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Post by Ken on Mar 27, 2023 9:32:37 GMT -6
I'm pretty notorious for water discussions so bear with me. My source water has 27ppm of SO4 and 20ppm of chloride so it leans towards the 'crisper, drier' side. As a result I tend to add calcium chloride. I also tend to prefer smooth, full and rounded beers. It's common for me to add 2.5 to 3 grams of CaCl to the strike water for some beers. In some cases (typically darker beers like a bock or Vienna Lager), I'll add some sulfate along with the chloride to add some crispness to the finish. But in the case of a helles, an American Lager, etc. I would have a chloride level in the 60s (61ppm to about 69ppm) and sulfate still at 27ppm. Does that sound oit of balance to any of you? I envisioned doing something with a "crisp gold lager" where I added less chloride and then used the Novalager which is supposed to attenuate well to make a very crisp and dry gold lager. Where do these numbers come in for you guys... say on a helles. I feel like most of you have your chloride and your sulfate closer to even. Cheers Beerheads.
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Post by Megary on Mar 27, 2023 12:26:31 GMT -6
I'm not a big lager brewer, so this answer carries very little weight. But if I had your water profile, for a Heles (or a Pils), I would probably just add a smidge of CaCl...put the Cl in the 35-40 range and call it a day. I think a Helles doesn't need to get too complicated. Less is more kinda thing. As a side bar... I personally don't think I could taste the difference between these ratios anyway: 27 SO4 : 20Cl 27 SO4 : 40 Cl 27 SO4 : 60 Cl I know I should be able to, but I highly doubt it. Not without training.
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Post by denny on Mar 27, 2023 13:05:53 GMT -6
does it taste out of balance? They're only numbers. It's how the beer turns out that gives them any credence.
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Post by Ken on Mar 27, 2023 13:59:49 GMT -6
does it taste out of balance? They're only numbers. It's how the beer turns out that gives them any credence. I think that comes down to personal taste. I like a beer with some of that smooth, round fullness. If I taste a beer that seems too thin and dry I tend not to like it. I prefer it deeper than that. For those who have been to my place and drinking my beer, they seem to enjoy it and say that it tastes like high-quality beer. My BIL was in town and drinking at my dad's place (Miller High Life Light) and then came to my place and tapped a glass of Mexican Vienna, took a sip and sighed loudly. He said, "See? This is real beer. This is good beer. I've been drinking crap beer all week". It doesn't taste out of balance to me but maybe my tastebuds are different than others. On a loosely-related tangent: I sometimes see that a very simple gold lager made by a craft brewery has 15 IBUs. Or 18. I am never that low. But maybe I need more hops to offset the deep character added by the chloride. If my ratio was closer together (making everything more crisp and dry), maybe less hops would work. I'm spitballing. I think a lot of things can be achieved (and ruined) by water adjustments and I find it kind of fascinating. Call me weird.
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Post by Ken on Mar 27, 2023 14:00:19 GMT -6
I'm not a big lager brewer, so this answer carries very little weight. But if I had your water profile, for a Heles (or a Pils), I would probably just add a smidge of CaCl...put the Cl in the 35-40 range and call it a day. I think a Helles doesn't need to get too complicated. Less is more kinda thing. As a side bar... I personally don't think I could taste the difference between these ratios anyway: 27 SO4 : 20Cl 27 SO4 : 40 Cl 27 SO4 : 60 Cl I know I should be able to, but I highly doubt it. Not without training. If they were all next to each other and you tasted them you might but who's got time for that?
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Post by brewbama on Mar 27, 2023 22:14:22 GMT -6
I’ve kinda settled on this: adding salts doesn’t require near the precision we think it does. Short of titration every brewday, this whole water thing is kind of a black art that is full of estimation, approximation, and assumption. One overarching issue is we confuse precision (measuring by the miligram to the Nth decimal) with accuracy (starting with exactly X and ending with exactly Y ppm). Assuming the scale is calibrated we can be fairly precise but there’s no way we’re accurate. The source water fluctuates day to day, the ingredients may be sub-optimal, and on and on. There are just too many variables. It’s all an estimate (a SWAG). So, I quit stressing, only add CaCl and gypsum using teaspoons, and couldn’t be happier with the outcome. I think AJ DeLange got it about right. …but I don’t use acid malt. He has no pretense of precision or accuracy and best of all as a result there are no spreadsheets and no grams scales required. I believe he starts with RO or distilled water (you would obviously use your base water profile). Then he recommends: 1. Baseline: Add 1 tsp of calcium chloride dihydrate (what your LHBS sells) to each 5 gallons of water treated. Add 2% sauermalz to the grist. (You can see the results below in a screenshot of the BeerSmith water tab for a Blond Ale I have on tap) He goes on to deviate from the baseline as follows: 2. For soft water beers (i.e Pils, Helles). Use half the baseline amount of calcium chloride and increase the sauermalz to 3% 3. For beers that use roast malt (Stout, porter): Skip the sauermalz. 4. For British beers: Add 1 tsp gypsum as well as 1 tsp calcium chloride 5. For very minerally beers (Export, Burton ale): Double the calcium chloride and the gypsum.
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Post by Megary on Mar 28, 2023 7:23:21 GMT -6
Short of titration every brewday, this whole water thing is kind of a black art that is full of estimation, approximation, and assumption. The source water fluctuates day to day, the ingredients may be sub-optimal, and on and on. There are just too many variables. It’s all an estimate (a SWAG). Couldn't agree with this any more. Especially the way I measure out additions, with one eye closed and pre first cup of coffee. I have essentially fallen into using Bru'n-Water's Yellow/Amber/Brown/Black + Dry/Balanced/Full profiles. How close I get to these numbers is a mystery, but if after drinking the beer, I think it needs a water adjustment I will make it next time. For all the beers I have made, there may have been only a handful of times where I thought, hmm...better up the gypsum next time...or something like that. That probably speaks more to my crumbling palate than the beer, but there it is. As BB says, one less thing to stress about. All that said, I do think beer-style Mash pH is critical and I don't want to suggest I'm not paying attention to that. I definitely have had better results aiming for the upper end of the acceptable mash pH range for darker beers, and the lower end for pale ones. I don't know if there's science or reasoning behind this, but it has definitely proven beneficial, at least in my brew-house.
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Post by Ken on Mar 28, 2023 8:17:40 GMT -6
My water numbers here in Chicago (Lake Michigan water) have been very consistent since I started brewing in 1999. I have sent samples to Ward Labs a good 8-10 times and the numbers are always consistent... occasionally off by 1-2ppm in either direction. My Ca is only 34ppm so I started looking at CaCl and CaSO4 to give the yeast a bit more Ca and I realized that CaCl and CaSO4 do very different things for your beer. One creates a round, smooth fullness and one creates a crisper and drier character. They also lower pH which is good because the pH of my water is around 8. I have adopted the "Brewbama approach to pH" by getting my water to a pH of 5.5 prior to mashing and also adding dark malts to the mash once the mash is over so they don't futz with the pH. But I'm still a firm believer that some finesse with CaCl and CaSO4 can create wonderful properties and bring some better character to the beer. I just wondered about the numbers. To BB and Tommymorris who recently had the "Country Helles" recipe... any idea what your Cl and SO4 numbers were for that beer?
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Post by brewbama on Mar 28, 2023 9:01:38 GMT -6
In this thread we discuss our water: BT Collab Country Helles. This was mine: This was Tommy’s: My Country Helles is in the fermenter. My water was 75 CA, 6 Mg, 14 Na, 81 SO4, 72 Cl To be more accurate, treating mash pH as paramount and holding the dark grains to the end is something I got from G Strong in Brewing Better Beer. I had to quit acid because it was lowering my pH too low. Other than that, I use the BBB technique in every beer and love it.
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Post by Megary on Mar 28, 2023 9:06:17 GMT -6
My Ca is only 34ppm so I started looking at CaCl and CaSO4 to give the yeast a bit more Ca and I realized that CaCl and CaSO4 do very different things for your beer. One creates a round, smooth fullness and one creates a crisper and drier character. They also lower pH which is good because the pH of my water is around 8. I have adopted the "Brewbama approach to pH" by getting my water to a pH of 5.5 prior to mashing and also adding dark malts to the mash once the mash is over so they don't futz with the pH. I don't understand this. If it's good that CaCl and CaSO4 lower your pH, then why would you want to leave out your dark malts from the mash because they futz with pH? The dark malts would help lower your mash pH as well. My water has a fair bit of bicarbonate and it's a gift to add the dark malts to the mash. I completely understand why BB does it, but he is starting with RO water. If I were to do that I would need to add Lactic to my mash to lower pH, something that the dark grains do for me.
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Post by Ken on Mar 28, 2023 9:07:09 GMT -6
In this thread we discuss our water: BT Collab Country Helles To be more accurate, treating mash pH as paramount and holding the dark grains to the end is something I got from G Strong in Brewing Better Beer. I had to quit acid because it was lowering my pH too low. Other than that, I use the BBB technique in every beer and love it. You both show more sulfate in your recipe than chloride which surprises me. Especially for a helles. I seem to remember the LO guys talking about wanting low sulfate levels in a helles. In my helles recipes I would typically have chloride numbers in the 60s and sulfate levels in the 20s. I know there are people who think that ratio is fiction or doesn't matter that much but I have to assume that two glasses of helles... one with 60ppm of Cl and 20ppm of SO4 and another with 80ppm of SO4 and 60ppm of Cl would taste quite different if sampled side-by-side.
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Post by Ken on Mar 28, 2023 9:09:18 GMT -6
My Ca is only 34ppm so I started looking at CaCl and CaSO4 to give the yeast a bit more Ca and I realized that CaCl and CaSO4 do very different things for your beer. One creates a round, smooth fullness and one creates a crisper and drier character. They also lower pH which is good because the pH of my water is around 8. I have adopted the "Brewbama approach to pH" by getting my water to a pH of 5.5 prior to mashing and also adding dark malts to the mash once the mash is over so they don't futz with the pH. I don't understand this. If it's good that CaCl and CaSO4 lower your pH, then why would you want to leave out your dark malts from the mash because they futz with pH? The dark malts would help lower your mash pH as well. My water has a fair bit of bicarbonate and it's a gift to add the dark malts to the mash. I completely understand why BB does it, but he is starting with RO water. If I were to do that I would need to add Lactic to my mash to lower pH, something that the dark grains do for me. Because I bring my water to a pH of 5.5 using lactic acid prior to heating the strike water and I do that on every batch, regardless of SRM. Once I have the water at that level and the grains from the mash are going to lower the pH into the desired range, I don't need Carafa or Midnight wheat bringing it lower than that. It's a simple approach and I like it.
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Post by brewbama on Mar 28, 2023 9:10:54 GMT -6
The sulfite/chloride ratio does lean slightly to bitter beers but 1.16 is pretty balanced and isn’t enough to matter IMO. 2 would matter or the opposite: .5 would matter only if the ppm(s) were high enough.
Yrs ago I did a side by side comparison by serving three beers and dosing two: one with CaCl and one with gypsum. The third was a control. I didn’t even taste a difference until ~150 ppm.
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Post by Megary on Mar 28, 2023 9:31:32 GMT -6
I don't understand this. If it's good that CaCl and CaSO4 lower your pH, then why would you want to leave out your dark malts from the mash because they futz with pH? The dark malts would help lower your mash pH as well. My water has a fair bit of bicarbonate and it's a gift to add the dark malts to the mash. I completely understand why BB does it, but he is starting with RO water. If I were to do that I would need to add Lactic to my mash to lower pH, something that the dark grains do for me. Because I bring my water to a pH of 5.5 using lactic acid prior to heating the strike water and I do that on every batch, regardless of SRM. Once I have the water at that level and the grains from the mash are going to lower the pH into the desired range, I don't need Carafa or Midnight wheat bringing it lower than that. It's a simple approach and I like it. I got you. It's simple, repeatable and convenient. Makes sense to me. Except I can't fathom brewing a Stout with lactic acid in the mash.
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Post by tommymorris on Mar 28, 2023 9:33:39 GMT -6
I just aim for the Beersmith Yellow/Amber/Dark balanced, dry, full profiles. I then add Lactic acid to the mash so that the Beersmith BW equation predicts 5.4 PH. I don’t measure PH. My beers usually turn out great. For some lagers lately I have tried just using my water as is and only adjusting PH to 5.4. That has also worked well. My tap water is below. It seems well suited for lagers.
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