Thursday, May 28, 2009

Homebrew Digest #5559 (May 28, 2009)

HOMEBREW Digest #5559 Thu 28 May 2009


FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
water addition help (Eric Beaupre)


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Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 23:57:13 -0400
From: Eric Beaupre <eric.beaupre at gmail.com>
Subject: water addition help

So I recently moved from central illinois where the water was quite
hard to Pennsylvania where the water's quite soft. I thought I'd
celebrate by brewing a light colored hoppy beer as I hadn't been able
to brew a decent one with my previous water. i pulled a report from
the water company and thought I'd try "adjusting" the water. My
report is as follows:

[ppm]
calcium 21
chloride 25
magnesium 6.6
pH 8.39
Sodium 12
Sulfate 18

I knew I wanted more sulfate for some hop bitterness, more sodium for
flavor, and more calcium since it's supposed to do a body good.

I found various water spreadsheets and settled on Palmer's. Sorry AJ,
yours was a bit over my head for a first go. I ran some numbers in
his sheet and came up with the following additions:

[g]
CaCO3 1.2
Gypsum .6
CaCl2 .35
Baking Soda .3

Here's where I might have made a terrible error, I _assumed_ this was
per gallon of water in the HLT. So, I multiplied all of those by 11
and added it to my 11 gallons of 170 degree water. I mashed my grain
and noticed the HLT was coated in a white film, and film is most
likely an understatement. I knew at that point I was most likely in
trouble but carried on anyhow.

The beer's been in primary for two weeks. When I racked to primary I
noticed an inch or two of "stuff" immediately settled to the bottom of
the carboy. I had a nice robust rolling ferment though. It's now
time to transfer it to secondary. I'm wondering at this point if I
did in fact supersaturate the water with minerals (nearly a given) and
if so what effect it will have on the beer. I'm also wondering if I
should "waste" the hops I had saved for dry hopping on this brew or
just use them in the next brew. So, any guesses on what this thing
will taste like? Any steps I can take at this point to improve the
beer?

I've hosted the spread sheet at scribd if anyone would like to take a
look at it.
http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/12269292/r48mewck64eg3counza
The target mineral levels are listed in there, can someone recommend
what they would have added to the mash water to achieve this?

Thanks
Eric


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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5559, 05/28/09
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