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 Shroomzilla
enthusiast
Registered: 02/03/01
Posts: 177
Loc: Texas, home of the longho...
Last seen: 22 years, 6 months
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 Re: More Honey Please  [Re: Humidity]
#268760 - 03/11/01 02:58 AM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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This is some VERY good info on HONEY I found some time ago on one of the homebrew pages:
HONEY'S EFFECT ON BEER
In honey, wild yeasts and bacteria are ubiquitous, yet they are kept in stasis due to honey's low water content (average 17 percent) and PH. As soon as honey is diluted in water or wort (the liquid extraction of the malt), these microbes are free to grow and proliferate. Many homebrewers have reported a high incidence of bacterial and wild yeast contamination when introducing honey to their beers.
HONEY: HEAT TREATMENT
The following method is recommended for pasteurizing honey for homebrewing:
Preheat the oven to 176?F.
Place the honey in a sanitized oven-proof saucepan.
Heat the honey on the stovetop to 176?F. The honey should be stirred occasionally.
When the honey reaches 176?F, cover the pan and place it in the oven.
The trick for the homebrewer will be maintaining the pasteurization temperature for the required time. Use a thermometer that is reliable, and hold the honey in the oven at 176?F for 2 and 1/2 hours.
At the end of the pasteurization process, bring the honey temperature down to the beer temperature by placing it in an ice bath.
As you can see from the recommendation above, the honey is to be kept well below boiling, for the sake of brewing this is to preserve its flavor. Honey is mostly complex sugars, which are harder for the yeast to ferment [or any fungi to digest]. Boiling it breaks down some of these sugars into simpler forms which is better for fermentation, but, it also creates some enzymes that can muck up the process. In brewing meade, which can be as much 20%-50% honey, it can take up to a year for full fermentation to take place. In regular beer where dextrose [the most simple sugar] is used, you can have full fermentation in a week and only need a tiny amount compared to the liquid volume. The dextrose is also nice and clean, and doesn't carry its own load of bacteria, yeast, and mold.
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Shroomzilla
enthusiast
Registered: 02/03/01
Posts: 177
Loc: Texas, home of the longho...
Last seen: 22 years, 6 months
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Re: More Honey Please
#269387 - 03/11/01 12:01 AM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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If you add the sugar [any type] before PC'ing your jars, you risk carmelizing the sugar, making it very hard for the fungi to consume. If you want to try "feeding" your substrate, you should consider making you substrate on the dry side then injecting sterile sugar water.
Best additive is dextrose [aka corn sugar, aka cornsteep, not to be confused with corn syrup], fungi of all types love this stuff. It is the most easily metabolized form of sugar, a ready food source. Dextrose is a common additive in commercial agar powders, and is used to speed yeast growth in brewing [often refered to as yeast food]. You can get it at any brew store, I pay about $2 for a 6 oz bag. That's actually a bit steep but one bag lasts forever. A dry powder, it can be easily measured or weighed, and is uniform from batch to batch. You only need a tiny bit of the stuff, too much of any sugar will actually slow growth.
Some of the chemicals in honey act as preservatives [anti bacterial and anti fungal], otherwise you couldn't keep the stuff at room temp for a year or more and not have it ferment or turn black and blue with every mold known to man. I suspect this is the reason why so many people have trouble making mycelia water using honey. I have seen mold growing on the surface of VERY old honey jars, but never any growing down in the honey. It also varies in chemical composition and sugar content from jar to jar, brand to brand, batch to batch, so it can be hard getting uniform results. Unless you buy locally produced honey, it is likely imported from south america or china. This stuff is frequently NOT pure honey, but can be cut with plain corn syrup and water. In anything but certified organic honey, the producing hives may have been treated with fungicides and/ or pesticides [very selective, of course] to protect the bees from types of fungal infection and mites. Traces of these chemical naturally wind up in the honey. Raw honey from any source can also contain botulism, a hard to kill bacteria that causes food poisoning. If you get the honey hot enough to kill the botulinum bacteria, you will have carmelized a good bit of it. There would never be enough bacteria in honey itself to make you sick, but if it is introduced into a favorable breeding environment...the bacteria can easily multiply.
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Humidity
Mad Scientist
Registered: 04/01/00
Posts: 358
Loc: Somewhere in Northeast OH
Last seen: 20 years, 8 months
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Re: More Honey Please [Re: Shroomzilla]
#269461 - 03/11/01 02:11 AM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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In my original post there is a link to a site with a bunch of info on honey. I read the two .pdf files under "Composition of Honey" the pH one says that "the low pH of honey inhibits the presence and growth of microorganisms." Of coarse we are not trying to inhibit growth, so why don't we raise the pH by adding some calcium carbonate.
I don't know anything about the "carmelizing" that you are talking about, it sounds reasonable that over cooking/steralizing could do that.
Dextrose sounds good too.
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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
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Humidity
Mad Scientist
Registered: 04/01/00
Posts: 358
Loc: Somewhere in Northeast OH
Last seen: 20 years, 8 months
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Re: More Honey Please [Re: Shroomzilla]
#269555 - 03/11/01 09:46 AM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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Great info Shroomzilla!
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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
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Humidity
Mad Scientist
Registered: 04/01/00
Posts: 358
Loc: Somewhere in Northeast OH
Last seen: 20 years, 8 months
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Re: More Honey Please [Re: Humidity]
#269639 - 03/11/01 12:06 PM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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I just did a seach on yahoo and found that dextrose is the natuarally occuring form of glucose. Which according to my book: "...it is clearly the material of choice when designing media for routine , rapid growth. The transport and enzyme systems for glucose are constitutive in fungi;no adaption period is required for growth to begin."
Like shroomzilla said, you can't add too much or it will have a inhibitory effect on the utilization of other carbon sources.
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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
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Shroomzilla
enthusiast
Registered: 02/03/01
Posts: 177
Loc: Texas, home of the longho...
Last seen: 22 years, 6 months
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Re: More Honey Please [Re: Humidity]
#269656 - 03/11/01 12:23 PM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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Just like feeding your kids...if all they eat is candy, they're not gonna grow properly. Lil' Dick and Jane need to eat their meat -n- veggies if they want to grow nice and strong.
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Humidity
Mad Scientist
Registered: 04/01/00
Posts: 358
Loc: Somewhere in Northeast OH
Last seen: 20 years, 8 months
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Re: More Honey Please [Re: Shroomzilla]
#270350 - 03/12/01 02:35 PM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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Can you grow mycellum in dextrose water, similar to the honey water tek?
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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
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 puscle
genius of love
Registered: 01/06/01
Posts: 4,539
Loc: NY
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Re: More Honey Please [Re: Humidity]
#270864 - 03/13/01 10:32 AM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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Yes, Humidity. 5% works well.
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Shroomzilla
enthusiast
Registered: 02/03/01
Posts: 177
Loc: Texas, home of the longho...
Last seen: 22 years, 6 months
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Re: More Honey Please [Re: puscle]
#272694 - 03/15/01 08:47 PM (23 years, 6 months ago) |
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Yep...found that it works MUCH better than honey water. Again...honey is mostly complex sugars that take longer to digest, dextrose is a "simple" sugar that can be used as-is.
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