Monday, May 4, 2009

Homebrew Digest #5546 (May 04, 2009)

HOMEBREW Digest #5546 Mon 04 May 2009


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


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Contents:
Hop Support (Glyn and Mary)
Excess CaCO3 / Mineral loss during mash (Matt)
Mineral Loss ("A.J deLange")
Flag poles for hops (David Harsh)
MBAA Global Emerging Issues (Fred Scheer)


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Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 05:36:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Glyn and Mary <graininfuser at yahoo.com>
Subject: Hop Support


I can't not tell you for sure that it will not
work. But I don't think that two flag poles
will support 6 mounds of hops. There will
be a lot of weight pulling those poles
sideways. Add to that some wind loading,
and I don't think it will work.

I have always supported mine with telephone
poles. Not esthetically please perhaps, but
very effective.

Glyn
So. Middle TN
(under water at the moment)

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Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 07:01:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt <baumssl27 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Excess CaCO3 / Mineral loss during mash


Wow, what an incredible answer. Thank you AJ. I'll play
with the spreadsheet and see what the effects of major acid
production might be (say a few hundred ppm each of lactic
and acetic acids--in the worst case with a pure CO2
atmosphere).

- ---

Regarding mineral loss during the mash... aside from
chemical reaction, there's the simple fact that you leave
behind whatever water remains locked in the spent grain,
and some minerals that were dissolved in that water.

Matt



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Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:15:51 -0400
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Mineral Loss

Interesting that there are 2 posts on mineral loss in the mash tun on
the same day.

There are a couple of mechanisms at play. The first is that if you
have liquor that is super saturated with respect to calcium carbonate,
calcium carbonate is going to precipitate when that liquor is heated
which is, of course, one of the most popular ways of decarbonating
water: Ca++ + 2HCO3-- ---> CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O. As this reaction
is facilitated at higher pH (because bicarbonate converts to carbonate
at higher pH) and we all take care to keep pH low this is not likely
to be a major contributor to stripping calcium. You will have already
done this when you treated your highly carbonate water by boiling or
with lime. It has been my experience in brewing with synthetic waters
with high temporary hardness (e.g. Burton waters) that much of the
carbonate (and accompanying calcium) is left in the HLT i.e. it never
makes it into the mash (but remember that Burton water has lots and
lots of permanent hardness as well - this calcium does make it into
the mash).

That leaves malt phosphate which occurs as up to 2% of the grain
weight (as P2O5). It is in the form of phytin, a mixed salt of
myoinositol hexa phosphate. If the malt is low kilned the enzyme
phytase will decompose phytin into myoinositol and inorganic phosphate
which, given the pH, will be mostly in the monobasic form, H2PO4-.
This enters into the reaction 10Ca++ + 6H2PO4- + 2(OH-)
- ---> Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2 + 12H+ thus releasing lots of hydrogen ions
and it is these that get mash tun pH into the right range if enough
calcium is supplied. Phytase is destroyed in all but the lightest
malts an so it is fortunate that phytin itself has a high affinity for
calcium ions. Through a similar mechanism phytin releases protons
whose place on the molecule is taken by calcium and those protons are
available for pH lowering at the expense of the calcium being removed
from the solution. This is far from the quantitative answer you are
asking for but I can't make any statement more specific than a soft
water is likely to be stripped of most or all of its calcium whereas a
hard water (permanent hardness) isn't. This is why some brewers
supplement calcium poor water with some gypsum or calcium chloride.
Calcium has lots of benefits in the mash, the boil, the fermenter and
even the bottle (it precipitates calcium oxalate for clearer beer and
less liklihood of kidney stones for the drinker). Other than actually
measuring calcium content of wort going into the kettle I can't
imagine how one would calculate the deficit. This is not something I
have ever done.

Magnesium can be expected to take part in similar reactions but to a
lesser extent (Kohlbach found that it takes twice as much magnesium as
calcium to neutralize a given amount of alkalinity). Other ions
(sodium, chloride, sulfate, potassium and trace metals) should be
unaffected by the phosphate.

A.J.

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Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 18:46:44 -0400
From: David Harsh <dharsh at fuse.net>
Subject: Flag poles for hops

Doug Moyer <shyzaboy at yahoo.com> asked about using flag poles for
hops:

I am currently using a 24' collapsible flagpole to support my hops,
strings hanging down to the old trellis. I previously used that
flagpole for a martin house, but ditched the martin house when I
decided I didn't care enough about having a martin colony to do the
work to get one established.

That being said.... I installed the pole about halfway through last
summer and it was fine until Hurricane Ike blew through one Sunday
afternoon - two hours of 80 mph winds shook the pole back and forth
a lot and the bines were severely battered as well. The pole was
undamaged - and realize many areas of Cincinnati were without power
for a week, so the storm was pretty severe.

During the prior two months, there was no problem in any of the
routine summer thunderstorms. I plan on setting the mounting sleeve
into concrete, but other projects have seemed to jump in front of
that task.

So yes, it will work - but if the trellis hadn't been built in a
shape to keep the pole from falling over, I bet it would have bit the
dust during Ike without a concrete anchor.

Dave Harsh Ja-eep!
Bloatarian Brewing League Cincinnati, OH

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Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 23:55:35 +0000 (UTC)
From: Fred Scheer <fredscheer07 at comcast.net>
Subject: MBAA Global Emerging Issues

HI Brewers:

With permission from Bradley Latham from the BA we have
published the MBAA Global Emerging Issues presentation
from the CBC in Boston, MA.
In that presentation we discussed in short the Bisphenol A issue,
Ray Klimovitz, Technical Director MBAA discussed the
Occupational Exposure to Diacetyl issue
and the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Changes.
Ray shows in the presentation examples of
Single serving size and servings per container.
Amie Gianino, Corporate Affairs ABInBev,
discussed World Health Organization Issues and The Brewing Industry.
Please visit www.MBAA.com, than on the leftsite you see GEI.

Thanks,
Fred M. Scheer


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5546, 05/04/09
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