Flabby beers?

[Pennine]

You could brew a middle of the road batch and then change the levels as you're drinking it. If you don't have a super-sensitive scale you can make up solutions of gypsum and calcium chloride and dose with a syringe.

Good point I was tentative about this as using straight RO won't give the yeast much Calcium but the mash should have enough. Then this gives me a starting sample point. I think I will do this instead. Thanks.

 

[Pennine]

Brewers rarely adjust final beer pH with acid. To reach a suitable final pH, all that is needed is to conduct a good, vigorous fermentation. As pH decreases with attenuation, drier beers tend to have slightly lower pH values. One interesting tidbit about fermentation is that some molecules in the fermenting beer become decolorized as the pH lowers and so the color of beer actually lightens slighty during fermentation.

https://byo.com/article/the-principles-of-ph/

 

[Pennine]

Still researching and over this time frame I had been mashing at 69-70 to get more body in my beers. Wondering if this is the difference I had been notcing.

 

[Pennine]

Problem seems to have been solved in the last few batches I have brewed.

 

[chthon]

Problem seems to have been solved in the last few batches I have brewed.

But what did you change?

 

[Pennine]

But what did you change?

Good question.
Adding more acid to the mash I think.

 

[Pennine]

A little more follow up, have been keeping track of the last 7 or so batches and none have the dull flavors. Some changes I have made is shooting for mash pH lower than 5.4 (room temp) lower than 5.3 tastes the best. Then using at least 2 to 1 CaSO4 to CaCl, in fact if I don't add any CaCl it doesn't seem to matter. I also add MgSO4 to up mag levels.

Before I often used baking soda to up the pH when using darker malts. I don't do this anymore. I think too much sodium and chloride with high pH tastes flabby to me.

And I have also been mixing my very hard tap water with RO.

I am much happier with the results now.

I just bottled my pure RO California common batch I made to experiment with the salt addition ratios. should be carbed up in the next week and ready to test in 2.

 

[dwhite60]

A little more follow up, have been keeping track of the last 7 or so batches and none have the dull flavors. Some changes I have made is shooting for mash pH lower than 5.4 (room temp) lower than 5.3 tastes the best. Then using at least 2 to 1 CaSO4 to CaCl, in fact if I don't add any CaCl it doesn't seem to matter. I also add MgSO4 to up mag levels.

Before I often used baking soda to up the pH when using darker malts. I don't do this anymore. I think too much sodium and chloride with high pH tastes flabby to me.

And I have also been mixing my very hard tap water with RO.

I am much happier with the results now.

I just bottled my pure RO California common batch I made to experiment with the salt addition ratios. should be carbed up in the next week and ready to test in 2.

Interested to hear how your California Common comes out.

All the Best,
D. White

 

[Pennine]

Some more follow up the Cali common I made that isn't that good of a recipe, poor yeast choice, but definitely gives a good background for testing calcium chloride and gypsum against nothing. The flabbiness that I am tasting is definitely due to the calcium chloride. Gypsum gives me a much brighter acidic taste and no additions is pretty solid as well.

interestingly enough calcium chloride gives the best head head retention. The pic shows CaCl on the left, gypsum in the middle and no additions on the right.

It was a fun experiment and very useful as I think I'm gonna drop CaCl from my recipes completely.

 

[strange-steve]

Interesting stuff. I'm actually going the other way though, I've been increasing the amount of CaCl2 in my brews and really liking the results.