Exactly, the cigar box build would be easy for anyone on here
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Homebrewers - Whats Fermenting?
- Thread starter BeerAdvocate
- Start date
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Have a noob Brewer question, wondering if you guys can give me some advice. I am getting ready to brew a DIPA today and have been reading about adjusting water hardness to accentuate the hops. The water I am using is around 130 total hardness and from what I read somewhere around 200 would be more appropriate.
The thing is, I don't completely understand water chemistry, and have read just enough to be dangerous. I bought a little gypsum and according to Palmers book, 1 gram per gallon of water adds around 61 ppm calcium for overall hardness. I can not find the exact amounts of calcium ppm in the Fort Wayne city water report.
Long story short, here are my questions.
I obviously don't understand this completely, should I mess with it at all? Add 1 gram per gallon? Does this get added in the mash? Since I'm doing BIAB should I add enough to adjust the total amount of water (9.4gal) or just enough for the final volume (6gal)?
The more I write, the more I think I should leave it alone...
Thanks in advance for anyone that can help me out.
The thing is, I don't completely understand water chemistry, and have read just enough to be dangerous. I bought a little gypsum and according to Palmers book, 1 gram per gallon of water adds around 61 ppm calcium for overall hardness. I can not find the exact amounts of calcium ppm in the Fort Wayne city water report.
Long story short, here are my questions.
I obviously don't understand this completely, should I mess with it at all? Add 1 gram per gallon? Does this get added in the mash? Since I'm doing BIAB should I add enough to adjust the total amount of water (9.4gal) or just enough for the final volume (6gal)?
The more I write, the more I think I should leave it alone...
Thanks in advance for anyone that can help me out.
Not something I'd recommend messing with. As long as your water is fine then I'd use it as is and get into this stuff further down the road. After overdoing the gypsum on one batch it sticks out like a sore thumb now. So many commercial IPAs have it its disgusting. It's not a pleasant bitterness and IMO does not accentuate the kind of bitterness the hops give.
Fwiw you would add the amount needed for your target batch volume. Not the volume of brewing water. That's probably the most common mistake people make when treating their brew water. Myself being one of them.
Fwiw you would add the amount needed for your target batch volume. Not the volume of brewing water. That's probably the most common mistake people make when treating their brew water. Myself being one of them.
I tend to agree with this. Brew the recipe first and then decide if it needs changing and address that in a later batch. Don't fix what you don't know is broken.
You should look into first wort hopping.
Don't mess with your water. Listen to Cole. Get about 10 brews under your belt and then worry about your water. Try to get consistent with your numbers first. Mash temps, SG, FG ect. Then throw everything out the window and use RO water and build your water for the best mash "requirements" for the beer your brewing. Surprisingly the mineral requirements are a lot lower than you think.
Well... Here is how my brew went today...
Started off fine using my BIAB water calculator as normal. 9.38 gallons needed for 16.8lbs grain and 6 gallons to the fermenter. .75gal trub loss and 1.25 gph boil off. It ended up being close to 6.75 gallons in the fermenter... I knew something was wrong after I mashed and was above my pre-boil volume by about 1/2-3/4 gallon. I decided to boil an additional 15 minutes before I added my 60 min hop addition. I should have done at least 30. The result is around 6.75 gallons of 1.066 instead of 6 gallons of 1.073. I have around an inch of headspace in the fermenter and rigged up my very first blow off tube. Bought 2 packs of US-05 because I expected my SG to be much higher since I got around 80% eff last time. Decided to pitch both packs anyway since I had them. I also added 1tsp of gypsum to the boil... Certainly I can't fuck up 6 gallons of wort with 5 grams of gypsum. At least that's what I told myself.
Not going to sweat it. The brew tasted fantastic and there are worse things than having more beer with a lower ABV than anticipated. This is by far my favorite wort sample of any beer I have made.
The only thing that concerns me at this point is the amount of headspace in the fermenter. Not much I can do about it now.
RDWAHAHB
Unfortunately I was brewing and didn't see the responses on here and made a decision on the fly. I appreciate all of the feedback and hopefully everything turns out fine!
Started off fine using my BIAB water calculator as normal. 9.38 gallons needed for 16.8lbs grain and 6 gallons to the fermenter. .75gal trub loss and 1.25 gph boil off. It ended up being close to 6.75 gallons in the fermenter... I knew something was wrong after I mashed and was above my pre-boil volume by about 1/2-3/4 gallon. I decided to boil an additional 15 minutes before I added my 60 min hop addition. I should have done at least 30. The result is around 6.75 gallons of 1.066 instead of 6 gallons of 1.073. I have around an inch of headspace in the fermenter and rigged up my very first blow off tube. Bought 2 packs of US-05 because I expected my SG to be much higher since I got around 80% eff last time. Decided to pitch both packs anyway since I had them. I also added 1tsp of gypsum to the boil... Certainly I can't fuck up 6 gallons of wort with 5 grams of gypsum. At least that's what I told myself.
Not going to sweat it. The brew tasted fantastic and there are worse things than having more beer with a lower ABV than anticipated. This is by far my favorite wort sample of any beer I have made.
The only thing that concerns me at this point is the amount of headspace in the fermenter. Not much I can do about it now.
RDWAHAHB
Unfortunately I was brewing and didn't see the responses on here and made a decision on the fly. I appreciate all of the feedback and hopefully everything turns out fine!
This is where things can get tricky and why you'll definitely want to see your full water report. Hardness mostly has to do with how strong of a buffer the ions in the water will be against the influence the malts will have on the ph. The malts bring the ph down while the hardness works against it with darker roasted malts being stronger than lighter malts. Now without seeing the full report its hard to say what ions are contributing to the hardness of the water, so your sort of shooting in the dark when it comes to knowing what ion levels in the water you need to raise or those you don't.
Where this gets a bit trickier is the other ions in the water. Calcium sulfate(gypsum) increases the ppm of Ca in the water but also the sulfate(S04) too, which is the ion that brewers try to manipulate to influence bitterness. S04 does have a taste threshold so while the amount of gypsum used might dial in your Ca levels perfectly it could also spike your S04 to levels that will taste like absolute ass. Hopefully I didn't scare you with any of this your beer is likely fine. But you can probably see how water treatment can be more than most care for and how much of a balancing act it can be.
I will echo others and say leave water chemistry for something to screw with when you get the rest sorted and are comfortable/confident. Me, well the water in AZ is shit and not suitable for drinking let alone beer. After paying $1.25/gal for spring water for about a year of brewing and winning medals in several homebrew competitions did I decide to go down that rabbit hole. Now, I use reverse osmosis water and build my water profiles specific to each beer, but I tend to go off the deep end with my hobbies and brewing science is my jam. Get comfortable and consistent with what you are doing, and when you decide to go all breaking bad on your water download the bru'n water spreadsheet doing a Google search and then pm me with your questions because it makes absolutely no sense at first and takes some time to figure out. Most homebrewers never go that far but if you like controlling every single aspect of your beer water chemistry is a must.
Nice to know I can combine hobbies if I ever get back into home brewing. I have a 5 stage ro/di system with 150 gallons of storage capacity for my reef aquarium systems.
I always forget that the rest of the world doesn't like chemistry as much as I do... I started playing with it right away, but then again, that's my field 
Yeah, if you ever need help reading a report or how to adjust your water, feel free to shoot me a message!
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Yeah, if you ever need help reading a report or how to adjust your water, feel free to shoot me a message!
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
Going to brew a Nut Brown recipe next week and need a little help with the hop additions. Going to do a 10 gallon batch of this.
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=30187
I will be doubling the grain bill, but I have a question when it comes to the hops. I put everything in my software and came up with 3.25oz fuggle @ 60 and 3oz EKG @ 15 to get 21.8 IBU. 6oz hops seems like a lot for this particular recipe. I am guessing that I am missing something.
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=30187
I will be doubling the grain bill, but I have a question when it comes to the hops. I put everything in my software and came up with 3.25oz fuggle @ 60 and 3oz EKG @ 15 to get 21.8 IBU. 6oz hops seems like a lot for this particular recipe. I am guessing that I am missing something.
First things first you'll need the actual AA value of the hops. I use EKG a lot and it ranges a bunch, anywhere from 3.5% up to like 6-7%. You generally won't know what your working with until you have the hops in hand and see what %s the packaging says.
The reason you need this is because the higher the AA the more IBU contribution. So if your aiming for a certain IBU you'll only use the hops needed based off the AA values as opposed to going by weight.
Bringing this back home.... Fuggles and EKG generally have low AA values so I can see you needing 6oz for a 10gal batch.
Not sure I'm looking to get an exact IBU, more of a generalized answer on wether I'm close or if I'm way off base for the recipe I posted.
On a side note (back to water chemistry) I have been transporting water for every beer I make because I don't trust my well water and I know it at least has sediment on the un-softened side. I bought a three stage canister system and am having it installed Tuesday. After installed I am going to send out for a water test. As recommended I'm not going to delve too deeply into chemistry for now, I just want to know what styles I can use it for, or if I shouldn't use it at all. Is Ward labs still the recommended testing facility? Water panel 6 is what I have gathered from reading a bit. Any suggestions?
Edit:
I will also have a faucet installed after the water filters but before the softner. The filters will reduce sediment going to the whole house, but I have been told "for the love of god don't use softened water for brewing".
Ward seems to be the quality standard. Unfortunately your water most likely will change with seasons and the amount of precipitation you get but as long as your water isn't treated with chlorine or chloramine your filtered water should be perfectly fine for brewing.
For a generalized answer your probably fine lol. I don't see where they list a batch size on that recipe though I'm looking at it on my phone. Is it 5gal?
As for soft water it depends on the style. A lot of styles call for soft water. Generally it's lighter stuff.
Yes, the original recipe was for 5 gallons. And thanks for the reply!