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HOMEBREW Digest #4920
HOMEBREW Digest #4920 Mon 26 December 2005
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Re: Adjusting Mineral Content ("William Frazier")
Water profiles ("A.J deLange")
Finishing Hops (Fred Johnson)
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Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 08:41:18 -0600
From: "William Frazier" <billfrazier at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Adjusting Mineral Content
Fred - My Kansas City area water is loaded with minerals. I'm sure lots of
brewers use this water straight out of the tap. But, I'm not fond of beers
with that dry bitterness I associate with Bass Ale. So, I use one gallon
tap water plus nine gallons of grocery store RO water. I treat this with
1/4 tsp K metabisulfite to assure no chlorine from the little tap water I
use. Then I add 5 grams calcium chloride. This gives soft brewing water
with the following mix of minerals;
Ca 54, Mg 1, Na 5, SO4 15, Cl 89. I've brewed all my beers using this water
for at least 10 years. It's perfect for pilsners and other lagers. It also
makes good tasting ales. Once you get familiar with a certain brewing water
you can adjust the amount of hops to get the bitterness you want.
Bill Frazier
Olathe, Kansas USA
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 08:29:20 -0500
From: Fred Johnson <FLJohnson at portbridge.com>
Subject: Adjusting Mineral Content
I have only played around with adjusting mineral content of my beers a
little because I've seen such divergent recommendations for doing this.
I'd like to ask a few questions of those of you in the community who
feel you have a good bit of experience with different styles and
adjusting your water accordingly.
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Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 15:23:47 +0000
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Water profiles
Fred asked a bunch of questions about tweaking one's own water to
resemble that of the city whose beer you are trying to replicate in this
case London. He right away hit on one of the problems in doing this:
there are several published profiles which claim to represent London
water and they vary appreciably. It turns out that many of them are also
demonstrably bogus in that the charges do not balance (i.e. cations and
anions) unless the pH is absurd. So how to approach brewing a London
beer? Look at the general characteristics. There are two things to
consider: mash tun pH and flavor. Mash tun pH is effected by residual
alkalinity which is the amount of alkalinity not canceled by calcium and
magnesium reactions with malt phosphate. It is calculated as alkalinity
- (calcium hardness + magnesium hardness/2)/3.5. Using the numbers Fred
posted the RA is 104/61 - (52/20 + 32/12.15/2)/3.5 = 0.92
milliequivalents per liter. The divisors are, in each case, the
equivalent weights of the ions. Multiply the result by 50 to get 45.5
ppm as calcium carbonate. This isn't a whole lot of residual alkalinity
but as we all know London ale brewers use some dark malts which will
offset this somewhat. I wouldn't worry about increasing the bicarbonate
content of the available water. I'd choose the dark malts for their
flavor contributions and monitor mash pH. I'd be ready with some calcium
carbonate in the event that the pH got too low but I doubt this will
happen. I also woudn't concern myself about getting the magnesium up. It
can contribute bitterness and if you want this go ahead and augment with
magnesium sulfate or chloride or a combination keeping an eye on the
sulfate and chloride levels. Sulfate is an important flavor ion which
manifests itself through hop character. The levels in London beer and
Burton beer are quite different and that in part explains the
differences between London and Burton beers. There's no reason why Mg
needs to be exactly at the 32 level. If you want to see if adding some
Mg improves the beer do it incrementally and look for effects on hop
flavor. Or use magnesium chloride in addition to magnesium sulfate.
You are struggling with the fact that calcium chloride dihydrate is 27%
calcium and 48% chloride (the rest being water) so that you must add
both in the fixed ratio 9:16 whenever you use this salt and you can
never get the salt amounts exactly right to precisely match the water
profile. In some cases you can do better than others and the fact that
you can do well is indicative that the water profile you are using is a
good one (if Mother Nature can do it you can do it too). There are
several ways to skin this cat involving optimization software. The
simplest is probably to make up an Excel spreadsheet into which you put
amounts of salts and in response to which it calculates the amount of
each ion added. Add these to the ion contents of your water and subtract
from the target. The differences are the errors in your synthesized
profile. You then combine these (by taking the square root of the sum
of the squares - weighting each if you want too) and adjust the salt
additions to try to minimize this number. If you are familiar with
Excel's "Solver" you can let it do this for you automatically. But the
bottom line is that you ought to be able to brew good London Ale with
the water you have. After you have brewed it if you decide it is lacking
in crystal malt character add more next time and be aware that this may
lower mash pH so be ready with calcium carbonate. If you miss the
bitterness of magnesium (can't imagine why you would) try adding a
little Epsom salts and so on. If the beer doesn't taste salty enough,
add some salt. If you'd like it a little rounder and sweeter add some
calcium chloride.
It doesn't matter so much where the stylistic ions go into the process
but the pH setting ions (bicarbonate, calcium, magnesium) must go into
the liquor or into the mash tun latest because that is where the
phosphate reaction takes place. It is important that there be sufficient
trace elements in the cast out wort and that there is a bit of calcium
as well which aids in clarification and ultimately precipitates oxalate
from the beer reducing the liklihood of haze.
The only salt which is really insoluble in water is calcium carbonate
so mother nature dissolves it with carbonic acid. You can do the same if
you want too by adding the salt and sparging the water with CO2 through
a stone or just stirring and wainting for a long time (days).
I think you are quite right that few breweries tweak their water to the
extent that we home brewers do. A couple of bags of gypsum into the mash
is usually the extent of the water treatment that small brewers give to
their beers though those with very hard alkaline water may decarbonate
with lime (e.g. Munich brewers doing Helles). I think that those who do
more use the approach of brew and tweak and brew and tweak based on at
least a general understanding of the chemistry. The biggest breweries
have a staff of inroganic chemists who worry about this stuff.
A.J.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 10:51:11 -0500
From: Fred Johnson <FLJohnson at portbridge.com>
Subject: Finishing Hops
I've had some trouble with my finishing hops additions since switching
to a counterflow chiller. Inevitably with such a chiller, the wort that
leaves the kettle early will have a different character than the wort
that leaves the kettle late, because the early wort will have been
exposed to the late addition hops at a high temperature for shorter
lengths of time than the late wort. Accordingly, the wort leaving the
kettle late will be more bitter, due to its having longer time to
isomerize the alpha acids compared to the wort leaving early.
Someone suggested that I add my last hop addition to the kettle using a
bag which can be removed from the kettle after the desired length of
time. At first blush, this sounds like a solution, but I wonder if the
removing the bag actually has much of an effect. It is my understanding
the the issue with bitterness is that it takes time to isomerize the
alpha acids that have been extracted from the lupulin glands. If the
lupulin glands dump their contents into the boil within a few minutes,
then taking the bag out after that point wouldn't prevent bitterness
being added at the late addition. Besides, the aroma of the late
addition hops is still being dissipated.
It sounds like a hop back is the only real solution to this problem.
Comments anyone?
Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #4920, 12/26/05
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