Liquor treatment - How do you do yours?

[BrewStew]

I've only ever treated one brew that was a pale ale, as i'm in a hard water area... but didn't do much.

i'd like to learn more about it, and when to know if it's necessary...

gentlemen and beer gods please divulge your information :pray:

 

[Dunfie]

I'm in the same boat as yourself BS. Its an area that I would like to learn some more about too.

The water up here is very soft which is great for darker beers but not optimum for pale ales and certain bitters. Up till now I have simply added some calcium to the odd brew as someone told me to but to be honest I didn't really look into why

 

[EskiBrew]

I've only treated one brew too - but then my water is so soft it's doesn't even register.

The one brew I treated was cloudy as hell and never cleared whereas normally I have no problems clearing without Isinglass

 

[Aleman]

I am also cursed with soft water Calcium around 16, magnesium around 1.4 and alkalinity of 24 (all ppm or mg/L).

Its not ideal for making any beer really . . . Ok so its fine for making pilsners in the Czech tradition :), but anything else and you are pretty stuffed. I keep ignoring water treatment and my beers turn out ok, given the length of time I store them for they always turn out clear, but the flavours are 'dull' bland and lifeless even, requiring more malt and hops to bring them up to 'standard'

My standard approach to water treatment is to reduce the alkalinity to below 30 (That's an easy one for me :) ) and then boost the calcium to 150 ppm using gypsum for hoppy styles and calcium chloride for malty ones . .. or a blend of the two to provide a balance between the two. My real issue is with dark beers, the Imperial Russian stout had a pH of around 4.8 well below the optimum for good conversion, and this is due to the lack of alkalinity. To get around this I will often acquire a few gallons of water from a hard water area (Or a suitable mineral water with a high bicarbonate content ) and add this to my liquor . .. measure the alkalinity adjust accordingly with CRS (say to around 100ppm possibly 150ppm for lots of roast malts), and then add my calcium.

As my water is so low in calcium, I treat my Mash liquor and sparge liquor as separate volumes. The salts for the mash go into the grist as I weigh it out, the salts for the sparge go directly into the boiler, where I can be sure that I then have sufficient calcium to get a good hot break. There would be no point in treating the sparge liquor as much of the salts would end up trapped in the mash bed leading to a much lower level in the boil that I wanted.

 

[BrewStew]

I'm in the same boat as yourself BS. Its an area that I would like to learn some more about too.

The water up here is very soft which is great for darker beers but not optimum for pale ales and certain bitters. Up till now I have simply added some calcium to the odd brew as someone told me to but to be honest I didn't really look into why

is it not supposed to be the other way around? i thought hard water like mine is better for darker beers? and pales better for softer water :wha: i'm sure dublins got hard water which is why they came up with guinness, the london water is very hard too and they brewed it there.

i'm confused now. hehehe i was under the assumption that roasted/black malt etc counteracted water hardness

Aleman, is there a way to pre-test with doses of CRS etc? i found i had to wing it the first time i used CRS... adding it, then testing, then adding some more... is there a surefire (and not complicated) way of working this out?

that liquor calculator that was on another forum scared the **** outta me! :shock: :lol:

 

[Frisp]

Peeps If you dont mind being diverted to another forum I found that THIS post helped clarify the subject for me.
That said I have still to put it into practice and Im still using cheap still water from Tesco and that seems to do the trick just fine

 

[Buzz]

Mine's rock hard. :shock: Alkalinity 231 and I treat with 1.05ml of CRS for every litre of liqour used and 0.6g of DLS likewise. This is for regular bitters and pale ales as per the Brupak instructions.

Took one of my recent beers to the North Hants Brewers meeting and it was well received so I guess I must be doing something right.

I've got it in the back of my mind to do a brew soon with no treatment (aside for campden tab) and see how it compares. I've treated my water for so long now I've forgotten what my early beers tasted like.

 

[Aleman]

I'm in the same boat as yourself BS. Its an area that I would like to learn some more about too.

The water up here is very soft which is great for darker beers but not optimum for pale ales and certain bitters. Up till now I have simply added some calcium to the odd brew as someone told me to but to be honest I didn't really look into why

is it not supposed to be the other way around? i thought hard water like mine is better for darker beers? and pales better for softer water :wha: i'm sure dublins got hard water which is why they came up with guinness, the london water is very hard too and they brewed it there.

i'm confused now. hehehe i was under the assumption that roasted/black malt etc counteracted water hardness

Stop being confused BS, Dunfie has got it the wrong way round . . . . Although be careful using the terms Hard And Soft and relating them to brewing. London has Hard Water and makes great Dark Beers . . . . Burton has Hard Water and makes cracking pale beers and so so darker ones . . . Hard water is water that has a high level of calcium and magnesium in it, soft water has a low level of calcium and magnesium. Ok so what is important . . . Alkalinity . . . London (And Dublin and Munich) have waters that have a high alkalinity (caused by water drawn off chalk deposits dissolving the carbonate, and having a high level of the bicarbonate (or hydrogen carbonate) HCO3- ion), Burton on the other hand, has a high level of sulphate great for hoppy beers.

The acidity from the roast malts neutralises the bicarbonate and the mash pH falls to the ideal value

Aleman, is there a way to pre-test with doses of CRS etc? i found i had to wing it the first time i used CRS... adding it, then testing, then adding some more... is there a surefire (and not complicated) way of working this out?

Well you could make a very small scale lab mash, and repeat it using liquor with subsequently more CRS added to it, until the pH was in the right range . . . but you would go through a lot of pH papers :) If you have an accurate pH meter you can use that to directly determine the amount of CRS to add to each litre of liquor. The JBK test kit is a reagent based version of that and is probably the simplest method of determining the alkalinity and how much CRS to add.

Using Palintest Total Alkalinity Kit and a 1:20 CRS solution you can determine how much CRS to add, . . . but again the test kit and reagent is fairly expensive (~30 quid IIRC - for 100 tests)

that liquor calculator that was on another forum scared the **** outta me! :shock: :lol:

That is probably one of the better Water Treatment calculators available . . . Promash's one is not accurate as Jeff Donovan forgot to include water of Hydration in his calculations . . . GW's is fairly simple, once you know what values to plug in where . . . the difficult bit is determining where you plug in your Alkalinity figure, after that it is fairly simple

 

[J_P]

I'm going to sneak back out and hope no one saw me in here, it's all got too complex for me :lol:

 

[MEB]

Ok. I've treated my water for beers and to my palate, it made no difference whatsoever. Except my beer stayed hazy. :wha:
My mash PH is at 5.3-5.5. Regardless of what i do to my water. Treated or untreated. The only thing i've added that seems to work is a tsp of rock salt to the boil. To me this makes the biggest difference out of anything i've done to my liquor. It made my beers slightly tastier and helped with the break. As i only brew for myself and don't know any brewers here(except kit brewers) i don't have any beers to compare mine to. So i rely on my palate and brew for my palate. Which, as i smoke, is probably a bit screwy.

I spent ten years **** arsing around with water for aquariums. To me, messing about with water parameters is work. Work is **** and gets in the way of proper stuff. Like brewing. :lol:

 

[Oggys Bar]

My water is the same as Aleman's...soft as ***** and in theory useless for brewing.

Having said that; most of my brews have turned out OK..just a couple of problems with haze in very light ales...but my beers definitely have a house taste..not unpleasant..but it's there.

In my last 2 brews I have used Graham Wheelers calculator and Gypsum, Calcium Chloride etc....As do local breweries..I have visited them and seen the evidence

So are these beers any better....Well I think they have cleared more quickly..and the "house" taste has gone...but actually I quite liked that taste :? ....So overall..a marginal improvement..perhaps. So I'll have another go with my next brews.

 

[J_P]

boost the calcium to 150 ppm using gypsum for hoppy styles

So by adding calcium you can increase hop flavour? This is relevant to my interests :hmm:

 

[Aleman]

boost the calcium to 150 ppm using gypsum for hoppy styles

So by adding calcium you can increase hop flavour? This is relevant to my interests :hmm:

No, adding calcium will help with hot break, and yeast flocculation. Adding sulphate (eg calcium sulphate) will increase the perception of hop bitterness. Adding Chloride (as Calcium chloride) will increase the perception of malt flavours.

 

[MEB]

How about adding hops to increase the perception of bitterness? :rofl:

Sorry, bit ******. Laughing at everything. :lol:

 

[Vossy1]

I've got very soft water like Aleman. I use my water report median figures and Graham Wheelers calcuator to get my salt additions. I don't know/treat for alkalinity at the mo. I have a kit to test for it, but haven't gotten round to using it yet.

What I have noticed is that my beers are far better WITH the salt additions, in fact much much better.
Having said that, I'm quite lucky in the fact my water has next to no salts and minerals in it, so it's hard to go wrong with additions

 

[Frisp]

Just sent an email to Bristol water for details of my water composition. So lets see what happens. I managed to get a total alkalinity figure of 160 from them last year which should be ok for stouts and the like.

 

[Rabmaxwell]

I have softer water tham Aleman i add my minerals to mash & kettle & raise my alkalinity to 25 mg/l. But when doing darker beers i add the darker grains near the end of the mash to stop lowering the PH too in the mash

 

[MEB]

One small note. GW's water calculator thingy doesn't work at all for my water. Which is collected rainwater. As is most household water in rural NZ.

 

[Vossy1]

One small note. GW's water calculator thingy doesn't work at all for my water. Which is collected rainwater. As is most household water in rural NZ.

It should do...or am I missing something :hmm:
Even if your waters got nothing in it the calculator will tell you what you need to add...surely :hmm:

 

[MEB]

First you've got to know what the parameters of your water is. I don't(i do have a rough idea from the spa tests). I could go and get every batch i'm going to use tested at $$$$$$$$$$ a go. As it's rainwater it changes every time it rains. If we'd had easterlies and it rains my water is slightly different to if we've had westerlies. I have no issues using untreated water anyway. Every time i brew the boil is slightly different too-sometimes i get evap rates up in the 20's sometimes down in th single digits. So by messing about with the water i'll just be complicating matters. I'd rather not bother-I don't even want to use whirlfloc or whatever so the thought of bunging more white powder in upsets me . I love my beer, it clears fine, tastes great and keeps me happy.