Sunday, July 20, 2008

Homebrew Digest #5374 (July 20, 2008)

HOMEBREW Digest #5374 Sun 20 July 2008


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


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Contents:
Efficiency and Astringency ("Jason Gazeley")
Yeast slants versus suspension (Fred L Johnson)
HBD's future and.... (Robin Griller)
further to plastic bottles.... (Robin Griller)


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Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:25:57 -0600
From: "Jason Gazeley" <jason.gazeley at gmail.com>
Subject: Efficiency and Astringency

I recently bought a Barley Crusher Malt Mill.
Scince buying the mill my efficiency has gone
from 70% to 82%. The mill is set to .039". I crush
with a drill as slowly as possible. I recirculate
Through 1/2" silicone tubbing and a stainless
false bottom at a rate of .75 gallons per minute.
I fly sparge with 170f water. I use BeerSmith to
calculate the amount of water I use.

Scince buying the mill all of my beers have an
astringency that although not over powering is
still noticeable and annoying. Is it possible that
my new higher efficiency my sparge water gravity
is dropping too low to maintain a good Ph range?
Or could it be something else? What solutions
would you recommend?

Cheers,

Jason


- --
Join our Yahoo Homebrew group
Desert_Quenchers


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Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:25:50 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Yeast slants versus suspension

For years, I have kept my yeast cultures by merely putting 10 mL of a
suspension a fully-fermentated starter culture into sterile 30 mL
vials and keeping these at about 35 degrees F. When I'm ready to make
a starter, I just pull out a vial and transfer the contents into the
starter medium, and this can be several months later.

Is there an advantage to using slants to store my yeast instead of
the method I've been using?

The principal difference that I can see in the two methods is as
follows. Yeast grown and stored on slants are put into storage at a
time when the yeast is actively growing and is in contact with a
fully nutritive medium, whereas the yeast are in a dormant state when
I put them into storage from the spent starter culture and are stored
in a medium that has no fermentable sugars.

I'd especially love to hear from the microbiologists or anyone with
experience in this.

Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA

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Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:19:39 -0400
From: Robin Griller <rgriller at chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: HBD's future and....

Hi Pat etal.,

I like the suggestion of a sustaining membership. I'd be happy to
contrubute a small but steady amount of cash for the hbd to keep going....
in terms of what you described, Pat, does this mean that Brews and Views
will cease to exist once HBD moves to a new set up?

cheers,

Robin

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Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:24:46 -0400
From: Robin Griller <rgriller at chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: further to plastic bottles....

Steve A, wrote:

"Try a month or two. Most plastics transpire oxygen. Some transverse
PET laminate bottles which are relatively impervious were under
development for commercial beer use (by SAB-Miller I think) but I
haven't seen these on the market ((perhaps never will given feedstock
prices))"

A number of breweries selling here in Canada use PET bottles for
selling beer here, including Charles Wells' Brewery (from the UK), which
sells their IPA and Lager in 2 litre brown PET bottles, and a few of the
micros up here. I could check with LCBO employees to ask about shelf life,
but there doesn't seem to be any issue there. As I said, using the brown
PET bottles sold in homebrew shops up here, none of the brewers I know who
used them ever had any problems with beer stored in them over a period of
several months.....

Robin

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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5374, 07/20/08
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