All Grain Water Chemistry Questions.

[katzke]

Well I have done 3 Biab brews, our first all grain brews. Have had some troubles not related to Biab. The first was a bad thermometer. The second was not tracking my fermentation temps well (it is summer here). And I think the last is water related.

I am on the first and the second problems but need to work on the water issue. Have a few questions that I think are related. Will first give some background on brew #1. It was intended to be an Ordinary Bitter. I used Maris Otter with some Honey Malt, Victory, and Biscuit. A mix of hops primarily Fuggle with some Goldings. We add a teaspoon of Gypsum at the boil just because that is what we did with extract brews. We add a teaspoon of Irish Moss at 15 min. Yeast was Wyeast 1098. I brewed a bit extra and split the batch between 2 fermenters and split the yeast so I consider that I under pitched. Fermentation looked OK maybe on the light side as I would expect for under pitching. The final gravity was high and I guess it was from the high mash temp (the bad thermometer). To the small batch I added a Mint tea bag like a dry hop addition at the end of the ferment.

The results are very hard to drink. The minted brew had a sour smell when bottled but a hint of mint taste. The regular batch was very bitter. I thought that I had messed up the bittering hops. After several weeks in the bottles they will not carb up past a quick fizz and a few bubbles. The color seems darker then expected. The taste is awful. Hard to explain but from doing some searching on the web and my recollection it is someplace between the sucking tea bag taste and the wet cardboard taste. I can not see both batches being oxidized so am leaning on the tannin taste. The Mint is also gone.

I called the City and have water reports coming. I was told it will be very hard to nail down the water as it depends on the time of year and even time of day what the water will be like. We have several wells and they get mixed in the storage tanks. Some wells are shut down in the winter. The time of day will influence the mixing of the water so I may get a mix or may get water from one well as it is pumped up to the tanks. I will wait to see what differences there are before getting to excited about the possible difference in water from one day to the next. I did take a PH test with an old aquarium test kit and the PH was way high off the chart. I added a drop of lemon juice to check the test solution and it did change to acid. Based on some other research I guess the PH to be at 8 or just a bit higher. The water is also treated with chlorine gas.

The last observation on all 3 brews are they seem to be cloudy. One is a wheat so it is hard to tell for sure. The second brew (an IPA) tasted great when bottled, the wheat tasted OK. They should be carbed in a week or 2.

With out having the water results I have only one question at this time. Do you think the Ordinary Bitter crashed because of the PH?

Also we have noticed that the extract IPAs have lost bitterness and hop taste with age. Could this be from the water effecting the hop bitterness and taste over time in the bottle?

Sorry for the long post but tried to give as much info as I thought you needed. Will post the water reports when I get them.

 

[newguy]

I started my brewing hobby in a city that had pH 8.9 tap water. Astringency was a huge issue. You have two choices: mix your tap water with reverse osmosis (RO) water to get the pH down into the normal range or acidify your brewing water.

If you opt to mix, go with about a 75% RO to 25% tap water mix. This is what I used to do in that city with the bad tap water and it pretty much eliminated the problem.

If you opt to acidify, there are a few options. If you can find food grade phosphoric acid, it's the best flavour-wise. Next would be lactic acid, followed by citric acid. Don't use sulphuric acid. A good starting point is 1ml acid to every every 10l of tap water, which is what I do for all my water (mash & sparge). If you want to get really anal about it, get your mash water to ~pH 7 and your sparge water maybe just a hair lower than that (6.5 or so). Like I said, I don't bother with pH measurements anymore. I just add 1ml acid per every 10l of tap water. That also happens to be the same proportion that the breweries where I presently live use.

Another option is the generic buffering compounds for brewing. Ross (craftbrewer) sells a 5.2 buffer powder that apparently works wonders. That kind of stuff isn't available around here, so I've never tried it.

To get rid of chlorine requires campden tablets (sodium or potassium metabisulphate - I forget the exact ingredients). 1 tablet will treat 80l of water. Chlorine can be driven off by preboiling your water but pure chlorine is rarely used anymore because it is unstable (won't stay in the water). Chloramine is what is most often used now, and it can't be removed by boiling or filtering. Campden tablets, however, will bind the chlorine (render it inert) and the result of the reaction is actually a yeast nutrient.

If there are still odd flavours once you take care of your water chemistry, there are other things you'll need to address. For instance, the sourness you mention makes me suspicious of your sanitation regime. Do you use a good no-rinse santiser? Star-San is (to me) the best available.

 

[katzke]

I started my brewing hobby in a city that had pH 8.9 tap water. Astringency was a huge issue. You have two choices: mix your tap water with reverse osmosis (RO) water to get the pH down into the normal range or acidify your brewing water.

I Chlorine can be driven off by preboiling your water but pure chlorine is rarely used anymore because it is unstable (won't stay in the water). Chloramine is what is most often used now, and it can't be removed by boiling or filtering. Campden tablets, however, will bind the chlorine (render it inert) and the result of the reaction is actually a yeast nutrient.

If there are still odd flavours once you take care of your water chemistry, there are other things you'll need to address. For instance, the sourness you mention makes me suspicious of your sanitation regime. Do you use a good no-rinse santiser? Star-San is (to me) the best available.

Thanks for the reply.

I did ask and they still use chlorine gas.

The sour smell was I am sure the mint tea bag. That was purely an experiment. Not sure if it went bad or not as the other part of the batch is also bad. May repeat it some day but need to work out my issues and brew good beer first.

I kind of wonder if the Maris Otter is prone to more astringency? The other brews tasted much better when bottling.

I have a local microbrewery and plan on asking them about the water once I get the reports.

 

[sathid]

When you added the mint teabag, how did you santize it?

 

[Quintrex]

I kind of wonder if the Maris Otter is prone to more astringency? The other brews tasted much better when bottling.

You have to be a lot more careful with Maris Otter when sparging, most people only sparge MO at 78oC as it seems more prone to giving astringency when oversparged(temperature or volume wise).
The only brew that I've had this happen to me was with a 90% maris otter brew, when I was first starting out.

Good luck

Q

Edit: Tannins extract better into basic water, so some acidification should also help reduce this problem.

 

[katzke]

When you added the mint teabag, how did you santize it?

Did not. Can not be all of the problem as that part of the brew was 2 gallons and no tea ever touched the other 5. If you are thinking of trying it I have no advice.

 

[sama]

Grab some 5.2 stabilizer,easy to use and gives you piece of mind http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=919.I do a simple filter of my brew water the night before through a brita filter fitted in a 50mm hole drilled in a bucket with the bucket then wedged into a fermentor. (so the water drains through the filter in the bucket, into the fermentor)..these little things make me feel better about my brew water,and thus my beer

 

[PostModern]

So I'm not the only one that has a brita filter shoved through a hole in a bucket....I no longer feel (quite as) abnormal :lol:

I got the idea from some Indian guy on another forum.

I haven't used a Hrundi-filter since I started AG tho. Boiling, pinch of meta-bisulphate and some calcium salts have removed the need for me.

 

[katzke]

Well I got the water reports today but not all the info I heed is there. The only info that may be useful are the PH, Total Alkalinity (as CaC03), Chloride, Hardness (as CaC03), and Calcium. Funny the Total Alkalinity and Hardness are different numbers with different test types but still based on CaCo3. I have 3 of the wells and all are a bit different but close.

PH ranges from 7.0 to 7.8
Total Alkalinity ranges from 71.8 to 64mg/L
Chloride from 2.3 to 2.04mg/L
Hardness from 42 to 50mg/L
Calcium from 6.97 to 9.23mg/L

What else do I need to know?

I read Palmers How To Brew and he gives ways to get some other values from what I have, I think. Anyone know for sure? And the convert from mg/L to PPM question, is it as simple as being the same?