NEIPA water chemistry

[Nickedoff]

Hi all

I'm looking to brew my first NEIPA next weekend (Home Brew Network's Harpoon Hazy IPA). I haven't mucked around with water chemistry much so far but it seems that's a bit more important with hoppy beers so I thought I'd give it some consideration. I'm having issues getting a water quality report from my water distributor and I'm close to kegland so I figured I'd use their RO water.

The grain bill is:

4kg Pilsner malt
1kg Ale malt
500g rolled oats
500g malted oats
500g naked oats

23l batch size so ~23l mash and 10l sparge water.

I'm completely winging it here, but I think a target PH of 5.24 is about right. I have the following water additions:

Phosphoric acid - 2.7ml (85%)
Gypsum - 2.5g
Calcium chloride - 12g
Epsom salt - 2.4g

I've plugged the RO water profile into brewfather, however, I can't seem to find a combination of salts that comes close to Gash's target profile - seems like way too much sulfate (see photo).

I'm a bit lost. Any pointers would be appreciated.

 

[chookherder]

Hi Nick,

I'm assuming from your screenshot that Gash's water profile is the same as your list as 'Hoppy NEIPA #2' ?

If not, what does Gash's water profile look like?

I put the same recipe into Beersmith and that 'Hoppy NEIPA #2' water profile I get very similar salt additions as you did, note I needed more Acid to get pH-5.27. This is an extremely Malty water profile, it really does use a lot of CaCl
.

I've always enjoyed Black Hops NEIPAs, so I put their target water profile instead and below is the outcome.
I have used these numbers before and enjoyed the result.

 

[TwoCrows]

 

[Nickedoff]

Thanks fellas. Chook - yes it's the NEIPA 2 profile. I think I've got a bit more of an idea now, the video was helpful TwoCrows.

I didn't realise brewfather had an auto button that calculates it for you.

I'll let you know how I go.

 

[Nickedoff]

I brewed this today using RO water and the following additions which I calculated to achieve a mash PH of 5.24:

9.8g Calcium Chloride
1.2g Epsom salt
1.4g Gypsum
4.8ml lactic acid (88%).

However, when I tested the mash PH it was 4.9! I cooled it to about 40c and used my kegland PH meter (calibrated to PH 4 so I'm fairly sure it's ok). I just went with it as I don't have any calcium carbonate and would have needed to add a heap of bicarb to get it back up to 5.2ish. I thought this might affect the OG but that seems fine (1.060 which is .001 off the calculated OG).

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

 

[Nickedoff]

Well, a lot went wrong in the brewing process with this, including some unexpectedly warm weather which meant it fermented at 27c for day 2 and 3. It seems verdant is a pretty forgiving yeast, and the PH didn't seems to have a massive impact because it turned out to be a pretty ok beer!

Took about 3 weeks in the keg to come together and now it's quite nice.

 

[MHB]

I would be taking a long look at your pH meter. In distilled (or RoMo) water you would be hard pressed to get the pH below 5.6 with just salt additions.
88% lactic will lower the pH by close to 0.1 points of pH /kg of malt. The recipe says 6.5kg of malt, assuming you had a pH of 5.6 the 4.8mL of acid added would only be enough to drop the pH another 0.12pH so maybe to 5.48pH.
Hard to tell if the pH meter is working unless it is well looked after (kept wet) and calibrated regularly, even then hot wort will kill them pretty fast and you can’t really expect to get much more than a year out of most pH meters.
Might be worth testing your meter.
Mark

 

[Nickedoff]

Thanks Mark - I'll re-calibrate it with the test solutions and give it another go. It's a new electrode (the old one dried out) and I've been keeping it wet with the KCI solution.