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From: michaelh@tekecs.UUCP (Michael Herbert)
Newsgroups: net.wines
Subject: Re: My first homebrew
Message-ID: <5962@tekecs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Feb-86 15:48:04 EST
Article-I.D.: tekecs.5962
Posted: Thu Feb 20 15:48:04 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Feb-86 08:08:24 EST
Reply-To: michaelh@tekecs.UUCP (Michael Herbert)
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 62

In article <393@watnum.UUCP>, Trevor J. Smedley writes:

> Unfortunately no one told me to carefully figure out how
> many cups are in a gallon, and I somehow used less than half the
> required amount of water. Upon realising this (at bottling time) I
> added the extra water, and prayed. I figure that as long as the
> alcohol concentration didn't get high enough to kill the yeast, things
> should be ok. Anyone have any ideas as to whether this will work out or
> not? (I figure that there was about 2 gallons of liquid where there
> was supposed to be 5. These are Imperial gallons, so that's 2.5
> American gallons instead of 6.25)


Although I've never encountered this problem, I agree with your 
assessment. Normal ale or lager yeasts work fine up to 12% alcohol,
and then get killed off. If your 2 gallons of concentrated wort
did "max out" at 12%, the resulting 5 gallons of beer would be
about 5% alcohol (which is certainly acceptable for most ales or
lagers.) Of course, there would be no active yeast remaining to
carbonate the beer in the bottles.

Nevertheless, I agree with Don Sharp's suggestion to open a
bottle and test it. It's about time to taste some of that brew
anyway :-)

By the way, when I brew a batch of mead (which is 10-12% alcohol as
opposed to 5-6% for my beers), I normally use champagne yeast to avoid
this problem.

> Then I intend on making a brew with no added sugar (except at
> bottling time - I think it's necessary then. Am I wrong?)  

You're right. I've found that 3/4 cup corn sugar for 5 American
gallons of brew is just right for my taste. I've never had a
bottle explode, and only had one batch which was over-carbonated
(and I suspect I bottled that batch before fermentation was complete.)

> While I was in Germany I fell in love with the Weizenbier 
> (wheat beer) that they have there. As nothing comparable is
> available on this side of the Atlantic I hope to duplicate
> (or at least approximate) this delicious drink. Does anyone know
> anything about this beer, or how it is brewed? All I know is that
> it uses wheat instead of (or as well as) barley, and that you can get
> it like normal beer, or with yeast in the bottle. 

Although I've never tasted wheat beer, I've heard a lot of good things
about it. From what I've read, it contains wheat _in_addition_to_
barley. I've come across several homebrew recipes, but all of them
use more advanced brewing techniques. This is probably due to the
nature of the beer; that is, some sort of "mashing" technique is required
to convert the starches in the wheat to fermentable sugars. Once again
I'll suggest The Complete Joy of Homebrewing as a reference on mashing,
but I'll send you the simplest of these recipes via e-mail.

Happy Brewing,

Mike Herbert
tektronix!tekecs!michaelh

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"Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew!"  --  Charlie Papazian