CRS and Gypsum etc

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

kitoog

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 4, 2008
Messages
121
Reaction score
0
Location
Ireland
I use CRS and DLS to treat my brewing water but I am interested to use crs and gypsum etc for a few brews to compare. Any guidelines for adding individual salts aong with crs for pale ales to bring out the hops?. I use a salifert kh test to test alkalinity but do not have any other values to input to the water calculator so not sure if I can really use the water calculator with only one input?
 
I use seperate mineral additions due to the aftertaste of DLS in my water treatment, I would advise you to take your alkalinity and lower it to 28ppm with CRS. test water before and after dosing, Feed the alk and the alk residue of 28ppm into Grahams water calculator on JBK and pick Sweet pale Ale on the dropdown menu and dose. Makes a cracking pint of pale ale or Bitter. The scales I use are on e-bay and weigh a max of 100grms. The minerals I buy are Gypsum. Calcium chloride. Maldon salt and Epsom salts. You try one mash and hops to IBU 30 .
Good luck
 
Knowing what is in your water is the first step in deciding how much more ionic content you can add. Testing for alkalinity is a good start, however, overdosing on any of several ions can leave you with a minerally or off taste.

Do be careful with CRS since its adding a lot of chloride while boosting sulfate. When both ions are at high level, minerally taste can be produced. Using sulfuric, lactic, or phosphoric acid could leave you with a cleaner beer taste. I caution against using the sweet pale ale profile since it recommends boosting the chloride level too high. Keep chloride in the 50 ppm range and go ahead and boost sulfate into the hundreds of ppm range and the taste will be better. I do suggest that keeping sulfate less than 300 ppm is prudent for a pale ale.
 
The only accurate water report available to my knowledge is Murphy and sons in Nottingham. Paul Taylor is the main man who will give you a true report for any style of beer if you ask. £18 is cheap for a detailed report, Look on his site.
Your Alkalinity reading can give you lots of information if you work it out.
Happy Brewing and goodbye.
 
Back
Top