Brewing Master

Question:

   I did notice that the keg that housed A&W root beer will tend to impart some of that taste to the beer, while the Pepsi and Mountain Dew kegs do not suffer from this.  The taste became noticable after two weeks in the keg, and after three weeks I was considering dumping the beer, since the taste quite overpowers a light ale.

The rubber seals should always be replaced when you first get a soda can. They become impregnated with syrup and thus the taste of the soda. The steel can’t take on any flavors. Enjoy! — Kurt Baudendistel —                                           — GRA Georgia Tech, School of Electrical Engineering, Atlanta, GA  30332-0250

Response:

       I did notice that the keg that housed A&W root beer will tend to impart some of that taste to the beer, while the Pepsi and Mountain Dew kegs do not suffer from this.  The taste became noticable after two weeks in the keg, and after three weeks I was considering dumping the beer, since the taste quite overpowers a light ale. The rubber seals should always be replaced when you first get a soda can. They become impregnated with syrup and thus the taste of the soda. The steel can’t take on any flavors. Enjoy! — Kurt Baudendistel —                                           — GRA

Thats a good point.  I’ve also found that a good overnight soak with a solution of about half a box of baking soda does wonders to kill the residue of root beer stink.  If it doesn’t work the first time, do it again.  Its always worked for me. NASTROVIA -julian "..and don’t get me any of that stinkin’ root beer"                             A "Hansen Brother"                               "SLAPSHOT"

Response:

1. How does one ferment in steel? 2. What are the preferred cleaners/sanitizers for stainless?   I do all of my fermenting in the carboy, dont think you want any sediment in the soda keg. As far as cleaners I use massive amounts of bleach with out any problems(only one batch, the second one this weekend).  Try force carbonation works great!!!!

        I use Pepsi kegs exclusively, and they do indeed work wonderfully. After the primary is done, I rack into the keg and pressurize it to about thirty psi with CO2, then shake it.  I do this until I no longer get a drop in pressure, and then place it in the basement to age for a week or so.  During that week I’ll shake it once or twice a day, adding more CO2 if it drops below about 15psi or so.  One week later I have a brew with proper carbonation and great taste.  I use bleach to clean with too.         I did notice that the keg that housed A&W root beer will tend to impart some of that taste to the beer, while the Pepsi and Mountain Dew kegs do not suffer from this.  The taste became noticable after two weeks in the keg, and after three weeks I was considering dumping the beer, since the taste quite overpowers a light ale. <Daniel R. Sorenson   Dod #1066  |If Iowa State University agreed with me < myself mercilessly in the pursuit of relaxation." — T. Weeds          

Response:

HOMEBREW Digest #871                         Fri 24 April 1992         FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES                 Rob Gardner, Digest Coordinator Contents:   JACK’S NA  (card)   Re: Cat’s Meow 2 – How do I keep my printer from exploding?  (Richard Foulk)   Removing blow-off (Conn Copas)   homebrew "steam" beer and hopping rate (Tony Babinec)   hopping a steam beer revisited (Bryan Gros)   Open bucket? (Michael J. Tuciarone)   SNPA yeast again (Keith Winter)   Phila. h-brew competition (STAFINIAK)   Re: Competition Question ("Roger Deschner  ")   Cat’s Meow (Rowka)   Nepal Alcoholic Beverage (Scott Bickham)   Shipping Homebrew (Richard Stueven)   Reviving Red Tail Ale yeast (Brian Smithey)   RE: Low mash pH (Michael J. Gerard)   IBU’S TO HBU’S  (card)   IBUs for a steam beer (Frank Tutzauer)   How a competition works. (/O=vmspfhou/S=nlorscl/DD.SITE=JSCPROFS/)   Wyeast Number? ("John Cotterill")   USE OF POLYCLAR AND LACTOSE (Eric Rose)   Re:  HBUs and IBUs??? (Walter H. Gude)   Here’s the first cut at the pepper beer (SHERRILL_PAUL)    i.e., address change requests, subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. **Please do not send me requests for back issues!**   Scott:   I think Jack made it perfectly clear what his expectations were.   There was a lot of dialog about whether or not it WAS a NA beer,   and whether his technique would indeed work.   My original tendecy was to tell you to cut the bull, but I’ll   give you the benefit of the doubt and just say that perhaps   you haven’t done your homework.                   /Mal Card Is there anyway I can break up the Cat’s Meow 2 recipe book…? psrev might do it on unix systems if cat’s meow is conformant postscript (ie, each page is self-contained).

No, psrev doesn’t like the cat’s meow at all. – —                                    - Bryan BTW, should I be skimming the foam out of the bucket?  Or was this the topic with no consensus?

People may remember that I proposed an experiment on this issue a while back. The basic idea was to take some blow-off, dehydrate it, then add it back to an acidified water/ethanol solution and note any effects on colour, taste, etc. I did something like this by taking the blow-off from a 5 gall stout brew and adding it back to 1 gall of acidified water. OK, I didn’t check ethanol solubility, but I did concentrate the solution by a factor of 5 times what would normally be encountered. The second thing I did was to take the 1/2 gall trub remaining after racking into the primary, and give it the same treatment. As we all know, both blow-off and trub taste foul. The dehydrated trub, in particular, was so intensely bitter that not even 1 litre of homebrew, applied orally, could alleviate the situation . The two substances appeared to be chemically different, as the blow-off dissolved with considerable effervesence, whilst the trub did not. Actually, the blow-off didn’t dissolve, because it preferred to sit on the bottom, despite all my best stirring efforts. After two weeks, it had had negligible impact on colour or taste. Conclusion – removing the blow-off is of questionable utility, unless you subscribe to the view that the yeast may metabolise it into fusel oil during its anaerobic phase, which is doubtful as far as I understand it. The dried trub contained considerable sugar and gave a rehydrated gravity of 6, with an opaque black colour. The solution tasted pleasantly bitter, which led me to wonder how much hop utilisation is lost by precipitation. On the strength of these observations, I decided to add a pound of sugar, some yeast, and ferment away. I deliberately gave the brew no nutrient and pre-boiled it to drive off any oxygen. Thus, in theory, I should be making a headache-inducing brew of fusel oil. At the moment, it is fermenting powerfully and tastes/smells quite pleasant. I’ll keep the list posted on further results, provided I survive – — Loughborough University of Technology          tel : (0509)263171  ext 4164 Computer-Human Interaction Research Centre     fax : (0509)610815       In the last HBD, Bryan Gros described his hopping of a "steam" beer. Is the homebrew "steam" beer adequately hopped?  I’d say that if it isn’t, he didn’t miss by much, so relax… The formula from the Hops Zymurgy issue is:    gram weight of hops to add =    Wort Volume*BU*.001 / (Percent Utilization*Alpha), and ounce weight of hops = 0.0353*gwh. In this case, filling in the formula:    gwh = (18.9*40*.001)/(PU*.085). Percent utilization is a function of the length of boil.  The Hop Zymurgy issue lists percent utilization at 30%, or 0.30, for a one hour boil.  However, you might want to downweight that a little bit, to take into account hop age, extent to which you attain a rolling boil, and such.  If you assume PU is 0.30, then one hop addition at one hour before end of boil should be 1.05 ounces of your Northern Brewers.  If you assume PU is 0.25, then one hop addition at one hour before end of boil should be 1.26 ounces of your Northern Brewers.  Since you split your one ounce addition of NBs into 0.75 ounces for 60 minutes and 0.25 ounces for 30 minutes, your bitterness falls a bit short of what it would be if the entire one ounce were added for an hour, as the above shows that 1.05 ounces would be needed assuming 30% utilization. If you are concerned that your beer will lack a little in bitterness, this is all the more reason to dry hop to compensate. Not that you’d get the same character as if you had boiled, but the character would certainly be appropriate.  Try Northern Brewers or even Cascades.  Although by all reports Anchor doesn’t use Cascades in Steam, I think they’re appropriate and it’s YOUR beer!  Try 1/2 to 1 ounce of Northern Brewers, or 1/2 ounce NB plus 1/2 ounce Cascades. Doesn’t Fred Eckhardt’s book show a recent Anchor Steam to be hopped slightly less than an older one–say, IBU equals 35?  If so, then your hopping is near-target.  Let’s hope that Anchor doesn’t knock that number down, as Anchor Steam is a world-class beer and just fine as it is!   The percent utilization ambiguity homebrewers face in practice helps explain IBU/HBU conversion.  If you assume 30% utilization in a one-hour boil, then    HBU = IBU/4.5 while if you assume 25% utilization in a one-hour boil, then    HBU = IBU/3.8 Hop additions at less than 60 minutes will have a smaller utilization number.  While it appears that hop utilization is not a linear function of time, you probably won’t be far off by assuming PU for a 30-minute hop addition to be around 13-15%. Finally, the 3.8 factor is useful to remember when reading recipes or the Zymurgy style guidelines.  This is not a criticism of what is in many ways a very fine book, but Papazian’s suggested HBU additions in one of TNCJOBH style tables in the middle of his book strike me as somewhat high for some of the styles.  Now, as our "mileage may very," these may in fact work well for the homebrewer getting a sort-of boil on the stove.  But, if you use fresh hops and get a good boil, then take that into account! Yesterday I posted a question about IBUs and HBUs and what to do when the measurements don’t line up. I’ve got some good responses on how to get the IBUs and convert, and most people said the numbers I reported (.75oz for 60min,  .25oz for 30min, .33oz for 2min, 8.5%AA) were a little low, but not bad. Unfortunately I forgot to say that these numbers were for a three gallon batch.  Now I guess maybe I’m a little high, especiall since the OG was 1.044. But thanks for the responses.  We’ll see what it tastes like and chalk it up to experience.                                      - Bryan I’m fermenting a steam beer right now.  For various reasons, my primary fermenter is an open plastic bucket.

I’ve probably got a misconception here, but when you say "open bucket" you really mean "plastic bucket with lid, and the lid is on right now, but there’s enough headspace in the bucket to simulate a truly ‘open’ bucket," right? Otherwise, if the bucket is really just open to the air, and you have it sitting in your bathtub or garage or whatever, you run the risk of some errant piece of dust landing in your wort and inoculating it with God-knows-what kind of yeast, bacterium, or mold. Anchor ferments its Steam Beer in an open trough, sure, but the trough is in a clean room under positive pressure. "Don’t try this at home." – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – My question is, since the Wyest cal. lager yeast is bottom fermenting, and I rack into the carboy leaving the stuff on the bottom behind,

… read more »

Response: