FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
Re: Hop Support (bill keiser)
Calcium loss in mash (Fred L Johnson)
Re: Flag poles for hops?? (steve alexander)
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Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 07:14:31 -0400
From: bill keiser <bk2 at sharpstick.org>
Subject: Re: Hop Support
It depends partly on how sturdy your poles are, but more importantly,
how the stress is distributed. If you string a horizontal cable from top
to top and suspend the vine ropes from that, the stress will be
approaching infinite. Raw physics says that when a weight is suspended
from a horizontal line, the stress is infinite. Try tying a heavy book
to the middle of a rope and try to hold the ends in your hands and pull
it horizontal to see how this works.
If there is some sag in the line, it will be better. Also some guy
lines on the outer ends will distribute some of that stress down to the
ground.
bill keiser
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Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 07:39:20 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Calcium loss in mash
Many thanks to A.J. for explaining how calcium can be lost in the
mash. I had suspected that the references I had heard to "mineral
loss in the mash" were referring to calcium, and I had suspected that
the sources may have been referring to the reactions with phosphate
that A.J. cited. (I hadn't considered the phytin reaction. Thanks
again, A.J.) However, I had never heard that there would be such a
loss that one would need compensate for that if there was an
appreciable amount of calcium in the mash to begin with, i.e., >50 ppm.
Some had said that "half" of the calcium is lost in the mash, but, of
course, the amount lost will depend upon the absolute amount lost in
the reactions A.J. described. The absolute amount lost will not be
based on the concentration in the mash but on the absolute amount of
monobasic phosphate and phytin in the mash, and the percentage of
calcium lost in the mash will vary depending on the absolute amount
of calcium in the mash, so "half" of the calcium would be lost only
under a specific set of conditions of calcium concentration in the
water, volume of water used in the mash, and amount of grain in the
mash.
If one wishes to target a specific calcium concentration in the final
product for yeast health, flocculation, taste, etc., it seems one
does need to have some understanding of approximately how much
calcium (absolute amount) would be lost per unit weight of malt/grain
in the mash. Surely there are some figures floating around out there.
Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA
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Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 08:51:22 -0400
From: steve alexander <steve-alexander at roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: Flag poles for hops??
Hi Doug ....
> I have planted six hop mounds - in a single line, spaced about five feet
> apart (center to center). I was thinking about putting in two flag poles
> (one at each end) and running a line between the two, with the hop twine
> dropping vertically to each mound. (Advantage: I can use the flag pole
> pulleys to lower the bines and twine for harvest time.)
>
> I don't want to spend much money, but I don't want to go too cheap that they
> don't hold up to the wind.
>
> I won't be flying a flag so that's not a risk. I wouldn't imagine that the
> weight of the hops would be problematic, even in strong winds.
>
> The cheaper 20' models are sectional, with a 2" diameter. Would that be up
> to the task?[...]
> Any thoughts from hop growers?
>
I use 6"x8" (x20') treated timber for the poles, and I string a fairly
heavy galvanized wire from pole to pole. I use the cheap sisal twine
farmers use for hay bailing. If makes things easy to throw a double
strand of sisal over the wire, (one from the fixed end and the other
from the spool). Then I stake it on the far side, near side and then
throw another pair over. Difficult to describe but it makes a running
WWWWW pattern and you don't have to cut the sisal except at the ends.
I tried several variants before the 6"x8" timber and all failed. The
galvanized wire pulls down pretty hard when the hops are full, and when
the wind blows even the 6x8's bend.
> I wouldn't imagine that the
> weight of the hops would be problematic, even in strong winds.
THAT is the big error - (I know, I've made it myself) ! My first
(second?) attempt was based on a a suggestion on this forum made from
welded, joint reinforced 1.25" steel conduit(the heavy gauge stuff) - a
sort of trigonal structure and only ~13ft tall. I welded together pairs
of 8' conduit (to 16') and joined three of these at the top of a
trigonal shape and put one trigon at each end of a row. Seemed strong.
Wind and hops weight bent the 1.25" conduit like a pretzel in late
summer - really ! ~90+ degree curves bent into a couple conduit
sections (no loss at the reinforced welds). This wasn't some amazing
high wind either - just a good breeze in a summer drizzle.
Your poles (6 mounds, 5ft apart) sounds like ~30ft between, (mine are
now ~35ft IIRC), but after a few years my hops are spread all along the
length. IMO your' 2" flagpoles are very unlikely to work. The
deflection of a tube of a given material w/ given forces is proportional
to L^3/(4*t*D^3) where L is length, D is diameter and t is wall
thickness (note this is an approximation good for thin-walled tubes
only). So the point is there is a big strength advantage for shorter
and larger diameter tubular poles. If you double the tube diameter at
the same weight (half the wall thickness) then the tubing will only have
1/4th the deflection. If you cut the height by 20% you halve the
deflection. A very lightweight 6" tube would probably be far better
than your 2" poles. My solid wood pole is inherently weaker material
(Youngs modulus ~25 times lower), but for a solid pole deflection is
roughly proportional to L^3/D^4 ,so we gain a factor of ~D/4t for the
solid pole.
It probably is smarter to use a central pole with several spaces twines
from the top to a circular planting mound around, May-pole style.. At
least the weight is evenly spaced and the substantial wind forces might
be modestly offset by the twine or yo could support with guy wires
agains the direction of the wind.
Another thought - the forces will drop about linearly with height (less
weight & less wind cross section), so making the poles 20% shorter
decreases forces and increases strength for a combined improvement
around 2.4X. So perhaps it makes more sense to try to get ~12ft above
ground and accept a little lower production.
-S
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5547, 05/05/09
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