Messages

1366

All Grain Brewing / Re: Mash Temps and Water Profile - Bock

« on: January 13, 2011, 08:47:38 AM »

Wouldn't you want individual alpha and beta rests in your schedule?  I figure 122F is a protein rest, I don't even know what a 97F rest is there for unless its just doughing in.  I'd be inclined to go 122F, 146F and 156F.  But I'm no decoction expert, just throwing this out for discussion.

Also, will Munich II self-convert?

I'd use CaCl2 for the malt flavor profile.  And I'm using more lactic than that for acid adjustments and don't taste anything.

1367

All Grain Brewing / Re: Pilsner brewing

« on: January 13, 2011, 07:22:23 AM »

You might even get 115% efficiency.

1368

General Homebrew Discussion / Swirling The Contents of Your Carboy

« on: January 13, 2011, 06:32:12 AM »

I am a self-confessed yeast rouser.  When I see a lovely 4" krausen on a fermenting wort I just have to go rouse it by swirling the carboy.  I don't agitate wth caviation but the cicrcular action is enough to get the settled material off the bottom and moving.  I didn't used to be so moved to partake in this practice, but in switching from buckets to carboys I now have a great visual that triggers my OCD.

I know htat rousing yeast can be a technique for getting better attenuation in big beers, but do you think it has any negative (or positive) effects on an average beer? 

1369

All Grain Brewing / Re: Digestibility

« on: January 13, 2011, 06:25:32 AM »

As an occasional consumer of low carb candy and Splenda, I can tell you that dextrins are a MAJOR substrate for methane-producing bacteria in the large intestine.

1370

All Grain Brewing / Re: Pilsner brewing

« on: January 13, 2011, 06:21:10 AM »

Anybody got a review for Global pils (and any other Global malts)?

I've personally wondered if there aren't custom made malts being used by the established German breweries.  And I worry that freshness of malt is contributing to my inability to replicate these things, but I doubt that.

1371

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Types of Water

« on: January 13, 2011, 06:16:40 AM »

I'd go with distilled and add my salts, this way you know exactly what you have.  With spring/drinking water you don't know exactly whats in it, usually just a municipal water supply from a soft water type.

1372

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Yeast Starter

« on: January 13, 2011, 06:13:59 AM »

Right theres not 65ml of SLURRY in a yeast vial/smack pack.

On the subject of trub as a percentage of east cake, I was in the habit of pitching most all my trub into the fermentor, just running the wort through a mesh screen to get rid of larger pieces of hops.  I'd get a nice healthy inch of yeast cake.  Recently I've begun colling and racking my wort off the trub prior to pitching, and I'm get about 1/3 as much in the bottom of the fermentor.  Its much lighter colored and finer.  Bottom line, I bet the slulrry volume recommendation is based on having the trub removed first so you'd be quite low on cell count if you don't remove trub via whirlpooling or some other means.

On the trub topic, I use DME to make starter wort and even with a short boil I get a pretty substantial amount of hot/cold break.  This is the stuff that drops quickly, so even if you are relying on visual volumes in these things you might be over-estimating.

Finally, if you pitch a vial in 750ml of wort will it even double once?  There was a discussion in Yeast about this, you might not get much of an increse in cell count with this method but it would at least get the yeast active and give hem a running start.  I think there's something to be said for a "running start", in the few times I've done it this way I see activity sooner.  Looks to me like there are cellular activities that take some bit of time to ramp up before even cell membrane component synthesis can begin.  You have to make some enzymes and express the right proteins before you can make triglycerides and cell membrane proteins.

1373

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Yeast Starter

« on: January 12, 2011, 07:47:18 PM »

Yeast can survive in beer at a refrigerated temp for some months, lets say two although I've kept them longer and still made viable starters.  Theres a general biochem rule of thumb that enzyme activity doubles for every 10C increase in temp.  Going from 4C to 24C (generous, this time of year its closer to 14C in my basement), we'd see two doublings of activity.  Thats a 4x increase in the rate of metabolism of glycogen.  So we should at least have two weeks at room temp before our average yeast runs completely out of stored carbs and starves to death.  Granted, they'd be darned weak after a week, but all we're needing is a few hours so I think the fact that metabolism is higher at room temp is insignificant as a practical matter.  I'm also not that certain there's a heck of a lot of protein synthesis going on in a mature, dormant yeast cell.  Its kind of the nature of dormancy, that a cell shuts down most synthesis activities and only keeps maintenance metabolism active.

Think we've made the OP sorry he asked the question yet?

1374

All Grain Brewing / Re: Pilsner brewing

« on: January 12, 2011, 03:19:46 PM »

I just brewed a N. German Pils last weekend. I used 99% German pils and 1% melanoidin. Any problem with that grainbill?

I used nearly this same grain bill (2% mel) on my first lager in my new ferm chamber.  It didn't come out great, a bit sweet and slightly bready like red complained of.  Maybe its a touch of diacetyl (I too did a good long d-rest), I know what diacetyl tastes like but its hard to tell in this brew.  Maybe it just needs more lagering, maybe I didn't use enough yeast, but my second try is sans melanoidin.  Its in the lager fridge, I'll report in a few weeks.

1375

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Yeast Starter

« on: January 12, 2011, 03:07:09 PM »

Tom, using your logic regarding reserve utilization, the minute a starter culture runs low on sugar in the wort, it begins using up its glycogen reserves.  I don't think this is the case.  The cells become dormant, their metabolism slows and the utilization of reserves is already minimized even without the further slowing by cold temps.  I don't think viability or health is affected by a few hours at room temp in a beer environment, if it were then we wouldn't be harvesting viable yeast off the bottoms of fermentors after days of this kind of environment.

Heat shock is a phenomenon that involves subjecting an organism to temps above its normal or optimal environment.  Since a yeast's optimal temp is well above our typical fermentation temp, or even most room temps, I don't think we are going to find heat shock proteins being expressed in a culture pitched in a properly cooled wort.

Bottom line, yeast is pretty tough stuff and I'm not sure there's a "best way" here thats head and shoulders above the others.

1376

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: I've lost my marbles...

« on: January 12, 2011, 01:25:22 PM »

That Barracuda helicopter worked great for aeration.  No wonder I was getting 110% efficiency, the lead was throwing off my OG.

1377

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Yeast Starter

« on: January 12, 2011, 01:19:16 PM »

I concur with the need to let the starter settle out for a couple of days.  If you rush it and decant, you are selecting for the faster floccing yeast which may or may not be what you want to do.  Wouldn't be too hot for a wheat yeast where you are wanting the slow floccers.

1378

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Yeast Starter

« on: January 12, 2011, 01:10:15 PM »

FWIW, I've done it both ways and now I'm straight form the fridge and into the beer.  The temp shock theory is outdated and has been disproved.  The current theory is that the yeast will start using up their glycogen reserves once they warm up and become active and you want that to happen in the beer, not before the yeast gets there.  I find I get far better yeast performance by pitching cold.  I'd encourage you to try it a few times and compare for yourself.  At the very least, there's no downside.

Denny, why would warming yeast from 4C to 20C prior to pitching cause them to start using glycogen reserves?  Theres no sugar so I don't think they would "spring into action".  If you let a culture use up all the sugar in a starter, its going to settle out and be dormant until theres more substrate whether the temp is 20C or 4C.  I think we're confusing the situation with dry yeast where you're rehydrating them with water and you don't want to leave them out of a wort for more than 20min.

On the other hand I don't think  theres any real reason to warm them first either, tif there is such a thing as shock it would be going from warm to cold.

I kind of like "waking the yeast up" by feeding them some sugar prior to pitching, that way I get the best of both worlds.  I get rid of any off-flavored beer from the starter, and I get them going with the small feeding a few hours prior to pitching.   Is it necessary, no.

I assume this would apply to pitching WL tubes straight from the fridge as well??  I've always just "read the directions" which say to warm to 70-75.

You're not doing yourself any favors just pitching the tubes straight (unless your brew is very low gravity).  To make better beer, you should be making starters.

Maybe he's making a 3gal batch of ale, in which case no starter is necessary.  I asked this question of the experts, since the one sells tubes of yeast as pitchable for 5gal, and the other has the Mr Malty calculator that tells us that a tube isn't enough for a 1.030 beer.  No word back, but I'm hopeful of a discussioni.

1379

All Grain Brewing / Re: Using Rice in a mash

« on: January 12, 2011, 08:13:38 AM »

Plain white rice starch granules are small and dense and take a higher heat to gelatinize from what I understand, although I couldn't find a temp in a quick online search.  Not sure you'd get a good gelatinization at mash temps even if you milled it first.

By the way, is rice much different than just using sugar?  I did see that it is 20% amylose, 80% amylopectin, so I suppose there would be some dextrins left after mashing, that you wouldn't see in table sugar.  Is it unique in what it brings to a mash as an adjunct?  Or is it primarily used in commercial brewing because of cost?

1380

All Grain Brewing / Re: Found a red cooler for mash-tun

« on: January 12, 2011, 07:57:41 AM »

Well I really wanted to get a blue rectangular cooler to convert to a mash-tun but unfortunately I found a red one tucked away in my barn. I think I'm going to spray paint it so i can get that 110% efficiency that I keep reading about.

Won't work, the plastic has to be completely infiltrated with the blue pigment for it to absorb the microwaves that destroy the glucose spontanogenerase.  You might try covering it with foil, some people report good results with this shielding method.

What were you storing in this cooler in the barn?  Sounds like it might be best suited for lambic production.