English Ordinary Bitter Design

[Tony]

Im with pumpy. I "burtojised the water" once. I added gypsum and epsom salt till i got the right amounts as per promash and a local water report.

The beer was harsh and not so flash to drink.

I now just go with a couple of teaspoons of gypsum in the mash and the same in the batch sparge water for a bitter.

it doesnt make that much difference and you need a bucket load to drop the ph anything noticable.

Keep it simple this first one and see how it goes. them adjust next time.

cheers

 

[Ash in Perth]

the main thing is that im trying to do everything i can do to avoid tannins. higher pH in the mash seems to do this more.

I dont have a pH meter, just a dodgy aquarium pH kit that tells me if it is acidic or basic and thats all.

Lets say im going to throw in about 5g of calcium sulphate and 3g of mangesium sulphate into fairly soft water at pH around 8. what kind of pH do you think this will become.. just a VERY rough estimate is good.

Cheers.

 

[neonmeate]

ash, don't want to confuse you any further but i wold say from experience that 3-4g of magnesium sulfate is way too much - magnesium is good in small amounts but can really give a harsh flavour - i know after wrecking a couple of ales with it. i would stick to less than half a teaspoon of the stuff. and don't worry about getting the carbonate content up as high as the burton figures - they would remove all the carbonate before brewing anyway.

as i said before, the coloured malts will more than likely get your pH down to a good level anyway. the only time to really worry about pH is when you have a 100% pale or pils malt beer really. the main reason i burtonise the water is to improve the mouthfeel.

but burtonisation doesn't mean you have to get exact burton figures - i did that once and it came out horrible and undrinkably bitter and harsh. i go for somewhere like half the figures you see in those burton water charts and it turns out much better.

and besides brewing beer like burton isn't the aim: marstons and bass brew crap beer. (burton bridge is another story).

just experiment and see what you like. most people don't bother with water treatment but i personally like a bit of hardness in the water for my british ales and saisons.

 

[Ash in Perth]

Ok cheers ill do that. just a little bit of mag sulphate then and then about5g calcium. its going to be:

91% Marris Otter
7% Crystal
2% Amber

This should bring the pH down alright. i jsu watned to try get it in the right range for the MArris otter.

Im not worried about gettting edactly the same as burton but i had never tried it. maybe its better to start softer then

Cheers every one. ill let you know how it turns out.

 

[Malnourished]

Lets say im going to throw in about 5g of calcium sulphate and 3g of mangesium sulphate into fairly soft water at pH around 8. what kind of pH do you think this will become.. just a VERY rough estimate is good.

I could make a completely random guess, but I think you will find the following information somewhat more useful.

In my opinion, your water's pH is as good as irrelevant. It is the mineral content that matters. I found this out upon receiving a Geelong water profile with single digit ppms of all the important minerals, yet a pH>9! I believe this has something to do with treatment of water for municipal use, but I don't really know much more than that.

Anyway you say your water is soft, so I would assume that a mash with crystal and amber malts with no water addition would get into the appropriate pH range at least. At least that's my experience with soft Melbourne/Geelong water - have you had problems with tannins in similar coloured beers before?

As far as calculations to predict mash pH, there was an article written which claimed that you can determine the "ideal" colour of a beer based on the residual alkalinity of the water... and consequently you can find an appropriate level of RA depending on what colour beer you want to brew. This assumes that you know the amount of Calcium, Magnesium and Carbonate in your water - units are ppm. Note the colour is in SRM too.

Residual alkalinity = CaC03 - (Ca * 0.714) - (Mg * 0.585)

(Or if alkalinity is expressed as HCO3) Residual alkalinity = (HCO3 * 0.82) - (Ca * 0.714) - (Mg * 0.585)

Ideal R.A. = (SRM * 7.14) - 37

Or you can flip the last equation around and calculate the "Ideal SRM" for your water.

I find these calculations invaluable when brewing amber to brown beers with Melbourne's very soft water. Pale beers always turn out fine anyway, and when you get into stout territory the amount of chalk these calculations suggest adding start getting real scary so I just add the dark grains with the sparge.

Of course with a bitter you also want a fair bit of sulfate in there for flavour. It doesn't affect the mash pH but the Ca or Mg it comes with will.

 

[BottleBitch]

Hi Ash,

Wow your ph is very high for your local water, I'm just a few suburbs away in Freo, and is between 7-7.5 PH, so maybe you should invest in a good PH meter, you can pick up ok ones on EBAY for $67 including postage http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NEW-PH-Temperature-...1QQcmdZViewItem

Just make sure you dont get a PH meter with ATC, because these are not very accurate, if they come with Temp, they are the ones to go for because you can always chill the sample down to 20C for testing.

Acid malt is just the German way of bringing down PH, because of the whole Rienheitgebot thing, but where not brewing in Germany now are we, so we can put in what ever the hell we want. For a English bitter I have been putting in 20 grams of CaSO4 in to the grist and 20 grams in with the first hop addition, which give me about 170 PPM, this seams to do the trick, but I'm thinking of going a little higher with my next brew to see what affect it has. I also add CaCl to my bitters, but this is much less, at about 5 grams, but if I'm making a pale, I dont add any CaCl. The whole subject of water treatment is not really based on scientific fact, more just historic data, you ask a professional brewer to explain the reasons behind the whole CaSO4 to CaCl ratio and they wont really be able to explain it, but they will say that you can not make an English ale without water treatment, they just recon its a taste thing, brew and adjust according to the final product.(based on 45lt kettle vol post boil)

An getting back on subject, if you get the mash ph right, that is about 5.4 at recirculation, this gives you a much greater buffer when sparging, because its at around 5.8 to 6 when you start to leak out the tannic acids and polyphenols, from the grain causing lots of problems down the track. You should also be aiming for about 5.2 at the end of boil.

Cheers

Brett

 

[Duff]

Your easiest and cheapest way to check water pH is to head to your local pool shop and buy a kit from them for around the $20 mark.

 

[colinw]

This is what passes for an ordinary bitter in my house, and it tastes remarkably like some of the stuff I've drunk on hand pump in the old country.

BPA ("Basic Pommy Ale")

Makes about 24 litres of 1.040 OG at my usual efficiencies.

4kg floor malted English Pale Malt (Maris Otter, Halcyon or Golden Promise)
270g Flaked Maize
185g English Crystal Malt 55L
45g English Black Patent Malt

Infusion Mash, 90 minutes at 65-66 degrees C.

Boil: 90 minutes
- 4g Target pellets 10.5%AA @ 60 minutes
- 16g Northdown pellets 7.2%AA @ 60 minutes
- 14g East Kent Goldings plug 5.5%AA @ 60 minutes
- 14g East Kent Goldings plug 5.5%AA @ 30 minutes
- 1/2 tablet whirlfloc @ 20 minutes
- 14g East Kent Goldings plug 5.5%AA @ 15 minutes
- 14g East Kent Goldings plus @ strikeout

I generally cut runnings on this recipe at about 22 litres (when the runnings are around 1.012) and top up the boil to about 27 or 28 litres with left over sparge water. Its quite easy to over-sparge with these lower gravity beers.

Ferment with a neutral, attenuative ale yeast (Nottingham, WLP007, Wyeast 1028).

Colour = 9 SRM
Bitterness = 36 IBUs
OG = 1.040, FG = 1.010 for approx 4% ABV

For Brisbane water, I use 1g gypsum and 0.25g epsom salts in each 10 litres of water. You want at least 50ppm Calcium and 50 to 100 ppm sulphate, so use BreWater or ProMash to work out the salts for your water profile. Adjust pH as per usual.

This beer is best served at about 12 to 15 degrees C. I wait until the yeast has mostly dropped clear, then rack to a corny keg with 50g of cane sugar as primings, then leave to naturally carbonate for a week before serving. DO NOT FORCE CARBONATE, just purge the keg and gas enough to seal and maintain a blanket of CO2 to keep the beer from oxidising. After it has conditioned, crank up the pressure a bit to serve. A picnic tap works best for serving, as you can get a correct pour without too much froth. With a decent highly flocculant English yeast you'll get a couple of cloudy pints at the beginning, but most of the keg will pour a brilliant clear reddish colour.

This recipe came the closest I have ever been to replicating the flavour of a bitter served properly in an English pub.

cheers,
Colin

 

[neonmeate]

This is what passes for an ordinary bitter in my house, and it tastes remarkably like some of the stuff I've drunk on hand pump in the old country.

....270g Flaked Maize

hey colin, any reason you like flaked maize?

 

[Tony]

I have used maize in british bitters before and it works great.

Seems to add a bit of sweet to go with the bready maltyness of the MO.

Also thins the body out a bit to make it more "skullable" if you want to mash a bit higher to get that malty melanoiden rich profile that you only get mashing warmer.

cheers

 

[Ash in Perth]

Im not going to buy a pH meter because they need calibrating quite often and replacement probes almost as often.

I like the idea about a pool pH kit, should be more accurate than the aquarium kit i have.

use BreWater or ProMash to work out the salts for your water profile. Adjust pH as per usual.

How do you adjust your pH?

 

[warrenlw63]

marstons and bass brew crap beer. (burton bridge is another story).

Tarring one too many with the same brush there NM. h34r:

Warren -

 

[Ross]

marstons and bass brew crap beer. (burton bridge is another story).

Tarring one too many with the same brush there NM. h34r:

Warren -

Yep, Marstons brew some great beer - "Pedigree" for starters :chug:

Cheers Ross

 

[Tony]

Ash.

With regard to adjusting pH with gypsum. I did this experiment with my IPA (that turned out so malty it hid the hops and is now an ESB).

I mashed in and then added gypsum to see what it would do.

here are my results.

12.4KG or grain mashed in @ 2.5L/KG
20 EBC beer
mash water pH: 7.96
Initial mash pH: 5.71
after adding 3 teaspoons gypsum: 5.65
1 more teaspoon added to mash: 5.60

After "burtonising" and wrecking my last atempt at an IPA i decided to stop adding gypsum as it wasnt making much difference.

I added 2 teaspoons gypsum to 40 liters of sparge water
the batch sparge pH was 5.82

I ended up getting about 82% efficiency and the beer is in the keg now. Its very malty with a nice bitter bite. The extra 7% efficiency i wasnt expecting blew out my BU:GU ratio hence why it is more like an ESB now. Its very malty and less bitter than IPA.

I took the pH meter to work the next day and checked it in some 4 and 7pH buffer solution.

It was reading 0.4 pH high!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the initial mash pH would have been fine @ 5.31.

Go figure. It was the first time i used it and i hadnt calibrated it fron the factory.

It now reads accuratly and doesnt need claibrating at all between brews. It is within 0.05 pH when i check it.

hope this helps mate, you seem to be a bit nervous about it.

I recon it was the epsum salts that spoiled the IPA i burtonised. magnesiun is a laxative in high levels. But for sulphate adition its great. definatly keep it down to like 1/4 or 1/2 a teaspoon.

cheers

 

[Tony]

Oh forgot to add.......

my water is fairly soft here. It is clean and doesnt have the swimming pool taste. and i can taste it when it does i grew up on tank water. I cant taste dead frogs in water like city folk though go figure

If you use some darker grains i recon the pH will take care of itsself mate..... just chuck in a few teaspoons of gypsum to harden it up a bit.

IT really doesnt make that much difference and i have tried lots of combos.

cheers

 

[Guest Lurker]

Hi Ash,

Wow your ph is very high for your local water, I'm just a few suburbs away in Freo, and is between 7-7.5 PH, so maybe you should invest in a good PH meter,

Tap water in Bayswater today was pH 8.6, measured with a $800 meter, calibrated to 2 standards. Although it changes during the year as the feed changes between dams and groundwater, I have never seen a pH as low as 7.5 here.

 

[Millet Man]

Tap water in Bayswater today was pH 8.6, measured with a $800 meter, calibrated to 2 standards. Although it changes during the year as the feed changes between dams and groundwater, I have never seen a pH as low as 7.5 here.

Mine varies between 7.6 and 7.9, an all pale mash would be about pH 5.7 without adjustment.

If you don't want to pour too much gypsum into the mash then something like citric or phosphoric acid can be used to adjust the pH down. I've settled on using 1 tsp of gypsum per 10 litres of water (I need the calcium) and then for light beers adjusting the mash water down to 6.0 using citric acid, don't bother for dark beers. Mash pH always comes out around 5.4. I also use citric to adjust sparge water down to 5.7.

One thing I've noticed is when I add the gypsum to the water it goes from 7.8 to 7.6, not much change as Tony noted. When I add a pinch of sod met it drops to 6.7 or so. :huh:

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[Ash in Perth]

I think ill just darken it a little to about 20EBC and throw in a little bit of salts. keep it simple.

I have pale choc malt or Carafa Special II, which would be better to darken it a little? about 30g of pale choc is enough to darken it from about 16 to 20 jsut for my peace of mind.

Ill worry about the pH mroe when im doing Pale lagers/pilsners which is kind of what im trying to find this out for. But I didnt realise pale malts would lower the mash water pH that much. I have a good water filter for them which softens it heaps and makes the pH easier to bring down because there will be less buffers present.

 

[neonmeate]

marstons and bass brew crap beer. (burton bridge is another story).

Tarring one too many with the same brush there NM.

Warren -

Yep, Marstons brew some great beer - "Pedigree" for starters

Cheers Ross

wondered whether anyone would bite at that... isnt pedigree a brand of dogfood?

sorry i meant "boring beer" not necessarily "crap beer" - Burton beers are supposed to be renowned for their hoppiness but buggered if i can taste any bitterness in any beer by marstons. think i need some f these h34r: h34r: h34r:

 

[colinw]

This is what passes for an ordinary bitter in my house, and it tastes remarkably like some of the stuff I've drunk on hand pump in the old country.

....270g Flaked Maize

hey colin, any reason you like flaked maize?

I just like the flavour it gives the beer - seems to make it a more elegant, dry & crisp beer than an all-malt bittter, even one mashed at 65 degrees. Comparing my all-malt bitters with ones with 6 to 10 percent maize, I always prefer the ones with the maize.

Other things I've noticed using it are a tendency to express the hops flavour more, better head retention & lacework, and reduced chill haze (if you must chill your beer that much - most bitters taste like dishwater if you chill them too much).

If you really want to get a taste of what flaked maize can do, try brewing a Classic American Cream Ale with 20 to 25% of the stuff. Yum!