (Jim Busch)   PH Adjustments (Cisco)   mareseatoatsanddoeseatoatsand… ("John E. Lenz")   wyeast package swell/lag times (Tony Babinec)   Micah’s Barley Wine Recipe ("Bob Jones")   What I did on my Christmas vacation (Rob Bradley)   Re: solder (holding wort chiller together) ("Roger Deschner  ")   Old Wyeast 1008 with short lag (Rob Bradley)   Which dregs to culture? (Rob Bradley)   Barleywine Yeast Method (Jeff Frane)   chiller construction (was solder) (Carl West)   Barleywine problems (korz)   Protein levels (korz)   Contribution of boiling hops (Brian Smithey)   barleywine (Brian Bliss)   Hop Specifications (korz)   GUINNESS in Caribbean (korz)   All-grain barleywine (Joseph Nathan Hall)   Year end report (STROUD)   diminishing desperation (Peter Maxwell)   brewspaper (Brian Bliss)   Brewspaper, Super Corona (Jack Schmidling)   All-grain Red Ale recipes? (Jim Bayer)   (Articles are published in the order they are received.) Send UNSUBSCRIBE and all other requests, ie, address change, etc., Archives are available via anonymous ftp from sierra.stanford.edu.     (Those without ftp access may retrieve files via mail from     message to that address to receive listserver instructions.) **Please do not send me requests for back issues!** J. S. says, )  I would like to use this opportunity to re-address the nitrosamine issue    <sigh )  as these two malts are produced in exactly the way that produces the maximum )  precursors for this potent carcinogen.    <sigh Don’t you know that it’s all part of a Bavarian conspiracy to kill YOU, Jack?  And we’re all in on it, too. HH1/2K 2102 Ryan’s Run East        Rt 38 & 41             Maple Shade NJ 08052 Copyright 1992 by Joseph N. Hall.   Permission granted to copy and redistribute freely over USENET and by email.  Commercial use prohibited. From Jeff J. Miller: Mr. Charlie P. if your listening:  If these people did get there mailing

list from the Zymurgy subscription list I would like to indicate that I don’t appreciate Zymurgy selling/giving my name to them. I second that.  It seems obvious that the list came from the AHA.  Anyway the Pico Brewery article by Mike O’Brien and Dave West *IS* genuine.  No disclaimer, they are friends of mine.  Mike can’t spell well either, but I should think he knows how to spell his name by now!  Humor is one thing (spellin is anothur), but misinformation (sugar vs malt article) is quite damaging those new to the hobby. From James Dipalma: IMHO, there is no correlation between the date code and the time

required for the package to swell, as I’ve also had 1 month old packages take 6 days to swell.  As Rob mentioned, this is inconvenient, as timing if fairly important. In the past I’ve experienced the same thing and suspect that variable lag times have more to do with retail mishandling than product date codes. Darryl Richman writes: Lets clear up a misconception here. Real Munich malt, whether domestic or imported, has enzymes. It has sufficient enzymes to convert itself, and perhaps just a bit more. If you want to make a real dark Munich lager, then use Munich malt. I’ve made several bocks with high percentages of Munich (60-80%) and it works just fine.

I recently made a dunkelweizen with 5 pounds of malted wheat, 3.5 pounds of Munich malt, and some crystal and black malts thrown in for body and color.  My O.G. was 1.052, for a yield just under 30.  So the Munich malt not only converted itself, but also the 5 lbs. of malted wheat.  Just a data point. Scott about motorizing a corona by…           I simply removed the handle, inserted a bolt into the           threads, cut off the head with a hacksaw, and attach a           power-drill to the bolt.  I typically crush about 10-15 # at           a pop, and with the drill, this takes about 10 min.  I’m           sure I could get that down to two minutes if I had a 10#           hopper, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet….maybe           that old bottling bucket would be just the right size.

I did this same thing but hooked it up to a large motor complete with gears to reduce the spin to 140rpm.  This worked ok but I found my corona to be so sloppy in its production that the thing bounces all over.  I also ended up snapping a screw and a milled setup trying to use the setup.  I’ve pretty much given up on trying to do follow this path and am now building a roller mill. – — Jeff Miller                 Network Systems Corporation Advanced Development        7625 Boone Avenue North Okay, so one day I sittin’ down at breakfast eating my Grape-Nuts(tm) cereal, and I noticed the ingredients: Malted barley, wheat, salt, yeast. I was wondering what if I were to include yonder cereal in a mash and make a beer?  It seems logical since the aforementioned ingredients are in most beers that a beer could be made from it…. Secondly, I was wondering if there are copies of the German Purity Law out there anywhere on the net or if anyone has it… just out of curiosity… Danke in advance,  -chris – — In the last digest, Neil Mager asks about brewing barleywines with Thomas Hardys yeast.  I have done this, using a culture from a bottle of 1991 hardys.  The strain was isolated on a plate, so I would assume that I was fermenting with the bottling strain, which could certainly be different from what the initial ferment strain is in the Eldrige Pope Brewery.  Anyway, I grew a one liter starter, brewed a 26 degree P BW, and pitched the culture. It took off quite well, producing a large amount of blowoff. After a week or so of primary fermentation, the gravity was down to around 11 P (~1.044) and the ferment appeared to be dead.  At this point I racked quietly and pitched a ton of american ale yeast slurry (~150 grams of Old Dominion Ale yeast, off a uni).  This yeast happily began chewing up the remaining fermentables and the resulting finish was about  6 P (~1.024).  THe beer was a great BW, bit I would caution anyone who intends to use this method to be prepared for a high FG or be prepared to repitch. Neil also inquires about adding extract to produce a BW.  I feel this is a fine method, depending on your equipment.  When I was brewing in my older setup, getting a good volume of high gravity beer was not possible.  I would max out my system to yield about 5 gallons of 20-22 P wort, and add 3 lbs of DME.  Worked fine. Now that I have a larger mash tun, I just reduce my yield by 30%, increase my grain bill by 50% and make a small beer in my older kettle.  Last BW made with this method yielded a BW of 23P and a small beer of 8P.  The small beer was astringent from the spraging, but enough Kent Goldings took care of most of that flavor. Darryl Richman notes his experience with high alpha west coast hops.  I agree 100%, beers made exclusively with a low to medium alpha hop tend to much more pleasing on the palate.  Beers made with Chinook tend to much harsher, in my experience.  I do like the notes that Centennial hops can contribute, but I still try to keep the quantities added to the initial boil low.  THis hop does lend itself nicely to dryhopping, though. Anyone out there tried Liberty hops??  I have used the Mt Hood hops with fine results and intend to try Liberty soon. Jim Busch Last weekend I was brewing an all grain stout and following Miller’s suggestion of a ph of 5 to 5.6 for the mash – no problem with the hard water I have. But I couldn’t lower my sparge water to 6.5 from 8.1 using gypsum. After dumping in a teaspoon at a time and taking reading with a digital ph meter, I could only get the ph down … read more »

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