cdh

I don't have any raw eggs handy right now, but I did just pour a glass of milk... I can detect no odor from it at all. If it is the same class of odor from all of the things that bother you, I'm just incapable of detecting it.

Sounds brilliant to me... Good for them. Just hope that being granted a monopoly doesn't give the Port folks ideas about jacking up fees and costs because there is no other alternative.

Wow... I've never thought that raw eggs had any kind of smell. What does it smell like? Can you fit it into any particular category of smells? I know there are sulfur compounds in there, so are they sulfurous? Or metallic? Or rubbery? How do you find the smell of hard boiled eggs? Similar questions on the raw chicken... I can't recall ever noticing a particular odor associated with it. I wonder if it is there in my consciousness and I'm not attuned to it, or if I just can't detect it.

Now that's the homebrewing spirit!

Any which way, you must let us all know how it turns out...

Well, the trichina worms that used to be pervasive in pigs were the cause for the recommendation to incinerate pork to a well done state... While overcooked meat is unpleasant, parasites that worm into muscle tissue and form hard nodules would appear to be even less so. So it may be appropriate to hold the derision for those who prefer not to take that particular chance... It is my understanding that modern pork raising techniques have all but eliminated them... Who knows, however, maybe the worms have returned? Or have become a part of the organic pig experience again?

Oh dear... You're probably going to end up with some unconverted starch in that beer... The pilsner grain is not a caramelized malt, so it requires the special step called mashing... that is the next lesson, for which you all seem quite ready... the steeping proceedure will have allowed some of the mashing reactions to have occurred, but at the 160-ish temperatures I recommended, it will have tended towards sweeter less fermentable sugars. So, you'll get something interesting, and have a base-line of understanding the conversion of starch that mashing does... The fun of the mashing is exercizing control over just where the starch ends up on the sweet vs. fermentable scale when the conversion is done. Now would be a good time to formally introduce you to the recipe calculator at http://www.hbd.org/recipator (be warned that the web hosting for it is somewhat flaky, so sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.) It will allow you to get an idea of what your recipe will yield with a report that looks something like this (it's actually in table form and prettier on the webpage): Rombot's Pilsner-ish Style: Type: Partial mash Size: 4 gallons Color: 8 HCU (~6 SRM) Bitterness: 16 IBU OG: 1.042 FG: 1.011 Alcohol: 4.1% v/v (3.2% w/w) Grain: 1.7 lb. Belgian Pilsner .45 lb. Belgian CaraVienne Boil: SG 1.042 4 gallons 2.9 lb. Light dry malt extract Hops: .66 oz. Saaz (3.75% AA, 60 min.) .66 oz. Saaz (3.75% AA, 10 min.) .66 oz. Saaz (aroma) That is what I put together from what you told me, and based on what you did, you're going to end up with a somewhat sweet, light beer. If you go to the webpage and enter as much of what you actually did as you can remember, it will calculate a more accurate picture of what the OG and IBUs of your beer will be. The FG is a guess, since we don't know exactly what went on in the mashing reactions and how much of the starch changed into sugar, or what kind of sugar.

I've only heard of half of your selections, and consider myself fairly well acquainted with good food in the PHL area... I've heard of Hymies, and its across-the-street rival, but never bothered to go down there to check them out... I'm in NYC a block from Katz's far too often to go pastrami hunting. The Lakeside Deli has made it onto my radar, but I've not tried it either. Dim sum is, again, something I eat in NY rather than PHL... maybe if I were here more on weekend mornings rather than up there.

Less krausen is fine. Was noted by other above too. Give it its 2 weeks and all will be well. And yes, a little time in the bottle allows everything to settle out and clarify the beer.

Yup, that would work just fine.

Well, the redness should pick up a bit as it settles and clears... give it a month in the bottle and it should be closer to garnet than amber. As to siphoning... well, there are the siphon starting widgets... and you've got your bottling bucket with spout attached already, so you really only need to siphon once... I'm surprised that you managed to pour off of the dregs without bringing along a whole lot of cloudiness along. Congratulations on another successful batch!

Don't know about licensing in the UK, but in the US the requirements to get a license to brew commercially are fairly tough to meet without renting a commercial space. I know the UK's history of taxing alcohol is older and more convoluted than the American variety, but commercial licenses may be tougher to get than you're thinking. Besides, I don't know that a new brand of lager would fly in the UK without significant promotion, would it? Isn't one's brand of lager still something of a status symbol in the popular mindset over there? Posh Stella, middling Dutch and Danish lagers, etc... Are there any posh lagers brewed in the UK under domestic labeling, or do all of the locally produced ones have to license a foreign label to sell?

oooh... cattiness already. but to continue the thread you might be a cocktail snob if... your preferred vermouth isn't commercially available in the state you live in.

Excellent piece. I'd love to read more about the Clara Davis experiments. Instinctual food choice is a fascinating topic. Beyond that, this is a great article all around. While I've never gone down any of the virtuous dietary paths myself, I know plenty of people who have meandered that way and come back to the omnivorous middle. Food should not be scary or a source of anxiety, and sadly in our culture it appears to have become both. Sadly

Well, you could put your fermentor into a larger container filled with water, and add ice to that container of water. Putting 2L soda bottles filled with water into the freezer and adding them would do a good job of lowering your fermentation temperature. Another alternative to the ice would be putting your fermentor into a tub of water, wrapping a towel around it so that the towel wicks up water, and aiming a fan at it. That would get you lots of evaporation cooling.

On the Brumas thingy, you don't need something like that to brew beer. It appears to do some useful and interesting things that will allow you to take a much more hands-off approach to the brewing. I've never tasted the results of such a device, so I don't know whether it does what it does well, or poorly, or otherwise. Until I taste the results of what it can do, I'm skeptical, as I don't believe that mashing properly can be totally automated. I couldn't find any instruction sheet on what variables are adjustable, or how such adjustments might get made. You also are far too ambitious with your desire to make giant 50L batches at a time as a beginner. Unless you plan on throwing parties for 20 of your closest friends on a weekly basis, going through 100 pint batches is going to take you quite a while. There is also the risk of bad things happening and a batch going south, as has happened to one of us already, with 50L worth of ingredients, that is quite some concentrated risk. The question then becomes: is your time that you'd spend making the 3 20L batches on more ordinarily sized brewing equipment worth the difference in equipment cost, and are you feeling skillful or lucky enough that rolling the dice on one big batch appeals to you? As a beginner, my advice to you is start small, get some feel for the skills required, and the ramp up the production size once you get comfortable with the small batches. This class is designed around that principle, with a bunch of 2 gallon batches spreading the risk of a bad batch over a number of iterations and small quantities of ingredients rather than on one giant vat. By the way, Bill, where and how would plan on storing the vat of beer once it is done? Bottles, kegs, otherwise?

What yeast are you using? There are some that should not mind temperatures around 74, though the Windsor may get quite fruity up in the mid 70s. It's only 2 gallons, so my advice is to try it and see if you like the effect or not. If there is too much flavor going on in there for you, then you know that this yeast needs to ferment cooler for your tastes.

Your beer will settle over time and clear up. Irish moss helps that process. It helps coagulate proteins in the beer and helps them fall out faster because they all stick to each other and become bigger particles. It is a helpful aid to clearing the beer, but has no effect upon the flavor or other properties of the beer.

This article never claimed to be comparing Pilsners... it claimed to be comparing lagers. No education needed, since they scored 100% on that test.

You're closer to lager brewing than most then... good start! For a 40-50L batch, consider boiling and fermenting in two of those 30L pots. Split your fermentables between the two pots, make double hop additions, and basically mirror your actions between both pots. Depends on where in the boil you add the hops. The Goldings are going to give a more floral effect, which is sort of like Leffe, if you add them late in the boil. Chinooks are piney, and have serious bittering capabilities, so if you add many of them early, you'll get very strong bitterness, and if you add them late, you'll get pineyness in flavor and aroma. The Saaz are the classic Pils hop, so you want that to predominate, I'd imagine.

There is some discussion of UK brewing equipment over in the eGCI Homebrewing thread. You should have a look over there. It's great that you're interested in brewing your own... come over to the class and get a feel for the process. The next lesson will introduce some of the techniques you'll need to learn for using grains like you'll need to. As a beginner, you're way out of your depth if you want to make 50L of pilsner lager type beer without serious capital investment in brewing equipment: - To do it successfully, you'd need two separate climate controlled spaces: a fridge or deep cellar that keeps the temperature around 50F, and a fridge that holds 34F. - To keep it as light-colored as a commercial pilsner, you'd need to do an all-grain mash to get your fermentables, which will require a 75 liter pot to boil your mash runoff down to 50 liters, and you'll need a heating device capable of getting those 60+ liters of runoff to a rolling boil. In the UK there appears to be a trend toward using electric immersion heaters and plastic tubs, but I'd not recommend them as plastic and heat play strangely together. For a 50L sized batch, something like http://morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=15230 would do the job for you. - You'll also need a fermentor that fits within your climate controlled spaces. - Your hopping choices seem problematic stylistically for a Pilsner. Chinook doesn't belong in there... nor does the EK Goldings. Those are nowhere near the "noble hops" that give continental lagers the flavor you expect. - If you use your Belgian yeast choice it will make your beer taste nothing like a Pilsner. And yeast choice has only a tiny influence on the end alcohol content of your beer. If you want a strong beer, you dump more malt and rice into it. If you want it to taste Belgian, e.g. like Stella, use Belgian Pils malt... I don't believe that there is a particular Belgian pils yeast strain. - When mashing lots of rice, make sure to add lots of extra rice hulls to your grist, otherwise you're likely to get a stuck sparge and have trouble getting all of the fermentable sugar out of the grain bed. - The lagering process that Pilsners go through takes months at near freezing temperatures, so if you got brewing now, you'd be ready to drink it in October or so. - Water chemistry plays a large role in Pilsners turning out like they do, so you'll need a water analysis of your local supply, and the appropriate raft of salts and chemicals to neutralize the not-like-Pilsen water characteristics and to introduce the like-Pilsen qualities that will play right with your malt and hops. - Brewing light lagers like Pilsner is very advanced brewing, so I'd recommend getting up to speed on the technique by brewing something else a few times to get a feel for your equipment.

Ahhh... but Pimms tastes like fruit, not like salad. Using Pimms would make a drink too close to that spinach and strawberry salad with poppyseed dressing all over it. But then again, maybe a little strawberry liqueur and frangelico are just what a spinach juice and lime base need for cocktail to taste like a salad.

Remniscent of the mixological escapades a friend and I have been experimenting with lately... cocktails that taste like salad. Lots of amusement with the vegetable juicer, notably cucumbers, watercress, and mustard greens. Gin, a bit of lime, a splash of simple syrup, and some interesting drinks come out of it.

Oooooohhh... pretttttty.... that is a beautiful piece of metalwork.

Ah... yes... 80 pounds is way too much to spend on a boiling pot. My thought was to import the $65 pot that tim pointed out above. In conjunction with the induction hob, that brings the total up to 85 pounds plus shipping. Not bad.