Apparently Prime Minister Harper and President Obama had a friendly wager over who would win the hockey gold medal game at the olympics; the winner gets a case of beer. Canada won and the beer was delivered to the Prime Minister on Friday. I guess we can rule Harper out as a guy with an eye for good beer as he asked for Molson Canadian!?!?! WTF!?!?
The basic idea behind malt conditioning is to soften/moisten the husks ever so slightly so they don’t shred when milled. This does a few things: 1) hopefully improve your efficiency as you can mill it slightly more, 2) improve lautering as the grain bed will not compact as much, although small particles will now make it through as the grain bed isn’t as compacted, and 3) reduce the chance that the husks contribute tannins (bitter, astringent flavours) to your mash as over-shredded husks will do so.
How to do it?
You just spray your malt with 2% (by weight of grains) of water. Spray the top layer of grains, mix the grains around and repeat until your 2% is up. Now, because the husks are staying intact, you can slightly tighten up the gap on your mill for a finer crush. I’ve conditioned twice now, the first time not changing the gap and everything working wonderfully and the second time closing the gap and crushing it just a hair too much (the mash was getting stuck, but I managed a 93% extraction efficiency!). I’ll ease off a tiny bit next time and will hopefully settle somewhere in the high 80%’s, efficiency wise.
Here are some pictures on HomebrewTalk.
Post mirrored in the Homebrew Korea Community Forums.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with beer or brewing but as it’s a magazine that I love to read, I thought what the hell. They have apparently partnered up with Google to scan all 137 years of the magazine with just a basic search available now and more advanced features to come.
Whats the first thing I searched for?? You guessed it!! 
Well, not quite….
Scientists in Korea have discovered that oxygenated alcohol helps to sober you up faster and possibly even help prevent that usual mind-numbing hangover.
A Korean company is soon to release soju called O2 Lin, which has been pumped full (around 33ppm) of oxygen. As far as I’m concerned, if you torturing your taste buds with that shit, you deserve the hangover!! Hahaha.
