FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
Re: Hop Questions/Advice ("Keith Anderson")
Aeration on the hot and cold side (Jim D)
THE WORKS on THE HISTORY CHANNEL ("Josh Knarr")
RE: English brewer seeks help with US beer list at GBBF ("Steve Jones")
Lead in glass carboys... (drsmith)
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Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 08:47:08 -0400
From: "Keith Anderson" <keithxanderson at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Hop Questions/Advice
Bob Tower writes:
>I grow Mt. Hood hops on the southern exposure side of my house. I have
>three sets of twine for each plant running from the ground up to the
>eaves of the house, which is about 11-12 feet (335-366 cm) of total
>growing length. In my climate, it's usually about early July by the time
>the bines have reached the top at which point they grow into a snarled
>mess as they have no where to go. Every year I threaten to experiment on
>one plant by cutting the terminal buds once they reach the top. With
>other plants this would simply encourage more side growth, but with hops
>it's unclear to me what would happen. Every year I either chicken out or
>simply procrastinate until it's too late. Either way, I never have
>actually tried it. Any thoughts about this? Can anyone see a downside to
>this kind of trimming?
I grew cascades at my old house in NJ the way you describe for about
three years except I had them on a ~60 degree include with a longer
length of twine to the eaves. It seems to me the hops always grow as
tall as they can vertically towards the midday sun and then bush out
horizontally. No matter how you cut them back (early spring to
encourage strongest shoots, top growth, late shoots, etc), they seem
to grow just about the same and produce the same amount of hops.
Don't have experience with Mt. Hood but it seems like varieties that
do well in your climate can not be stopped from growing vigorously. I
don't see a downside to trimming early in the season. If you trim
once they bush out horizontally you won't get more vertical growth
from those particular vines/bines but more shoots will come later and
probably climb almost as tall soon (I didn't trim new shoots since
they will bring another wave of hops after the first harvest).
What I found worked even better than trying to grow them > 20 ft
vertically is to grow them horizontally on a 5-6ft fence. I've seen a
few articles (Zymurgy?) that also recommend this idea of a "hop bush".
I screwed a few large pieces of privacy trellis to my fence and let
the hops shoots climb vertically a few feet to the trellis and then
horizontally ~6 ft in each direction. Much easier to manage and grew
just about the same amount hops (possibly a bit less). I think an
ornamental overhead trellis for growing grapes would work even better.
>As far as hop harvesting goes, would there be any detriment (besides
>taking up more freezer space) to simply freezing fresh harvested hops
>without drying them first? Reduced shelf life? Freezer burn? Some kind
>of enzyme action that would not be arrested by the freezing storage
>temperature? In the past I've done this with small amounts and used them
>utilizing the premise that fresh, undried hops weigh 5-6 times more than
>dried hops. I've done this with the hops at the beginning and end of the
>harvest (when there isn't enough harvested all at once to justify going
>to the trouble of drying them) and I haven't noticed any difference.
>However, I used them within a few months of freezing. Thoughts on this?
I think the only potential problem is moisture which could encourage
rotting/mold/mildew in the long run. If you freeze hops right off the
vine and thaw them (as with herbs) they can get slimy and appear to be
decomposing. But sounds like you don't have this problem so I
wouldn't worry. I found my fresh hops added a flavor a bit too
vegetal for my taste and preferred the flavor of dried hops (although
the Sierra Nevada fresh hop ale is superb). Overall, my homegrown
cascades lacked the oomph of "professionally" grown cascades and
suspected I wasn't getting a very high %AA due to some missing
nutrient from my soil but that was just a guess.
Keith
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Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 08:15:55 -0500
From: Jim D <goswell at hotmail.com>
Subject: Aeration on the hot and cold side
I read tons of information regarding hot side aeration but very little about
the cold side. I'm trying to figure out how both affect by beer.
Hot side: This is obviously the hardest one for me to control. Mainly
because I don't understand how I can mash grains in a cooler and not
create hot side aeration. I usually put the mash water into my cooler and
let it preheat the tun, then once it has, I mix in the grains. This act alone
creates a lot of aeration but it seems impossible to mix everything up
without aerating. One thought I had was that since that is preboil,
perhaps the boil itself will drive off the oxygen I introduced while mixing.
Cold side: This is much easier to control but I'm wondering if it is more
critical, especially at bottling time since the beer will just be sitting and
aging. I don't know that I create any aeration at this point but I am
wondering if it is more or less critical on the cold side.
I guess I'm looking for the straight story on the affects of aeration and
some of the methods people use to control it. It seems that is the
hardest part for me to control during the brewing process.
//Jim
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Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 14:27:11 -0400
From: "Josh Knarr" <josh.knarr at gmail.com>
Subject: THE WORKS on THE HISTORY CHANNEL
The beer episode was on last night on The History Channel.
(WOOO I WOULD INCLUDE A LINK HERE BUT I AM REJECTED BY OUR PERL SCRIPT
OVERLORDS).
Mini-review follows!
The host is a waif. I don't care that he's a PhD in Robotics or that
he's the mastermind of The Gay Agenda. What does that have to do with
the core interest of the program?
Stuff amusingly wrong:
* 212F was advertised as the mash temp. "Mashtun" was spelled
correctly, despite being treated as a single word.
* "All beers are ales or lagers." Absolutely no mention was made of
"steam beers", etc. I find the spirit of homebrewing is in Doing It
Wrong to find out what works. (I have a pilsner I'm intentionally
fermenting at 80F to try to make it interesting, for instance).
Where's the adventure?
* There was a lot of talk about branding being important to a beer
image and taste. Except no-one I know prints labels for their beer. If
the beer is lucky, we're sober enough to write on the caps. Everytime
Papizan says "Stop, have a homebrew" - WE DO.
* The guy brewing in his house had an incredibly high end system. I
guess plastic buckets just weren't impressive enough. His system,
however, was beautiful.
Good stuff:
* Smuttynose went out of it's way to show everything off, talk about
the hop shortage (but no mention of the warehouse fire was heard),
talk about hop pellets, etc. They're not above throwing trashcans full
of grain around.
* The Bud guys were nice, but seemed elitist, which is about what I
expected. The attitude seemed to be WE HAVE COMPUTERS, SO WE MAKE BEER
WITH COMPUTERS, SO WE WIN. Only a very small hat-tip was given to
adjuncts, which is more than most of these "beer specials" seem to
get. I don't think it was intentional but the editing seemed to lean
towards adjuncts like rice being bad. No mention of spices though,
especially the staple Belgian coriander.
* There was a good job of walking you through the process, but it
glossed the details. Someone had half a clue about starch conversion
in the program.
* Beers were presented in proper glasses, and different taps were
displayed. Cans were debated.
If you can download it, I would say watch it. I don't think it's worth
canceling dinner over to catch a showing of, however.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 17:41:34 -0400
From: "Steve Jones" <stjones1 at gmail.com>
Subject: RE: English brewer seeks help with US beer list at GBBF
Steve from the UK wrote:
>>
>> ... I am hoping that you good folk will be able to give me some advice as
to which beers you would advise a friend to try. ...
>>
>>
And gives us a link to the beer list. This would be my take on narrowing it
down to a few dozen:
Anchor Liberty Ale
Anchor Old Foghorn
Anderson Valley Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout
Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA
Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale
Firestone Walker Firestone Pale 31
Flying Dog Imperial Porter
Goose Island Summertime Kolsch
Great Divide Titan IPA
Left Hand Brewing Co Milk Stout
Lost Abbey The Angel's Share
Rogue Shakespeare Stout
Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot
Sierra Nevada Porter
Stone IPA
Stone Ruination IPA
Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale
Stone Pale Ale
Stone Smoked Porter
Victory Hopdevil
I've proabably only had a third of the ones I've left off - they were all
pretty good, so you can't go wrong with them, either. But every one of these
is a great beer, IMHO. The only ones I've not had on this list are the
Firestone Walker and Lost Abbey beers, but I'd never pass up a chance on a
beer from either of these breweries - especially Lost Abbey.
Steve Jones
State of Franklin Homebrewers
http://www.franklinbrew.org
Johnson City, TN
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:46:34 -0400
From: drsmith <hbd at aperature.org>
Subject: Lead in glass carboys...
As I mentioned a few days ago, I have a lead test kit here that I used
to do a surface test of a 3 gallon glass carboy. There are 2
different ways to perform the test according to the directions. For
general dishes or food handling items the instructions say to just
moisten a strip of the test material with water and hold in place on
the item for 2 minutes. For lead crystal, the instructions say to let
the crystal rest overnight with some white vinegar and then to test
the solution of white vinegar with the test strip.
I covered both methods by taking 2 paper towels, wadding them up and
taping them to the side of the glass carboy. One was soaked until it
was dripping in water while the other was soaked in white vinegar.
The following morning, I tested each by placing the test strip in
between the paper towel and the glass for 2 minutes. Neither test
strip showed any presence of lead in my case. Either the glass carboy
I have is lead free or basic washing of the surface has removed any
lead that might leach out of the carboy.
- --Darrin
Rochester, NY
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5385, 08/01/08
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