Well, bottled anyway!
Sunday saw me bottling the dark saison co-created with Steve at Beers I've Known. On removing the top of the FV, the first thing I got was a huge hit of hops from the Pacifica I had added as a dry hopping experiment. Gravity remained at 1013, suggesting a beer of around 5.5%.
Tasting it before bottling, there had definitely been a change over the week. The sourness was there but less pronounced, the roast notes there but much more subtle now - and providing more balance than main interest now. However, the dry hopping had made this beer taste much fresher - not exactly the hit I expected from the way the hops smelt and were described, but a nice crispy taste that came from these new hop oils. I wonder what bottling will do for it?
Next time, I think I will get some kind of small bad for dry hopping, as fishing all the arrant leaves out was a bit of a pain. I primed the bottling bucket with about 60g of sugar, and syphoned from SV to bottling bucket.
Managed to squeeze 13 pints and a couple of small tester bottles out, so Steve, you have your saison! Will let you know what it's like in a couple of weeks!
At the same time, I decided to do a bit of housekeeping. I decided to get rid of the remainder of the Veno's Porter....it was just getting too much for me! I also had to get rid of three remaining bottles of the winter Belgian I brewed. Not sure what happened here, but the yeast never settled, and opening at room temperature created lots of foam (so I suspect I over primed). However, one thing to note is that months and months down the line, the beer still tasted great, if not better than when I first brewed it - a definite plus side to the faff that is bottling
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
Sunday, 16 September 2012
Saison Update
So, a week from pitching, and I thought I might take a peek at the Overseas Dictator....
First thing to note was just how ACTIVE the yeast was. I had my first ever overspill in two years of brewing....it just went nuts. Now this maybe because I fermented in the kitchen, rather than understairs, and the weather has been a bit warmer...but we returned home on the Monday to froth everywhere! Even after a week, there is still krausen sitting on the surface, which I had to skim off to take a gravity reading.
Secondly, this yeast attenuates very well, regardless of what I have heard some say about its general finickiness Perhaps warm is best for this yeast! However, seven days on, gravity comes in at 1013, from 1055. That's over 75% attenuation, and 5.6% ABV. This was a little higher than I expected, so it looks as if the yeast has done most of its work. I shall let it sit for another week, just to allow it to condition a little before bottling.
Finally, the taste. I have to say that I think this is one for the enthusiast. Easy drinking this is not. The roast that was dominant before pitching has lessened, but there is clear dark, smoky hint. Bitterness wise, there is a decent balance, but it is not overpowering. I have to say I do not get the citrus notes from the hops, but this may improve with bottling. However, the beer is rather dry on the palate, with black pepper (for me), and then there is just a hint of sourness. This is not acetic sourness from contaminated beer, but something all the more subtle, similar to the sourness you expect from this and similar styles.
My suspicion, on first taste, is that this one will be better served a little cooler. This may also help me carbonate it a little more without explosion!
First thing to note was just how ACTIVE the yeast was. I had my first ever overspill in two years of brewing....it just went nuts. Now this maybe because I fermented in the kitchen, rather than understairs, and the weather has been a bit warmer...but we returned home on the Monday to froth everywhere! Even after a week, there is still krausen sitting on the surface, which I had to skim off to take a gravity reading.
Secondly, this yeast attenuates very well, regardless of what I have heard some say about its general finickiness Perhaps warm is best for this yeast! However, seven days on, gravity comes in at 1013, from 1055. That's over 75% attenuation, and 5.6% ABV. This was a little higher than I expected, so it looks as if the yeast has done most of its work. I shall let it sit for another week, just to allow it to condition a little before bottling.
Finally, the taste. I have to say that I think this is one for the enthusiast. Easy drinking this is not. The roast that was dominant before pitching has lessened, but there is clear dark, smoky hint. Bitterness wise, there is a decent balance, but it is not overpowering. I have to say I do not get the citrus notes from the hops, but this may improve with bottling. However, the beer is rather dry on the palate, with black pepper (for me), and then there is just a hint of sourness. This is not acetic sourness from contaminated beer, but something all the more subtle, similar to the sourness you expect from this and similar styles.
My suspicion, on first taste, is that this one will be better served a little cooler. This may also help me carbonate it a little more without explosion!
Sunday, 9 September 2012
The Overseas Dictator
Todays brew day was brought to you by the evil mind of Steve Lamond at Beers I've Known.....
In a recent Session, Steve blogged about his perfect beer. He described a Saison, but, with a sick twist of dark malt and New Zealand hops! Bloody weirdo.
I thought this was interesting. Partly because the beer he described was so far from what I thought a saison to be, and partly because, as I brew more, the more I appreciate the skill of people who do this kind of thing of thing for real; regardless of what you THINK you want the beer to be like, it never really seems to happen that way - whereas the really good brewers appear to get it right more often than not. May be that is harsh on us real amateurs....perhaps what we drink from others is the result of lots of practice, mistakes, and small test brews. I admit that, even with my crap set up and bucket chemistry approach I've not made a really crap beer....oh, hang on, I take that back....but anyway, malt, water, hops and yeast tend to have made something palatable.
I suppose it's a bit like cooking....you only really get to taste the dish from the chef when they've tweaked and tailored it. But my beer has always struck me to be something like my photography....in my head the picture has always looked better than the actual image. In my head, I'm Ansel Adams, but the pictures look more like they were taken by Tony Adams. In my beer, I'm more Yosser Hughes than Sarah Hughes...
So here was an interesting test. Steve knew what he wanted, and I knew I could brew it, but would it really be any good? Steve suggested the name, Overseas Dictator, and I thought the following would be both a record of a collaborative brew (he got the brains, I got the boiler...), and also a description of the process should people be interesting in taking up home brewing.
So, here we go. My technique is known as BIAB or brew in a bag. Here you forego the conventions of grist to liquor ratios and mash in the boiler. This is ok for the small volumes I make (9 litres), but a bigger brew would require some thinking about and dunk sparging. I have dealt with water chemistry tweaks here, so adding brewing salts, I get the water heating up to about 70C.
Once we hit about 70C, I dough in, or add the malt. Mashing usually occurs at temperatures between 64-67C, so that little bit of extra heat accounts of heat loss upon adding the grain. I add the grain into a simple mashing bag.
Here are the malts for this brew, and this is where my first problems lie. A bit of research would suggests pale malt base is usual. Check....there is Maris Otter and Pilsner here, but I saw Vienna, Golden Promise, and a range of other pale malts added to the water. I suppose that all makes sense; Saison was typically a farmhouse brew, and they were not going to get sniffy about the exact malt, although they were largely malted not roasted...far too busy to do this I assume!
However, Steve wanted Carafa and Chocolate Wheat in there. These give colour, but also a nice roasted/chocolate hit. However, since Steve's idea was a bit unconventional, it was difficult to get hold of how much of these malts needed to go in. In the end they came out at about 5% of the malt bill, and this, on reflection was wrong. There is a handful of acid malt in here too, just to get that pH adjusted properly.
In a recent Session, Steve blogged about his perfect beer. He described a Saison, but, with a sick twist of dark malt and New Zealand hops! Bloody weirdo.
I thought this was interesting. Partly because the beer he described was so far from what I thought a saison to be, and partly because, as I brew more, the more I appreciate the skill of people who do this kind of thing of thing for real; regardless of what you THINK you want the beer to be like, it never really seems to happen that way - whereas the really good brewers appear to get it right more often than not. May be that is harsh on us real amateurs....perhaps what we drink from others is the result of lots of practice, mistakes, and small test brews. I admit that, even with my crap set up and bucket chemistry approach I've not made a really crap beer....oh, hang on, I take that back....but anyway, malt, water, hops and yeast tend to have made something palatable.
I suppose it's a bit like cooking....you only really get to taste the dish from the chef when they've tweaked and tailored it. But my beer has always struck me to be something like my photography....in my head the picture has always looked better than the actual image. In my head, I'm Ansel Adams, but the pictures look more like they were taken by Tony Adams. In my beer, I'm more Yosser Hughes than Sarah Hughes...
So here was an interesting test. Steve knew what he wanted, and I knew I could brew it, but would it really be any good? Steve suggested the name, Overseas Dictator, and I thought the following would be both a record of a collaborative brew (he got the brains, I got the boiler...), and also a description of the process should people be interesting in taking up home brewing.
So, here we go. My technique is known as BIAB or brew in a bag. Here you forego the conventions of grist to liquor ratios and mash in the boiler. This is ok for the small volumes I make (9 litres), but a bigger brew would require some thinking about and dunk sparging. I have dealt with water chemistry tweaks here, so adding brewing salts, I get the water heating up to about 70C.
Here are the malts for this brew, and this is where my first problems lie. A bit of research would suggests pale malt base is usual. Check....there is Maris Otter and Pilsner here, but I saw Vienna, Golden Promise, and a range of other pale malts added to the water. I suppose that all makes sense; Saison was typically a farmhouse brew, and they were not going to get sniffy about the exact malt, although they were largely malted not roasted...far too busy to do this I assume!
However, Steve wanted Carafa and Chocolate Wheat in there. These give colour, but also a nice roasted/chocolate hit. However, since Steve's idea was a bit unconventional, it was difficult to get hold of how much of these malts needed to go in. In the end they came out at about 5% of the malt bill, and this, on reflection was wrong. There is a handful of acid malt in here too, just to get that pH adjusted properly.
And here are the grains, in all their glory, mashing for 90 minutes. The thermal properties of my boiler (and water) are such that I just check on the temperature every 15 minutes and give the water a warm to get back to temperature. It's a bit of a faff, and I could use insulation, but then If I do that I might as well go straight up to full, traditional all- grain brewing.
Once the mash is over, and after a 10 minute mash out, where the temperature is raised just to extract that last bit of goodness, I drain the bag, and start to bring the wort up to a boil, taking a gravity and temperature reading (to correct the calibrated hydrometer)
On boiling, the first hops go in. Again, I was guessing...I used this advice to work out what my bitterness should be, and then just played around with timings and amounts of hops until I got the right IBU figure. Secondly, these hops were new to me. I knew Nelson Sauvin hops, liking them, but I went with Steve's suggestion of the fantastic lemon- lime hit of Motueka for bittering, followed by another addition late on for aroma (along with some Irish Moss to fine, and some yeast nutrient), and a last minute addition of the orange/ floral Pacifica for aroma. These two really did smell different from the bag, so I am hoping I can pick their individual characters out in the final product.
The observant might now be looking at the photo of the hydrometer jar saying "That looks dark for a Saison!", and I would agree. I think I over did the roasted grains, Steve! Anyway, I now tend to cube and leave overnight. So that all done, and I then perform the MOST IMPORTANT bit of a brew day (apart from sanitising stuff), which is clearing up....this is key if you want to be allowed to do it again ;-)
The following day, I took the cooled wart, decanted it into a sterilised fermenter and added the yeast. Regardless of the colour, the hops, the strength etc., it is the yeast that gives these beers their real flavour. I splashed out on a vial White Labs Saison yeast. I got Type I, described as giving earthy, peppery notes, and apparently coming via the legendary Dupont brewery, which makes a notable Saison. The other great thing about these yeast vials is that for my volumes, I pitch straight in. On opening the vial, I have to say that the yeast smelt fantastic. OK, so there is that yeasty hit you always get, but there was something sweet and really pleasant behind it. Certainly has encouraged me to think about brewing a light version now!!
So there you have it....I hope you're satisfied Steve! You made me make a dark, chocolate Saison....I'm not sure I know of one of those. We shall have to wait and see....the unfermented wort is, erm, interesting. It may be that in a week or so you go the way of all dictators, crashing to Earth in tragic delusions of (beer) grandeur....or your tactical beer like genius may take over the World.....
Posted with BlogsyWednesday, 29 August 2012
Late reports
It's been age since I last blogged. There a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, and foremostly, not a great deal has been going on....secondly, and sadly, the dear old moggy, after whom this page is named died in late June. We both miss him dreadfully, and I have been staying away from this site for a bit.
My last entry was all about a poorly fermenting porter. Well, it never shifted, after getting down to 3.2%. A bit of a shout out to the really helpful BIAB community convinced me that I had really of exaggerated the speciality roasted grains. No software makes allowance for the fact that such high percentages of roasted stuff (about 40% here....I was told 15% is about right for an Imperial Russian Stout!!) just do not ferment out like a wort stuffed full of pale malts. It sounds as if it is all to do with roasting locking in sugars during the roasting process, making them unfermentable.
Well it's been sitting around in the barrel. Cannot drink lots of it; the strength is fine, the roast is just quite full on...even though summer here has been crap, I still need something a bit more autumnal to get me drinking darker beers. However, the are times when this beer reminds me of old-fashioned Venos cough medicine; a kind of alcoholic black treacle!
As you can see, it's got good deep colour, a nice thick porterish head, so looks the part. Certainly headed in the right direction, and I have definitely started to get the battering issues sorted by looking more closely at my water chemistry.
As the season starts to turn then, I'm looking at a new brew, and also looking to adapt my process, but more of that later.
And Sockster...thanks, it was a real privilege. I'll keep brewing with your name, and raising a glass to you, old pal. Cheers!
My last entry was all about a poorly fermenting porter. Well, it never shifted, after getting down to 3.2%. A bit of a shout out to the really helpful BIAB community convinced me that I had really of exaggerated the speciality roasted grains. No software makes allowance for the fact that such high percentages of roasted stuff (about 40% here....I was told 15% is about right for an Imperial Russian Stout!!) just do not ferment out like a wort stuffed full of pale malts. It sounds as if it is all to do with roasting locking in sugars during the roasting process, making them unfermentable.
Well it's been sitting around in the barrel. Cannot drink lots of it; the strength is fine, the roast is just quite full on...even though summer here has been crap, I still need something a bit more autumnal to get me drinking darker beers. However, the are times when this beer reminds me of old-fashioned Venos cough medicine; a kind of alcoholic black treacle!
As you can see, it's got good deep colour, a nice thick porterish head, so looks the part. Certainly headed in the right direction, and I have definitely started to get the battering issues sorted by looking more closely at my water chemistry.
As the season starts to turn then, I'm looking at a new brew, and also looking to adapt my process, but more of that later.
And Sockster...thanks, it was a real privilege. I'll keep brewing with your name, and raising a glass to you, old pal. Cheers!
Thursday, 14 June 2012
All a ferment!!
This week I have been struggling with stuff yeasty.....or have I? And that's kind of the problem.
A week or so ago I brewed a porter, not a style I had tried by BIAB. All the techniques came out; mash water treatment, based on Wheeler's Calculator, and a preboil of 30 mins with some gypsum to remove most of the carbonate. After cubing for a day, I pitched a vial of White Labs English Ale yeast, and left it to do its stuff.
I also decided to mash at a slightly higher temperature to produce a slightly sweeter, full bodied beer, as I like my dark beers this way! And I think that is where the problems started.
Mashing high tends to also produce non-ferment able sugars, hence the residual sweetness. So, even though I missed my OG by four points, I was confident I was going to get the kind of beer I wanted. Starting slowly at 1.055, the yeast never really started going, and after 5 days the bee looked spent. Taking a gravity reading, I was at 1.030, an attenuation of 45%, not the 63% I was quoted, and a full 10 points out. This site told me that I could correct my attenuation for a high mash....but I was still 6 points shy of target.
And so I hit the dilemma....stuck fermentation, or was I done? Even trickier was the fact that, although now 3.2% rather than the 5% I was aiming for, it tasted great (mocha, anyone?). Further fermentation might just dry it out a bit. Moreover, if it was stuck, a kick of priming sugar may cause the odd nasty explosion.....really not good.
I have tried rousing it, and leaving it in a warmer spot, and three days later nothing. Eventually, those nice people in t'Internetland suggested I try a Fast Ferment Test....this is a great idea! Perhaps I should do this all the time? 200ml of brew, over pitched and kept warm....if the gravity drops again I know the yeast has conked out and I repitch, if it stays the same I can keg with impunity! I started the FFT yesterday, so let's see how it goes.
Update on 16/6: FFT has been sitting in the airing cupboard for two and a half days. Justtaken a gravity reading....1.030. Looks like I'm good to barrel it!
A week or so ago I brewed a porter, not a style I had tried by BIAB. All the techniques came out; mash water treatment, based on Wheeler's Calculator, and a preboil of 30 mins with some gypsum to remove most of the carbonate. After cubing for a day, I pitched a vial of White Labs English Ale yeast, and left it to do its stuff.
I also decided to mash at a slightly higher temperature to produce a slightly sweeter, full bodied beer, as I like my dark beers this way! And I think that is where the problems started.
Mashing high tends to also produce non-ferment able sugars, hence the residual sweetness. So, even though I missed my OG by four points, I was confident I was going to get the kind of beer I wanted. Starting slowly at 1.055, the yeast never really started going, and after 5 days the bee looked spent. Taking a gravity reading, I was at 1.030, an attenuation of 45%, not the 63% I was quoted, and a full 10 points out. This site told me that I could correct my attenuation for a high mash....but I was still 6 points shy of target.
And so I hit the dilemma....stuck fermentation, or was I done? Even trickier was the fact that, although now 3.2% rather than the 5% I was aiming for, it tasted great (mocha, anyone?). Further fermentation might just dry it out a bit. Moreover, if it was stuck, a kick of priming sugar may cause the odd nasty explosion.....really not good.
I have tried rousing it, and leaving it in a warmer spot, and three days later nothing. Eventually, those nice people in t'Internetland suggested I try a Fast Ferment Test....this is a great idea! Perhaps I should do this all the time? 200ml of brew, over pitched and kept warm....if the gravity drops again I know the yeast has conked out and I repitch, if it stays the same I can keg with impunity! I started the FFT yesterday, so let's see how it goes.
Update on 16/6: FFT has been sitting in the airing cupboard for two and a half days. Justtaken a gravity reading....1.030. Looks like I'm good to barrel it!
Friday, 6 April 2012
It's all about water - Part Two
As if worrying about what's in it is not enough, the last 24 hours have seen me think about water in general.
Water is one of the major facets of beer's environmental footprint, probably second (maybe even first) to the transportation footprint of the ingredients and the product. Certainly for home brewers it is pretty significant. Ordinarily, this should not be an issue, but, yesterday, the South was placed under a hose-pipe ban. Now using water for 'food' does not come under the ban, but the message to conserve the little was seem to have down here is clear.
Water is used all over the place in brewing. Not only do you start with almost double what you end up drinking, but you are constantly rinsing and cleaning and rinsing again. Moreover, to ensure that the wort does not get infected by bacteria and yeasts from the outside world, you try and cool your wort as quickly as possible. I have done this previously using an immersion chiller - apiece of copper tubing that runs of the tap and discharges down the sink. This typically takes 30 minutes, and I hate to think how much water I use. The immersion chiller can be seen here on the left:
So, this brew, I have used an idea from Australian brewers, whose water shortages are far more severe than ours! They use a method called cold cubing or no-chill cubing. Simply, this a HDPE food grade jerry can (not the ones Francis Maude suggests you fill with petrol!!!), which you fill with wort and then fully seal. I tried to get mine to be brim full, and you 'burp' the container to try and remove as much air as possible. The wort then cools naturally without contact with air and nasties:
I should be able to pitch yeast tomorrow, although some brewers keep their wort like this for months with, allegedly, no deterioration in quality. I leave them to that kind of thing, but, for now, I'm glad I'm saving a bit of water!
Water is one of the major facets of beer's environmental footprint, probably second (maybe even first) to the transportation footprint of the ingredients and the product. Certainly for home brewers it is pretty significant. Ordinarily, this should not be an issue, but, yesterday, the South was placed under a hose-pipe ban. Now using water for 'food' does not come under the ban, but the message to conserve the little was seem to have down here is clear.
Water is used all over the place in brewing. Not only do you start with almost double what you end up drinking, but you are constantly rinsing and cleaning and rinsing again. Moreover, to ensure that the wort does not get infected by bacteria and yeasts from the outside world, you try and cool your wort as quickly as possible. I have done this previously using an immersion chiller - apiece of copper tubing that runs of the tap and discharges down the sink. This typically takes 30 minutes, and I hate to think how much water I use. The immersion chiller can be seen here on the left:
So, this brew, I have used an idea from Australian brewers, whose water shortages are far more severe than ours! They use a method called cold cubing or no-chill cubing. Simply, this a HDPE food grade jerry can (not the ones Francis Maude suggests you fill with petrol!!!), which you fill with wort and then fully seal. I tried to get mine to be brim full, and you 'burp' the container to try and remove as much air as possible. The wort then cools naturally without contact with air and nasties:
I should be able to pitch yeast tomorrow, although some brewers keep their wort like this for months with, allegedly, no deterioration in quality. I leave them to that kind of thing, but, for now, I'm glad I'm saving a bit of water!
It's all about water - Mash pH
Well, it seems ages since I last wrote.............hang on a minute, it IS ages since I last wrote, 12 weeks or so, in fact!
Well, this post is all about trying to create a light, summery beer. I ended up with this, looking for some light bitterness from Hallertau and a bit of floral stuff from Amarillo.
However, I had noticed that yet again my beer was showing the same character that I wanted to get rid of, that other local brewers were not getting e.g. the beers being brewed over at Totton's Vibrant Forest brewery. What I was getting was astringency when ever I used darker grains, and an over bitter taste. I have my concerns at the various bits of programming that predict your IBUs - they never give the same answers. However, I found out this was probably due to using different volumes of 'batch size' in the Tinseth Equation for predicting bitterness. Even so, what I was getting was not what I thought I should be getting, and I needed to get rid of this 'tang' for this beer.
A little scouting around the internet led me to discover this might have something to do with mash pH. Probably best explained here, mash pH is about how the acidity/alkalinity of your water changes in response to the phosphate being dissolved out of malt upon mashing. Apparently, the ideal mash condition is acidic at pH 5.4 or so. One of the things this can lead to is astringency from darker grains when the pH is too high. Secondly, I found out that in the South, dark beers brew better than light because of the hardness and alkalinity of the water. Clearly, then, I had to investigate the chemistry of brewing water a bit more.
I use bottled Sainsbury's Caledonian Spring water, so thought I would get away with the South of England high pH, hard water chemistry. However, by reading the labels, plugging in the typical composition into a free water chemistry calculator, and adding the last recipe's malt bill, I discovered I mashed at pH 6.4, was deficient in Ca and Mg, and had a sulphate:chloride ratio that suggested 'bitterness may be enhanced'. Bang on!And measuring the pH of the water I've been using, it was well above the 6.8 of my pH strips,
So using the spreadsheet above, I did two things. Firstly, I added salts like gypsum, calcium chloride and Epsom's salts to rebalance the cations and anions in solution, and to establish a better mash pH, I added a small amount of acid malt to lower the pH even more than usual. I could have taken the old fashioned route, and added an acid rest in the mash (this is a low temperature mash, where the pH is significantly lowered by liberating phytic acid, and this was the old way- possibly before any chemist understood what was going on!- that was used by German brewers using the incredibly soft waters of Pilsen).
So, what have I found? Well, nothing yet....as I haven't tasted it. I did notice there was not as much crud on the boiler element, as there usually is, although that may not be chemistry, that might just reflect the malt bill. What I DO think is a result of messing about with the water chemistry (apart from getting a pH of 5.2 according to the pH test I ran), was that I have got a few more percent efficiency out of the mash and boil. There is some evidence to suggest that this is also influenced by mash pH, and the result may be that my calculated grain bill was too high (based on previous efficiencies) and I now may have a beer nearer 6% than 5%! If I have also nipped that bitterness thing in the bud, that sounds like a win-win to me!
Well, this post is all about trying to create a light, summery beer. I ended up with this, looking for some light bitterness from Hallertau and a bit of floral stuff from Amarillo.
However, I had noticed that yet again my beer was showing the same character that I wanted to get rid of, that other local brewers were not getting e.g. the beers being brewed over at Totton's Vibrant Forest brewery. What I was getting was astringency when ever I used darker grains, and an over bitter taste. I have my concerns at the various bits of programming that predict your IBUs - they never give the same answers. However, I found out this was probably due to using different volumes of 'batch size' in the Tinseth Equation for predicting bitterness. Even so, what I was getting was not what I thought I should be getting, and I needed to get rid of this 'tang' for this beer.
A little scouting around the internet led me to discover this might have something to do with mash pH. Probably best explained here, mash pH is about how the acidity/alkalinity of your water changes in response to the phosphate being dissolved out of malt upon mashing. Apparently, the ideal mash condition is acidic at pH 5.4 or so. One of the things this can lead to is astringency from darker grains when the pH is too high. Secondly, I found out that in the South, dark beers brew better than light because of the hardness and alkalinity of the water. Clearly, then, I had to investigate the chemistry of brewing water a bit more.
I use bottled Sainsbury's Caledonian Spring water, so thought I would get away with the South of England high pH, hard water chemistry. However, by reading the labels, plugging in the typical composition into a free water chemistry calculator, and adding the last recipe's malt bill, I discovered I mashed at pH 6.4, was deficient in Ca and Mg, and had a sulphate:chloride ratio that suggested 'bitterness may be enhanced'. Bang on!And measuring the pH of the water I've been using, it was well above the 6.8 of my pH strips,
So using the spreadsheet above, I did two things. Firstly, I added salts like gypsum, calcium chloride and Epsom's salts to rebalance the cations and anions in solution, and to establish a better mash pH, I added a small amount of acid malt to lower the pH even more than usual. I could have taken the old fashioned route, and added an acid rest in the mash (this is a low temperature mash, where the pH is significantly lowered by liberating phytic acid, and this was the old way- possibly before any chemist understood what was going on!- that was used by German brewers using the incredibly soft waters of Pilsen).
So, what have I found? Well, nothing yet....as I haven't tasted it. I did notice there was not as much crud on the boiler element, as there usually is, although that may not be chemistry, that might just reflect the malt bill. What I DO think is a result of messing about with the water chemistry (apart from getting a pH of 5.2 according to the pH test I ran), was that I have got a few more percent efficiency out of the mash and boil. There is some evidence to suggest that this is also influenced by mash pH, and the result may be that my calculated grain bill was too high (based on previous efficiencies) and I now may have a beer nearer 6% than 5%! If I have also nipped that bitterness thing in the bud, that sounds like a win-win to me!
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