Brewing Master

Question:

Well as it happens a friend of mine (we’re collaborating on a book on Continental Darks…) works for the Conglomerate which owns Jever. he says they yse Tettnang for the aromatic hops, and whtever is cheapest for the bittering hops. He said whatever else they say about "herbs" is likely marketing hype….         JaH — Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalts

Response:

HOMEBREW Digest #1187                        Thu 22 July 1993         FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES                 Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator Contents:   On sugars (Chris McDermott)   Brewing Techniques, Issue 2 (Timothy J. Dalton)   The Tumbleweed Report (Part 2) (Kinney Baughman)   The Tumbleweed Report (Part 3) (Kinney Baughman)   Re: Jever Pils (Richard Akerboom)   Noble Aroma Hops (Jeff Frane)   Mash volume (Alexander R Mitchell)   Another data point in the hot break debate (arne thormodsen)   sharing articles? (Bob Devine)   Belgian yeast strains (Jeff Cook)   uh-oh! (Jim Sims)   Cheap Carboys (ADM_WWIBLE)   Keg parts supplies, BCI in Brighton TN (21-Jul-1993 1039 -0400)   info on Welsh ale and/or bitter (Jerry M. Trott)   carboys (Rich Ryan)   Very Smooth Ales (root)   Guinness Cans ("Rad Equipment")   Is Pete’s a real Micro? / Pub List Changes (JOHN.L.HALE)   Heat Output of Stoves (Michael L. Hall)   Dry Hopping ("Thomas J. Baker")   Siphoning (Kevin V Martin)   How do I read HB files via FTP?  (billok)   Yakima & Portland (Jeff Frane)   CO2 Cylinder filling and gas (Karen Jdsgeoac Hyrum GEOACOUSTIC)   Papain -how does it work? (demosth236)   (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.  On sugars In HBD #1184 William A Kitch says:   Dark sucre-candi:  Philip Seitz says as near as he can tell rock candy=            sucre-candi.  Piere Rajotte says in _Brewing Belgian Ales_            that sucre-candi is sucrose.  The dark sucre-candi is            caramelized before being crystalized.  Nobody seems to have            a US source.  I’ve tried camelizing my own sucrose.  It’s            not hard to do.

Correct; but more specifically it is inverted sucrose. This seems (at least to me) to be important. While I have not tried it myself, I know of at least one person that has used carmalized sucrose in belgians with sucess.  I think that carmalized *inverted* sucrose would work even better.  If you want to carmalize it yourself you can do so in a sauce pan over the stove.  Remember to use *low* heat and stir *continually*. There is stong consensus that too much sucrose adds a characterist cidery taste.

I agree with this to a point.  My experience leads me to beleive that if sucrose (or almost any sugar for that matter) is used judiciously that cidery flavors can be easily avoided.  I think the key is to avoid sugars in all low gravity beers (say < 1.040) and in moderate (say 1.040 – 1.60) gravity beers not to exceed 20% extract from sugars.  I think that extract brewers should be carefull here to really consider that quality of the extract that they are using.  Some of the cheaper extracts may contain a significant quantity of non-malt sugars to start with.  In higher gravity brews (say 1.060) I think that the amount of sugar that can be used is only limited to what the yeast can ferment.  What I mean by this is that you could use an infinite amount of sugar, but after a point even the most ethnol-tolerant strain will quit fermenting and leave the remaining sugar as is. On the other had high gravity Belgian ales call for sugar as an adjunct.  The purpose is to lighten the body and maltiness of these high gravity beers.  This is one thing that makes them distinct from say Barley Wine.

I think everyone would agree with this.  An all-malt tripple having the body of a dopple bock just wouldn’t cut the mustard, so to speak. Rajotte says Belgian brewers may add either glucose or sucrose to their high gravity beers.  Some say the already high maltose content hides the cidery flavor.

I read this in a slightly different light.  What I got out of it is that with a significantly high proportion of malt to sugar, the yeast would not produce those cidery flavors.  What’s your opinion? _ C.S. Draper Laboratory, Inc.              Voice:     (617) 258-2362 555 Technology Square                     FAX:       (617) 258-1131 Cambridge, MA 02139 (USA) Issue 2 of Brewing Techniques arrived yesterday. Only 42 pages, but packed with info. Feature: Diacetyl: Formation, Reduction and Control, George Fix. Articles: 1) Malt Extracts: Cause for Concern, Martin Ladahl           2) Methods of Sanitation and Sterilization, Maribeth Raines           3) Quick Results for Quality Assurance: Simple Lab Methods              for Microbrewers, Frank Commanday. Columns: 1) Troubleshooter, Dave Miller          2) Brewing in Styles: Oktoberfest Alternatives, Roger Bergen Forum: Blending and the Art of Salvage, Chris Studach Plus a pile of departments… Looks good! I’m glad I subscribed to this one.  The level of writing is geared towards advanced home brewers and micro’s & brewpubs.  Its refreshing to have a brewing magazine that doesn’t talk down to you.         Tim #include <standard.disclaimer – —- MIT, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Materials Etching Technology Lab On to the brewing equipment decisions we’ve made. The Brewhouse: The brewhouse is literally a house.  A 12′ x 12′ bedroom was plumbed and gas lines run in to give us our brewing room.  The boiler sits on top of 4 or 5 courses of concrete blocks encased by 2 x 4’s.  It’s located right by a window.  A window fan vents the place.  It gets a little hot in the summer.  But we’re working on cooling the place down now by adding more fans to the other windows.  In the winter it’s fine. The old living room (14 x 24′) is our "fermentation chamber" and office. Nothing fancy.  In one corner of the room we have an 8′ x 8′ walk in cooler.  Four insulated walls were built in one corner of the room along with a raised floor on 2 x 4 "floor joists".  Plywood floor and walls.  A compressor cools the room.  Cost was around $2000.  The restaurant uses the cooler some but mostly we have it filled with kegs going through final conditioning before being taken to the restaurant.  We store our malt and hops in there as well. In the winter we used a thermostatically controlled heater to keep the fermentation room around 65 degrees.  This past winter we had temperature fluctuations of plus or minus 5 degrees.  This isn’t ideal, I know.  But it works.  We’ve made some modifications to things this summer, so I think we can do better next winter and hold temps within 5 degrees. That’s good enough by anyone’s standards. During the summer, we use a common, garden variety window air conditioner. We just put a 11,000 btu air conditioner in a couple of weeks ago and with temperatures above 90 degrees, the fermentation room has been staying right at 65 degrees.  Again, pretty good. Fermenters: When Burton and I arrived in November, Tumbleweed was fermenting in 6 1/2 gallon carboys.  Some of you know that I designed the BrewCap.  Since Burton was a BrewCap fan, too, the first thing we did was attach BrewCaps to each of the carboys Tumbleweed had and turned them all upside down. At one point, we had 50 carboys turned upside down in a two-tiered rack merrily fermenting away!  For me it was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen!  But after a month, we realized the care and feeding of 50 glass fermenters was too labor intensive even using BrewCaps.  While the BrewCap works great for the average home-brewing operation, things were getting out of hand at the brewery.  Moreover, in December darned if Bart didn’t trade for a 42 gallon stainless steel pot that had been salvaged from a cheese factory about 40 miles away.  So Burton and I found ourselves dealing with 40 gallon batches after just one week of brewing at 30 gallons. It had become clear that we had to move away from carboys.  And I want to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of one this forum’s esteemed members for being the prime cause for us having to move up in size.  We were using Larry Barello’s idea for a wort aerator and it was foaming the beer up so badly (nicely?) that we could only fill a carboy half-full before moving on to the next one and by the time we had come back to the first one, the foam usually hadn’t settled down so we had to shake and stir and do whatever to collapse the foam head so we could get the blasted carboys full!!  Thanks, Larry!  Filling carboys had become a nightmare. But what to do?  Glass is one of the best materials in which to ferment and carboys weren’t working out.  Stainless steel would have been great but we couldn’t find them much less afford them.  Bart, on the recommendation of someone in the brewing industry had purchased three 31 gallon black HD polyethelene drums back in October but we were reluctant to … read more »

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