Friday, January 2, 2009

Homebrew Digest #5478 (January 02, 2009)

HOMEBREW Digest #5478 Fri 02 January 2009


FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
Frambois (Joe Katchever)
RE: Using a coolship to get enough HSA (Kai Troester)
Removing Cold Break (Fred L Johnson)


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Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:14:54 -0600
From: Joe Katchever <joe at pearlstreetbrewery.com>
Subject: Frambois

Hello all-
I brewed up a Frambois for the first time since 2000. I am interested in
adding fruit without refermentation. Last time, I filtered it and added
pureed fruit directly to the kegs. I will not be filtering this batch,
since I no longer have the filter.
The batch is 85 gallons into the fermenter. I added about three gallons
of puree when the fermentation was trailing off and it roared back to
life. The main reason for not wanting refermentation is that I don't
want to increase the alcohol any more than it is and more importantly,
that I don't want the CO2 to carry of the fresh aromatics of the fruit.
I am interested in your experiences and ideas.
Cheers,
Joebob


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Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:26:13 -0500
From: Kai Troester <kai at braukaiser.com>
Subject: RE: Using a coolship to get enough HSA

Happy New Year to you all!

Just catching up on some e-mail:

> I just came across an abstract of a very old paper:
>
> Briant, L. "[Wort] Coolers - Use and Abuse of."
> J. Fed. Inst. Brewing, 1904, 10, 286-289.
>
> The paper is on open wort coolers (coolships) about
> which Briant surprisingly notes that "One of the most
> important objects of the cooler is to enable the wort
> to combine at high temperature (180-190F) with a
> suitable quantity of oxygen."
>
> Unfortunately in this abstract he doesn't explain why
> the HSA was desired. Any ideas?

Matt, I have seen similar studies and recommendation in older brewing
texts (late 1800's and early 1900's). Google scanned a lot of them and
makes them available on-line.

So I just searched for "Kuelhsiff Sauerstoff" and found this
interesting desciption in a German book from 1900: (I had to add a
line break so the line is less than 80 characters and I can post this.
Just remove the line break when putting this link into a browser)
http://books.google.de/books?
id=XwA4AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA856&dq=k%C3%BChlschiff+sauerstoff#PPA856,M1

It states that it was desired to oxidize wort components like sugars,
protein and hop compounds. It also mentions an experiment in which the
oxidation of maltose lead to a much darker color of that wort. It
doesn't say why the chemical binding of oxygen was seen as good for
the beer.

But this book:
http://books.google.de/books?
id=pk4SAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA495&dq=k%C3%BChlschiff+sauerstoff#PPA496,M1

It talks about mechanical and chemical oxygen absorption and mentions
that there was an assumption that chemical oxygen binding (HSA) would
benefit the break formation. But it also mentions experiments that
were done to show the opposite. In addition to that it says that
mechanical oxygen binding is necessary for a good fermentation and
that this happens when the wort is cold. In particular when the wort
is run over a Berieslungskuehler after the cool ship. Such a cooler
runs a thin film of wort a surface that is cooled by pipes filled with
ice water. Lastly it mentions that the time on the cool shiop should
be reduced for lighter beers (chemical O2 absorption darkens the beer)

But Steve already mentioned that wort oxidation is a big No-No in
today's brewing. Mainly because the oxidation that leads to darker and
less stable beers and the biological instability that comes fom such a
large wort surface being exposed to the air. It is really hard to find
any operating cool ships in German breweries these days. Even in small
museum breweries.

My take is that brewers thought that it would be good to oxidise the
wort, as much as they also thought that it would be good to boil the
heck out of it (2+ hr boil with more than 15% boil-off) but that
modern brewing science and the demand for lighter and more shelf
stable beer brewed with less energy has changed these believes.

Kai


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Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2009 11:52:14 -0500
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Removing Cold Break

Some/many of us, especially those of us who use counter-flow
chillers, will allow the chilled wort to stand in a container
(fermentor) at cold temperatures (below fermentation tempeature) for
some period of time, even overnight, to allow the cold break to form
maximally and to settle, after which the clear wort is carefully
removed from the cold break, transferred into a fermentor, and then
the yeast is pitched. I have never done this since I started using a
counter-flow chiller and have lived with cold break in my fermentor,
but I understand (according to Greg Noonan) that cold break in the
fermentor is to be avoided. For those of you who allow the cold break
to settle before transferring to the fermentor, how much volume do
you typically lose by this practice? I suspect that in a high gravity
wort the break does not settle very well, and one would lose a large
portion of the wort accordingly.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA

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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5478, 01/02/09
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