Brewing Master

Question:

HOMEBREW Digest #1111                        Fri 02 April 1993         FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES                 Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator Contents:   Hunter update, spent grain (Ulick Stafford)   Jockey Box and *FOAM* ("Wayde Nie, Eng.Phys. II")   RE: Questions (""Robert C. Santore"")   Whitbread yeast (Mike Rego)   5 liter Kegs (RADAMSON)   re:quick ferments & conditioning (Jim Busch)   Style snobs (NOT!) ("Spencer W. Thomas")   maple beer (John Edens)   "Samiclaus" aka strongest beer in world, for now? (Andrew Lickly)   Test Drive (Jack Schmidling)   Re:immersion cooler length (Sherman Gregory)   YEAST CULTURES ("William A Kitch")   Beer Balls/ 5L minikegs (atl)   king Kooker (Roy Rudebusch)   king Kooker (roy.rudebusch)   schwarzbier (Brian J Walter (Brewing Chemist))   Sediment ("Thomas Gilks" )   Legality of Mailing Homebrew (Troy Howard)   Grain Mills (Kenneth Haney)   Iodophor (Lee=A.=Menegoni)   Manitoba Brewers (Phil Hultin)   ICE BEER IS ALREADY HERE (Phil Hultin)   That "Styles" Issue (Martin A. Lodahl)   Yeast Culturing Equipment (Brian J Walter (Brewing Chemist))   Using Sulphites (Mike Lemons)   1993 AHA NATIONAL HOMEBREW COMPETITION (Bob Gorman)   (Articles are published in the order they are received.) Send UNSUBSCRIBE and all other requests, ie, address change, etc.,   then you MUST unsubscribe the same way! If your account is being deleted, please be courteous and unsubscribe first. 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 don’t send me requests for back issues – you will be silently ignored. I would like to update my Hunter post in 1107.  I have been informed that a Hunter Airstat is what is normally used.  Its main use is controlling windowe air conditioners and so can easily handle Freezer loads.  It is simply plugged in and the freezer plugged into it.  I don’t know how available they are.  I didn’t see one in any hardware stores but now that the seasons are changing they may become available. BUt to update my description of how to use the regular heat/cool home thermostat.  I found the 9V battery to be useless for running the relay. It seemed to go flat in a day (and I thought relay loads were low!). I replaced iot with an old 9V power supply that I had lying around. 6V will also do it, and maybe there would be no problem with a 120VAC relay. Otherwise I am now very pleased with the performance.  I like the simple way of adjusting the range.  I have been informed that a method for modifying the thermistor based airstat with a resistor was posted a while back, and this would seem to be a less complicated approach than mine.  But hey, if you can’t get an airstat, this is an alternative. David Mackensen asked about spent grain.  The best thing is to feed it to livestock, if you know a farmer nearby.  You can use a little in bread, but it usually ends up a little solid.  Or do what I do, compost it.  It makes a fine mulchy compost, especially if you forget about it and leave it rotting in your cooler for a week before dumping it     Pabst Blue Ribbon!’               | Notre Dame IN 46556 In HBD number 1108 Andy Anderson asks:          4.   When sparging in my extract brews, I filter out the          hops as well as hot & cold break proteins and plop the gunk          onto some cheese-cloth.  When I’m finished filtering, I          squeeze the cheese-cloth to wring out the last liquid back          into my wort.  An I screwing up because my "naked" hand is          squeezing out the juices?  Am I introducing bacteria as          well as skin oils?  How should I be doing this? Andy, if there is anything true about homebrewers it is that we all have our own ways of doing things and the ultimate test of our practices is the quality of the beer we make.  However, having never tasted your beers, I would object to this practice of yours on two grounds.  The first is certainly the increased chance of contamination that you bring up.  I hope you at least sterilize the cheese cloth by boiling.  The second objection I would make is that once you’ve gone through all the trouble to filter trub out of your wort, you want it to stay out!  The couple of ounces of extra wort that you can obtain by pressing the trub is probably not worth introducing trub into your fermenter.  My advice it to not do it at all! Syracuse, NY The recent discussion concerning Whitbread yeast has caught my interest.  At the end of February I brewed a porter using dry Whitbread Ale yeast.  It was a 12 gram packet with a serial number of 020412 stamped on the back.  I bought it along with my other ingredients the day before brewing. I did not have any trouble with this yeast during the ferment, and the resulting brew is lovely. Still being new to this, I have not yet tried a liquid yeast. Almost everything I’ve read talks of Wyeast.  How is that name pronounced, and is it the best? By the way, I just finished a bottle of Sam Adams Cream Stout. It has a distinct flavor that is hard to describe.  A slight suggestion of burned popcorn?  After a few bottles it becomes a familiar signature – kind of like the Guinness sour tang. Mike Rego Amherst, New Hampshire I received several inquiries regarding the 5 liter metal keg setups. Here’s what I know: The problem with getting the Dink, et.al. cans from the stores is that the tap they sell you for $2.00 is a gravity tap that you insert in bung, flop the keg upside down and ‘can-open’ a hole in what was the bottom (and now on top). Certainly makes the vessel non-recyclable. The solution is these bottom-feed CO2 cartridge taps made by Beer*King in Germany.  I originally got my tap(s) from Hoster Brewery (brewpub) in Columbus, OH – but they no longer ‘keg’ into 5 liter cans (and, therefore, don’t sell the taps anymore).  Dock Street Brewery in Philly kegs into 5 liter cans, but I’m not sure about the type of tap they sell.  Stoudt’s in Adamstown, PA likewise. A source that I do know of (and have no affiliation with) for both taps and empty kegs is:    Randy Martin, Proprieter    Brew Ha Ha, Ltd.    209 High St    Pottstown, PA 19464    800-243-2620 (orders)    215-326-2620 (Dr. Brew) Randy picked up a bunch of kegs from the now defunct State College Brewery (Penn State) and could probably set you up. The tap has a central stem the height of the can which feeds brew from the bottom.  There may be a small yeast burst in the first couple ounces of brew/foam when first tapping, but none whatsoever afterwards.  The tap also has an adjustable CO2 valve that I "tweak-up" a little at a time to intro- duce more gas – you can hear it enter and build up a bit, then back it off to zero.  I put more gas on for overnight storage, haven’t had any leaking. As far as kegging these guys go, I have usually filled a couple 3 kegs along with a couple dozen bottles.  And to keep it simple, I still bulk prime with either DME (.50 cup) or Corn Sugar (.75 cup) and just fill them as I go along.  Use your own standard priming rate, mine are low-to-fair carbonation level (British Ales, mostly).  Since the volume is larger than that of each bottle, the maturation time is increased (takes longer to reach carbonation), but is well worth it.  Handling and storage is the same as if they were bottles.  The 5 liter is equivalent to about 14 12oz bottles  - but it goes in the fridge better. For Sanitizing, I just drop a few tbls of Bbrite in, fill and soak for a couple hours prior to kegging.  So far the hardest part about these is forcing the bung in after I fill the keg.  I think I’ve been filling to high – I’m going to be leaving about a 1" head space next time. <Nope…and anybody who tells you otherwise is full of it. Some things just <can’t be rushed…You could jack it around and bottle early, but it wouldn’t <be the great beer you started out making… I have discussed this offline with in more detail with John, but let me say this attitude is utter nonsense. I have brewed several beers that were online 2 weeks from brew day.  The key is tons of clean yeast that flocculates well, and sometimes cold conditioning followed by forced carbonation.  Filtering

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Response:

Apparently UPS will mail homebrew, just don’t tell them what is in it. If you must declare a popular response is "Yeast Cultures" which is actually quite an honest reply … Looking forward to drinking your entries in Woodstock NY…         JaH         Site Director         New England/ Mid Atlantic 1st Round Site — Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalts

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Is the sanitizer Iodophor (sp?) harmful to septic systems?

By the time iodophor gets into your septic system it will be so dilute, I can’t imagine it would cause any problems.  You might not want to upend an entire bottle into the sink to find out, however, especially since it isn’t free. –Jeff — "Ultimately, you must forget about technique. The further you progress, the fewer teachings there are. The Great Path is really No Path."                                       –Morihei Ueshiba (O-Sensei)

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