Monday, October 11, 2010

Homebrew Digest #5749 (October 11, 2010)

HOMEBREW Digest #5749 Mon 11 October 2010


FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
Lemon grass in beer (David Harsh)
Dividing Yeast Starters (Robert Tower)
RE: Kaffir Lime and Lemongrass Berliner Weisse ("David Houseman")


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Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 07:07:26 -0400
From: David Harsh <dharsh at fuse.net>
Subject: Lemon grass in beer

Darla Orth <darlakorth at yahoo.com> asks about using lemon grass:

No experience with Kaffir Lime, but I've used lemongrass once.

Added it with about 15 minutes left in the boil and got an
interesting flavor (what you would have expected) along with an
astrigent tannins that took about a year to fade.

Once it did, the beer was quite interesting, but until then it was
undrinkable. I'd recommend the addition at knockout.

Dave Harsh Cincinnati, OH
Bloatarian Brewing League

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Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:05:48 -0700
From: Robert Tower <roberttower at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Dividing Yeast Starters

I've recently changed my fermentation equipment and I now find myself
brewing 10 gallon batches, with the wort being divided between two
fermentors. The problem I'm having is dividing the yeast starter to
pitch to each fermentor. I do 2 liter starters in a 3 liter beaker on a
stir plate. For the first batch with my new set up, I merely swirled the
contents of the beaker in an attempt to get the yeast in suspension.
This was done right after taking the beaker off the stir plate, so it
wasn't as if the yeast had settled to the bottom already. I took the
beaker off the stir plate, gave it a good swirl, then poured half the
contents into fermentor #1, and then poured the remaining half into
fermentor #2.

Fermentor #1 took off about 12 hours earlier than #2. Eventually #2 got
going, and all was well. #1 finished in about 4 days. A day or two
later, #2 slowed way down but then continued to weakly ferment for
another week. Eventually, it finally stopped. When I took gravity
readings, both were exactly the same. There's a slight difference in
flavor between the two as well. It was a hefeweizen fermented with WLP
380 Hefeweizen IV. Fermentor #2 beer is slightly sharper and spicy, but
the difference is fairly subtle. My guess is that #1 got more and/or
healthier yeast than did #2.

If you split your yeast starters between fermentors, please tell me your
techniques and results. Is there a better way of handling this.

It occurred to me that I could do two separate starters. The downsides
of that would be that I'd have to do two starters in sequence in which
case one would be older than the other and thus they wouldn't be the
same and I might get other problems/inconsistencies. Or I'd have two
have two stir plates and two beakers. I don't want to go that route
either as I already have a tendency towards sprawling Rube Goldberg type
set ups!

Bob Tower / Los Angeles, CA


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Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 20:39:06 -0400
From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net>
Subject: RE: Kaffir Lime and Lemongrass Berliner Weisse

Darla,

I have made beers with lemongrass. I added lemongrass to the boil with
about 15 minutes to go. I cut up the lemongrass to provide more surface
area. Later I did dry "lemongrass" with cut up lemongrass that I soaked in
vodka to sanitize. Can't say which provide more lemongrass character but
the combination was very good. One suggestion is that this takes more
lemongrass than you'd think. I used about 6 stalks in the boil and another
4 or so as dry spicing. I would have have doubled this for a more
pronounced lemongrass character.

David Houseman


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5749, 10/11/10
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