Recent content by Lyrebird_Cycles

Ignoring the ad hominem: please explain in plain English how a change in hydrostatic pressure of the order of 10% can materially affect the solubility of a solid.

That is badly misguided. As Goatchop said above, gout is caused by the retention of purine breakdown products. In normal function the kidneys excrete the uric acid via the glomeruli but then some of it is reabsorbed. Gout is associated with a dysfunction of these reabsorbtion mechanisms. Uric...

I might also be interested for work. Ask your boss if he'll trade for wine. BTW melaleuca oil is mostly terpenes so it isn't difficult to wash out. Terpenes are insoluble in water but highly soluble in ethanol, so rinsing a couple of times with metho should see you good to go.

Yes. It's a standard analysis in the wine industry to heat a sample for 15 minutes after the free SO2 is measured to drive out all the bound SO2. That part which has oxidised to sulphate will remain but there will be no SO2. It probably wouldn't matter anyway, many brewing yeast produce SO2...

It should come as no surprise to find that the "least significant digits of the SG" has a name in German: it's degrees Oechsle, so an SG of 1018 is 18 oOe. Only ever seen it used by German winemakers. Yes, oOe/4 = oP is a good rough conversion up to about 15 oP. If you are good at mental...

At almost 5 oP you aren't going to be getting a lot of leaching, so pressing won't hurt and will make up for some of the lost extract. With a well designed brewhouse your last runnings should be about 2 oP and leaching does become a problem. I think this is due to a combination of osmotic...

What strength are your final runnings?

We use metal ones to make stacking and moving barrels with a forklift easier. If you aren't moving the barrels often or you don't have a forklift you can make do with old fashioned stillage, which is very easy to construct at home. To hold two barriques you need two pieces of sleeper about...

Not necessarily an infection: hibiscus flower is very acidic by itself. I once developed a hibsicus flavoured wine as a contract job and was surprised by how much acidity the hibiscus contributed. It would be even more evident in beer with its higher pH.

Not in Australia.

True that. I happen to be doing some work on this for another application (ullaged wine tanks) and the speed at which oxygen diffuses through an inert gas "blanket" is surprisingly high. Even if you could get your "blanket" to be a metre thick it will be effective for about an hour. There's a...

I just re save each recipe every time it is used and add a sequence number. Don't forget to change the date, otherwise Beersmith defaults to the date of the previous iteration. To avoid clutter, I have folders for recipes so I can archive them once gone.

Possums apparently. Mum is 93, lives by herself and has to be careful because her immune system isn't what it was.

It's very dependent on the location and condition of the collecting roof. I'm with MOC, I spend about half the year under 500 m^2 of roof in Beechworth and use the water collected from that roof for everything (perforce, as we are 5k from the town water reticulation system). Lovely skyjuice...

Proud sponsor of: the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and American Chiropractic Association. And they evidently hold themselves to the same standards of scientific rigour