third brew, first %7.2 abv belgian ale ;)

[amberfiend]

while im here,,

is there any scientific reason for some beers being bottled in brown bottles and others in green ? is it just tradition ? or does the coloured glass somehow stop ambient light degraded the contents of the bottle ?

i found myself having to use a mix of the two just based upon what i had on hand. i did have another three slabs of washed twist top bottles ready to go but after doing my initial test run on capping bottles i didnt want to take any chances with them tbh.. which is a shame they mainly came from the sapporo premium stubbies that coopers brew under license in australia apparently ? its one of the full strength off the shelf beers that i like drinking, its the same deal with the coopers pale ale stubbies i was collecting, bloody unusable, which is kind of wierd seeing as coopers has the whole big side line in home brewing ? you would think they would take bottle re usability in account yeah. kind of sucks because to buy 24 empty bottles is $18 at some places ive noticed so now its a consideration with every off the shelf beer purchase i make, which means i probably wont be purchasing coopers beers other than to collect yeast at some point. looks like i will be buying more of that LEO beer from aldi, its a  full strength thai beer brewed with rice and barley malt and at only $18 for a 12 pack of bottles that are easy to re cap im pretty happy purchase that and some of the cheap but drinkable slabs from dans such as the hollandia, oettinger etc, they are easy to drink, dont taste horrible, are cheap and have reusable glass bottles (if any coopers employees are reading i hope your taking notes lol) anyways, enough ranting for now lol

[Journeyman]

25 minutes ago, amberfiend said:

cheers journey, that makes the best sense. im assuming to get a precise reading ou would probably have to invest in very expensive measuring equipment eh ?

as long as my beers come out over %5abv i'll be happy i guess lol

AFAIK yes on equipment.

Me, I make strong beers - haven't had one under 6.5% yet. My main concern is learning to balance the extra malts with decent bitterness so, no matter what beer I make, it is balanced. Partial mash with a sous vide has set me up, for now, as deep in the rabbit hole as I want to go. Might cahnge later but for now, I am making a wide variety of beers that I like.

[Journeyman]

18 minutes ago, amberfiend said:

is there any scientific reason for some beers being bottled in brown bottles and others in green ? is it just tradition ? or does the coloured glass somehow stop ambient light degraded the contents of the bottle

"Beer bottles were green in color until the 1930s when it was discovered that brown bottles filtered out some light that prevented the beer from going “skunky.” It’s not called “skunky” because it smells bad, it’s called that because if you expose beer to light for long enough, it will actually smell like a skunk. Chemists at the University of North Carolina and Ghent University in Belgium found that sunlight breaks down alpha acids in hops that react with sulfur to make a chemical that is nearly identical to the smelly chemical that skunks spray.

Brown bottles filter out visible and ultraviolet light that causes this reaction. Clear and green bottles don’t do much for filtering out the harmful light, clear and green bottles are often a marketing decision more than a practical one.

Clear bottles look great, showing off the color and texture of the beer while green bottles were once a status symbol for beer. After World War II, there was a shortage of brown glass, so European brewers exported their beer in green bottles. Because many of those beers were extremely high quality and others were just priced to seem that way, the green bottle became a status symbol for great beer.

Beers with little or no hops aren’t as susceptible to damage from light, so clear and green bottles are widely accepted for those beers."

https://brokensecrets.com/2010/03/23/why-beer-bottles-are-green-brown-or-clear/

 

[amberfiend]

21 minutes ago, Journeyman said:

"Beer bottles were green in color until the 1930s when it was discovered that brown bottles filtered out some light that prevented the beer from going “skunky.” It’s not called “skunky” because it smells bad, it’s called that because if you expose beer to light for long enough, it will actually smell like a skunk. Chemists at the University of North Carolina and Ghent University in Belgium found that sunlight breaks down alpha acids in hops that react with sulfur to make a chemical that is nearly identical to the smelly chemical that skunks spray.

Brown bottles filter out visible and ultraviolet light that causes this reaction. Clear and green bottles don’t do much for filtering out the harmful light, clear and green bottles are often a marketing decision more than a practical one.

Clear bottles look great, showing off the color and texture of the beer while green bottles were once a status symbol for beer. After World War II, there was a shortage of brown glass, so European brewers exported their beer in green bottles. Because many of those beers were extremely high quality and others were just priced to seem that way, the green bottle became a status symbol for great beer.

Beers with little or no hops aren’t as susceptible to damage from light, so clear and green bottles are widely accepted for those beers."

https://brokensecrets.com/2010/03/23/why-beer-bottles-are-green-brown-or-clear/

 

excellent, i had suspected something vaguely along those lines, but this explains the whole thing in one short paragraph looks like the brown bottles will be what im drinking for a little while longer as build up my stash of home brew

[kmar92]

1 hour ago, Journeyman said:

A refractometer is only useful for the OG - as soon as the yeast goes to work you have to begin a guesswork calc, adjusting what you see on the refractometer to account for the amount of alcohol. I'm not sure how you can do that accurately without taking an SG reading with a hydro - without that it's a guess as to what the ABV level might be.

Maybe someone who uses one can help with just how that all works?

That is really not an accurate statement. I use a refractometer almost exclusively these days as I find it more convenient than hydrometers. There are online calculators that compensate for the alcohol when using a refractometer, which takes out the guesswork, and I have checked my refractometer against hydrometer and they yield identical readings. Refractometers, like hydrometers, should be calibrated regularly but this is a simple process using distilled water. As the sample for a refractometer only requires a few drops of fermenting wort for a reading it is more efficient than the larger samples required for hydrometer readings.

[Journeyman]

7 minutes ago, kmar92 said:

That is really not an accurate statement. I use a refractometer almost exclusively these days as I find it more convenient than hydrometers. There are online calculators that compensate for the alcohol when using a refractometer, which takes out the guesswork

How does the calc know how much alcohol is in your FV?

Not arguing, curious. 

[kmar92]

The calculator that I use needs to know the OG of the wort, well in fact the brix reading, it then uses that reading to compensate for the alcohol in the fermenting wort and the resulting brix reading.

[Journeyman]

24 minutes ago, kmar92 said:

The calculator that I use needs to know the OG of the wort, well in fact the brix reading, it then uses that reading to compensate for the alcohol in the fermenting wort and the resulting brix reading.

So, until you get to FG, isn't that just an approximate? Because so many things can be different? I usually do 2 brews at a time and they are all circa 1.065 - 1.070 or so yet the FG reading and even the FG time taken can be quite different.

Or am I misunderstanding the reason for the calc needed? My impression is that the alcohol in the brew messes with the sugar reading and that's why it needs a calculator to compensate - it's not just 'read the sugar level' at start minus 'read the sugar level' now.

[Journeyman]

40 minutes ago, kmar92 said:

The calculator that I use needs to know the OG of the wort, well in fact the brix reading, it then uses that reading to compensate for the alcohol in the fermenting wort and the resulting brix reading.

Bloody hell - I just did some reading...

"Only after dividing the Brix WRI by the wort correction factor is the actual Brix known. It is helpful to know that Brix and Plato are nominally the same to 3 decimal places, so the corrected reading can be treated as Plato (°P).

The correction factor is needed because wort has a different density than sugar water which refractometers are designed for.  The wort correction factor is specific to the instrument."

"We recommend at least 30 samples from several different unfermented worts.  Only unfermented wort is appropriate for this test, because alcohol throws off the refractometer reading.

Filling out the spreadsheet will also tell how accurate the refractometer is in general. 5x refractometer measurements from 6 different worts provide a nice wide sample. Some cheaper refractometers report wide ranges (2-3 points) sample to sample from the same wort. In that case, the average of several samples should always be taken before recording the gravity in your brew log.

It is easy to get started using 2oz of DME in 8 ounces of water.  From there, add data to the spreadsheet over the new few brew sessions to dial it in more closely.

Remember, the unadjusted wort reading is Brix WRI. Only after dividing Brix WRI by the wort correction factor do we arrive at the actual Brix."

And on top of all that, you need the OG anyway - I haven't yet found how to convert Original Brix to OG so the calc can adjust for the presence of alcohol. I also wonder what the presence of non-fermentable sugars might do to the calcs - add in maltodextrine for example and the OG or sugar content is high but the possible ABV isn't affected.

I think I'll be sticking with hydros for quite some time.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Journeyman

[Titan]

Most refractos come duel scale. Theres a simple calc in beersmith which give you a corrected reading for fermenting wort. Its not complicated at all.

[Journeyman]

1 hour ago, Titan said:

Most refractos come duel scale. Theres a simple calc in beersmith which give you a corrected reading for fermenting wort. Its not complicated at all.

That's once you set the 'wort correction factor' for your individual refractor though - or don't you worry about that? 

And how about the non-fermenting sugars - they'd have to throw off any calc surely? The light would still refract because of them but they are never going to turn into alcohol.

[kmar92]

Yes JM the calculation is an approximation as alcohol refracts light at a different rate to water. However I have found that approximation to be pretty much spot on comparing refractometer readings to hydrometer readings. As far as your research into accuracy and taking multiple samples etc etc etc, well we are not working in laboratory conditions in the home brewery. How accurate do you think that your hydrometer readings are in reality?  I am more interested in relative readings as the wort ferments and I do not require laboratory accuracy to know where I am going. Also as I stated I have found negligible differences refractometer to hydrometer readings and so for the convenience and simplicity in measuring my worts I would rather use a refractometer.

As Titan says it is a simply putting a figure into Beersmith to see the approximated SG - and that is good enough for me.

[amberfiend]

 

haha, seriously though, i dropped out of school at 14, what you guys were discussing above is probably going to take me six months to wrap my head around lol, what the brix ?

i will try my best to keep it simple at this early stage in the game yeah, but a refractometer seems like a definite improvement on the crooked hydrometer coopers threw in with the kit, will be nice not having to waste that precious beer also

[Lab Cat]

5 minutes ago, amberfiend said:

haha, seriously though, i dropped out of school at 14, what you guys were discussing above is probably going to take me six months to wrap my head around lol, what the brix ?

I've managed to brew over 60 beers without understanding a word of what any of the above posters said.

[amberfiend]

5 minutes ago, Lab Cat said:

I've managed to brew over 60 beers without understanding a word of what any of the above posters said.

although im interested to learn about every aspect of this, it does sound like something guys running an industrial scale operation would more need to be familiar with yeah still though, my curiousity is now triggered and i appreciate all feedback on posts yeah, there will come a time where these strange words i see popping here and there up all start make complete sense lol

[Journeyman]

14 hours ago, amberfiend said:

there will come a time where these strange words i see popping here and there up all start make complete sense lol

Not sure about the others but that's why I tend to give extra detail. When I was teaching people to use PC's I found, they may not use (say) Track Changes at the start and they will forget it all because they don't use it now, but later if they need it, what DOES stick is that it is there in Word and they can then go find it.

[amberfiend]

34 minutes ago, Journeyman said:

Not sure about the others but that's why I tend to give extra detail. When I was teaching people to use PC's I found, they may not use (say) Track Changes at the start and they will forget it all because they don't use it now, but later if they need it, what DOES stick is that it is there in Word and they can then go find it.

yeah theres a few words ive seen popping up where im like wtf ? but to stop and ask their meaning would derail from the topic being discussed at the time.. they are are all subjects i intend to investigate eventually though words like "partials"

somebody will more experience should create a glossary of the most common terms relating to home brewing and the techniques that are most utilized and attach it to the top of the brewing blether category for all us newbs to refer to without having to ask embarrassing questions all the time lol

[Journeyman]

11 minutes ago, amberfiend said:

somebody will more experience should create a glossary of the most common terms relating to home brewing and the techniques that are most utilized

Here you go...  

http://howtobrew.com/book/glossary

[amberfiend]

3 minutes ago, Journeyman said:

Here you go...  

http://howtobrew.com/book/glossary

damn, that looks pretty comprehensive, cheers journey