On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 02:06:15PM +0200, Christian F. Behrens wrote: > From: "Christian F. Behrens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Mit første bryg skal være en ?all-grain? IPA, selvom jeg (måske) vil > knække nakken på dette, så finder jeg det mere tiltalende end ekstrakt.
There is nothing scary about all-grain brewing. It takes a little bit more time and work, which means you can spend more time with an interesting hobby. All-grain brewing gives you much more control over various variables in the process, so you can get just the beer you want. On the other hand, as a beginner, you may not know how to control these things, and end up with more variability in your beer. As I have said before, it will be beer anyway, and probably damn good beer at that! > Stort set al den litteratur, jeg har læst, anbefaler, at man tilføjer > lidt (varierende mængde [http://haandbryg.dk/eftergaering.html]), opløst > sukker, inden man hælder bryggen på flaske. There are various ways to get that carbonation, from adding pure CO2 with a counter-pressure filler, to saving some of your wort for that purpose, to adding sugar, to... > Ideen er, at man under mæskningen holder temperaturen på omkring 68 > grader i en periode, hvilket skulle sikre, at noget af stivelsen i > malten bliver til ?sukker?, der kun fermenteres langsomt. Denne proces > vil så finde sted i flasken og dermed karbonere øllet tilpas. Prisen er, > at brygget skal lageres betydeligt længere, end ens > tålmodighed/nysgerrighed vil tolerer. Til gengæld slipper man for at > tilkalde forstærkninger fra Dansico. In theory this sounds like a good plan. I can see a few practical problems with it. Most of all, no good way to control if the mashing has produced enough of the "non"-fermentable sugars (and in which proportions), and therefore no idea of how much CO2 will be produced in the bottles during the lagering period. You sound like you are afraid of flat beer. Of course that is a boring outcome, but it can be helped by opening the bottles, adding priming sugar, and waiting a week or three. Boring, perhaps, but not dangerous. The thing you should fear is overcarbonating them bottles. If there is too much of fermentable sugars left in the brew (as sometimes happens to impatient beginners who bottle too early) and/or if too much priming sugar is added, the fermentation keeps producing CO2 well over and beyond what is proper. In small quantities this means that when you open your bottle, the beer gushes out in foam. Once you have cleaned up the mess and let the foam settle in your glass, you get maybe a deciliter of beer out of a bottle. But it can get *much* worse than that, for there is a natural limit on how much pressure a bottle can hold. The caps are surprisingly strong, they will not pop out. Once the bottles have reached the critical pressure, a small disturbance can trigger an explosion, sending splinters everywhere in the room, some of them at surprisingly high velocity. And Murphy's Law guarantees that at least one of them will hit you, sharp edge first, and draw a lot of blood. Of course the flying schrapnell will hit other bottles in the box, and if they are at sufficient pressure, trigger the same reaction in them too. Such a chain reaction of bottle explosions can be outright deadly, and even in the best case, leaves a hell of a mess behind. This is not to say that your slow-fermenting technique wouldn't work, only to caution you that it is indeed an advanced technology, and might not be suitable in your first brew. If adding sugar is so much against your philosophy, then save some of your wort, cool it down (freeze it?), and use it for priming. Remember to boil it the bottling day, to be sure it is clean. Measure the sugar content with your hydrometer, and you should be able to get just the same amount of control over the carbonation as by adding sugar. What ever you do, please report back how it went, so we can increase the amount of knowlege on this list! Best regards Heikki -- Heikki Levanto LSD - Levanto Software Development <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
