Two hour boil

[Lee Haseley]

Dear all,
I was hoping someone could take a look at this for me. I use RO water and got these numbers from the water calculator on Jim's Beer Kit.
The problem is that I am doing a two hour boil with 20-25% evaporation. I have calculated that I need just under 24 litres of water in total.

1.97gr calcium sulphate
11.22gr calcium chloride
2.43gr Epsom salt
4.58gr table salt
2g chalk

Grain bill:
2.3kg pale
300gr each of roasted barely, dark crystal, and soft dark brown sugar.
2225gr Admiral @60

are the water additions too much given the extended boil and evaporation rate?

12 litre batch.
2.3kg pale
300gr each of dark crystal, roasted barley, and dark soft brown sugar.
25gr Admiral @60

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Dear all,
I was hoping someone could take a look at this for me. I use RO water and got these numbers from the water calculator on Jim's Beer Kit.
The problem is that I am doing a two hour boil with 20-25% evaporation. I have calculated that I need just under 24 litres of water in total.

1.97gr calcium sulphate
11.22gr calcium chloride
2.43gr Epsom salt
4.58gr table salt
2g chalk

Grain bill:
2.3kg pale
300gr each of roasted barely, dark crystal, and soft dark brown sugar.
2225gr Admiral @60

are the water additions too much given the extended boil and evaporation rate?

12 litre batch.
2.3kg pale
300gr each of dark crystal, roasted barley, and dark soft brown sugar.
25gr Admiral @60

Why not boil for one hour? Water additions, I have read that there is 1.9g/kg of magnesium in malted grain so more than enough magnesium to ditch the Epsom salts, though Martin Brungard does say he adds a pinch of magnesium to his brewing water. 11.22 g of chloride seems a bit excessive. Reading Gordon Strong's books where he has to use RO water he only puts about 2g of sulphate and chloride. To make life easier why not steep your non fermentables (roasted barley and dark crystal) overnight if cold steeping 20 minutes at 77C and add the liquor before the boil. Of course taking the amount of liquor from the steeping into the pre boil total.
The table salt start of with 1g and edge up seems the table salt is on the high side, but that could be me I don't like salt.
Calcium carbonate is un soluble in the mash but steeping the grains you won't need any at all, in fact if you do a mash out process just add the non fermentables then.

 

[Lee Haseley]

Why not boil for one hour? Water additions, I have read that there is 1.9g/kg of magnesium in malted grain so more than enough magnesium to ditch the Epsom salts, though Martin Brungard does say he adds a pinch of magnesium to his brewing water. 11.22 g of chloride seems a bit excessive. Reading Gordon Strong's books where he has to use RO water he only puts about 2g of sulphate and chloride. To make life easier why not steep your non fermentables (roasted barley and dark crystal) overnight if cold steeping 20 minutes at 77C and add the liquor before the boil. Of course taking the amount of liquor from the steeping into the pre boil total.
The table salt start of with 1g and edge up seems the table salt is on the high side, but that could be me I don't like salt.
Calcium carbonate is un soluble in the mash but steeping the grains you won't need any at all, in fact if you do a mash out process just add the non fermentables then.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. The extended boil is in order to maximise my efficiency.

 

[ianh]

Something does not appear to be right, you are starting with 24litres and finishing with 12 litres. You have say 3kg grain to absorb water and then say 25% loss due to the boil. Figures dont add up.
cheers
Ian

 

[Lee Haseley]

Something does not appear to be right, you are starting with 24litres and finishing with 12 litres. You have say 3kg grain to absorb water and then say 25% loss due to the boil. Figures dont add up.
cheers
Ian

I will have a look at the calculations again. Cheers very much.
Lee

 

[elmoMakesBeer]

You have to ask first what you’re targeting with your salt additions. I like to keep it simple: add calcium chloride and calcium sulphate (gypsum) to achieve 50-80 ppm calcium (good for mash conversion), and a reasonable sulphate:chloride ratio (more sulphate accentuates hops). Chalk or baking soda could be used if your grain bill is too acidic (most likely high gravity with heaps of crystal malts). By my calc your grain bill in 24 l of water should end up roughly pH 5.4, which is at the upper end of good. You don’t really need to add acid but you have no need to add bases like chalk. Table salt I’d leave for my chips.
Do check your volumes, but you could do a lot worse than 3.5g of each gypsum and calcium chloride. Starting from a perfectly clean water you should end up with approx 73ppm Ca, 80 ppm sulphate, and 70 ppm chloride. Giving a SO4:Cl ratio of 1.2
If you have something specific in mind play with the relative sulphate:chloride, but those are roughly the quantities I’d be looking for.
I’m not familiar with Jim’s Beer Kit, but if it has a calculator it should work. Or try the Brewer’s Friend website.

 

[Lee Haseley]

Thank you very much for your reply.
In the water calculator in question, I selected dry stout as a target profile.

 

[MHB]

Something does not appear to be right, you are starting with 24litres and finishing with 12 litres. You have say 3kg grain to absorb water and then say 25% loss due to the boil. Figures dont add up.
cheers
Ian

Was my first thought too.
Had a bit of a play with the numbers and, if as many recipes do, the evaporation rate is quoted in %/hour, it does make sense. Arguably the cost of energy for that long and intense a boil would cost more than any gains in efficiency would repay. Also there will be some thermal damage to the wort if you boil that hard.

I would try to get back to around 10%/Hour boil off. My default boil is 90 minutes for most beers and certainly for dark beers.
Remember that salts don’t boil off so they concentrate in the boil. Elmo above makes a lot of sense; there are plenty of good reasons for having a minimum of 50-100ppm of Calcium in your wort (I normally aim at 100-150ppm).
There are two ways to look at salt additions.
One is to try and copy water profiles from known brewing areas.
The other is a functional approach that adds salts to achieve outcomes.
What you have chosen (Dry Stout) looks like the first, the fact that a "Traditional" water profile has chalk or Salt (NaCl) in it isn’t to my mind a good enough reason to add it to my beer.
Most breweries traditionally modified their water profile to do what the brewer wanted, I have never see a traditional profile that takes that into account.
Mark

 

[Lee Haseley]

Was my first thought too.
Had a bit of a play with the numbers and, if as many recipes do, the evaporation rate is quoted in %/hour, it does make sense. Arguably the cost of energy for that long and intense a boil would cost more than any gains in efficiency would repay. Also there will be some thermal damage to the wort if you boil that hard.

I would try to get back to around 10%/Hour boil off. My default boil is 90 minutes for most beers and certainly for dark beers.
Remember that salts don’t boil off so they concentrate in the boil. Elmo above makes a lot of sense; there are plenty of good reasons for having a minimum of 50-100ppm of Calcium in your wort (I normally aim at 100-150ppm).
There are two ways to look at salt additions.
One is to try and copy water profiles from known brewing areas.
The other is a functional approach that adds salts to achieve outcomes.
What you have chosen (Dry Stout) looks like the first, the fact that a "Traditional" water profile has chalk or Salt (NaCl) in it isn’t to my mind a good enough reason to add it to my beer.
Most breweries traditionally modified their water profile to do what the brewer wanted, I have never see a traditional profile that takes that into account.
Mark

Thank you very much, Mark.
I played around with the numbers again, thinking exactly what you said about salts not boiling off, and came back with roughly half the amounts.
Here in Thailand gas is cheaper than grain.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. The extended boil is in order to maximise my efficiency.

Efficiency is what you get from the mash, once you have extracted the sugars from the mash that stays in the wort. Prolonged boils just condenses the wort, the sugar content remains stable which will give a higher SG.

 

[Lee Haseley]

Efficiency is what you get from the mash, once you have extracted the sugars from the mash that stays in the wort. Prolonged boils just condenses the wort, the sugar content remains stable which will give a higher SG.

This was my aim. I did, perhaps, express my aim in a manner that wasn't 100% clear.

 

[MHB]

I still don’t understand how you intend to get enough extra efficiency to justify the other factors involved in using double the amount of water necessary.
Remember that brewing is always a series of compromises. As above long intense boils will cause harm to your wort. So will long high volume or hot sparges, they are almost guaranteed to extract enough tannin (well Polyphenols) from grain husks to make the beer taste fairly unpleasant.
How are you planning to use all that water to get your high efficiency?
Mark