44 replies to this topic

[gnef]

You are adding a lot of salts into the boil itself. For some reason, that just doesn't sit well with me. Also, it looks like you have no sodium at all in your water profile. Also, are you adding a yeast nutrient during the boil? That was something I made sure to do for each batch using RO water and building profiles since yeast still need micronutrients that can't be added in with just the brewing salts.Here is the water profile I used for most lighter colored beers, and it worked well for me. You can try it out if you want. I added all my salts only to the strike and sparge water.concentration (in ppm):Ca: 97Mg: 20Na: 53SO4: 120Cl: 141HCO3: 135This is what I added per gallon of RO water (in grams):CaCl2: 1.11gMgSO4: .77gNaHCO3: .71gCaSO4: .28gI created this profile based on the recommendations in Palmer's How To Brew, using the ranges he said for certain characteristics. I don't know the RA, but I never worried about RA if I was building the profile and knew beforehand what I was brewing, because I tailored each profile to the type of beer, so I knew it should work. This water profile I used for some hefeweizens and other wheat beers, as well as a nut brown (this is from the notes I put in the water profiles). I have a different profile for belgian beers as well as for my IPAs. I guess I never did a stout while I was using RO water. When I do my stouts now with city water, I just add some carbonates to the mash to buffer and keep the pH of the mash in line.

[MtnBrewer]

I think my thermometer is close enough. It's a digital NSF thermometer that has the ability to calibrate. I calibrated it the day I brewed the hefeweizen in a cup full of ice water. Here are the salt additions from my last batch... it was a hefeweizen with an SRM of 3.4Starting Water (ppm): Ca: 0 Mg: 0 Na: 0 Cl: 0 SO4: 0 CaCO3: 0 Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 4 / 5.2 Dilution Rate: 0% Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle: CaCO3: 0.5 / 0.65 CaSO4: 1 / 1.3 CaCl2: 2.5 / 3.25 MgSO4: 1.6 / 2.08 NaHCO3: 0 / 0 NaCl: 0 / 0 HCL Acid: 0 / 0 Lactic Acid: 0 / 0 Mash Water / Total water (ppm): Ca: 73 / 73 Mg: 10 / 10 Na: 0 / 0 Cl: 80 / 80 SO4: 78 / 78 CaCO3: 16 / 16 RA (mash only): -42 (2 to 7 SRM) Cl to SO4 (total water): 1.02 (Balanced)

I would not add any gypsum to a weizen. I would get all of my calcium from CaCl₂. Also, there is no reason to add CaCO₃ at all to a pale beer.

[CaptRon]

Why not just do all-grain with spring water, and stop worrying about water chemistry? In a lot of cases, messing with water chemistry just makes the beer worse, it's hard to improve a beer through water chemistry.

This!I have switched completely to purified spring water and my beer quality has been WAY better. I just go to Raleys, get the cheapest purified water that they have (they sell it in 2.5 gallon jugs).Now, if I just want to make some beer and not go through the extra work that it does take to make an AG batch, then I will certainly do an extract batch. I'm a beer snob, but I'm a lazy one sometimes.

[shmgeggie]

After 6 years of brewing I was forced to sell my setup when I moved. While I was building my brewery back up, I did extract batches for a while. I was doing full boils, extra light dry extract with some steeping of specialty grains. While I made pretty decent beer, it just wasn't up to my standards. I know and have heard all the arguments for extract, both positive and negative, and brewed my batches with absolutely no bias. Some batches like big malty super hoppy IPA's came out great, but milder beers didn't fare so well. For me the issue was attenuation. I like my beers dry. I just couldn't ferment anything down past 1.018 when working with extract. I'll never knock anyone for brewing extract and would gladly drink their beer... but I've made my choice and it's all-grain, all day.

I'm glad you brought this up. I like my beers fairly dry and I was also having problems with getting my FG as low as I wanted with extract. With AG (or MG - "mostly grain") I am able to consistently get a much lower FG by mashing below 150. For instance, my last pale ale finished at 1.006. I used to think I was having yeast issues but with lots of healthy yeast and ferm temps under control, I still don't get good enough attenuation when I brew with LME, even with adding more than half of the extract at the end of the boil.

[MakeMeHoppy]

I'm glad you brought this up. I like my beers fairly dry and I was also having problems with getting my FG as low as I wanted with extract. With AG (or MG - "mostly grain") I am able to consistently get a much lower FG by mashing below 150. For instance, my last pale ale finished at 1.006. I used to think I was having yeast issues but with lots of healthy yeast and ferm temps under control, I still don't get good enough attenuation when I brew with LME, even with adding more than half of the extract at the end of the boil.

I usually did late addition and also used about 10% table sugar to help with the same problem of high FG. I think getting real fresh extract is part of the problem there.