This may sound dumb, but what about serving temperature?
I’ve had a couple of brews that had a surprisingly malty aroma when I got down to those last few sips.
Sorry to get this so late. Allergies and the holiday have slowed me down a lot.
My Cloride is 16, and Sulfate is 25. I think this is ppm. This is from my city water report. Bicarbonate is 218 so I usually use 50% city water and 50% RO in the mash. My mash is usually 5.2-5.5. I usually don’t adjust my sparge water too much. I usually use 9 gallons of city water and 2 gallons of RO just to bring the pH down. I add a lot of gypsum and epsom salts when I brew hoppy Pale ales, but not for my Belgians.
I also brew at lower temps on my Belgians. Sweet Belgian ales are almost as bad as oxidized ale. No one wants to drink that. Even the German lagers that have a great malt character do not finish sweet, they just have a great malt flavor to balance the hops. I also doubt that the Germans are just getting a 60% efficiency.
After reading everything so far, I probably need to pay closer attention to my sparge water pH. As long as I am around 6 am I ok? I also think I need to try Dingman’s malt. I would also like more info on the Cl:SO4 ratio.
I love 515 Antwerp yeast, but I want a little more spice in a Strong dark. 515 is pretty clean, and my local has not carried it this year. It is great for a De Koninck clone. If your De Koninck has any spicy phenolics, it is not fresh. I split the batch between Wyeast Abby II (Rochefort) and White labs 530 (Westmalle) for this particular batch.
[quote=“SA Brew”]Sorry to get this so late. Allergies and the holiday have slowed me down a lot.
My Cloride is 16, and Sulfate is 25. I think this is ppm. This is from my city water report. Bicarbonate is 218 so I usually use 50% city water and 50% RO in the mash. My mash is usually 5.2-5.5. I usually don’t adjust my sparge water too much. I usually use 9 gallons of city water and 2 gallons of RO just to bring the pH down. I add a lot of gypsum and epsom salts when I brew hoppy Pale ales, but not for my Belgians.
I also brew at lower temps on my Belgians. Sweet Belgian ales are almost as bad as oxidized ale. No one wants to drink that. Even the German lagers that have a great malt character do not finish sweet, they just have a great malt flavor to balance the hops. I also doubt that the Germans are just getting a 60% efficiency.
After reading everything so far, I probably need to pay closer attention to my sparge water pH. As long as I am around 6 am I ok? I also think I need to try Dingman’s malt. I would also like more info on the Cl:SO4 ratio.
I love 515 Antwerp yeast, but I want a little more spice in a Strong dark. 515 is pretty clean, and my local has not carried it this year. It is great for a De Koninck clone. If your De Koninck has any spicy phenolics, it is not fresh. I split the batch between Wyeast Abby II (Rochefort) and White labs 530 (Westmalle) for this particular batch.[/quote]
Using good malt is one thing, for sure. I find that a lot of the European malts (whether it be English, Belgian or German) have much more depth and character than a lot of domestic malts. I made a few Festbiers recently and I used a little aromatic to add some depth. I have not sampled these yet, but that grain is quite rich and malty. Honestly, this could be a tough call because that character you’re looking for could come from a number of places. Water, mash schedule, type of grains used, etc. Eventually, you’ll dial it in and when that happens, please share it with us! Cheers.
Here’s another thought. You don’t want to overcook your food or it loses flavors. I’ve always had the attitude that a longer mash time would let things steep longer and extract more flavor, maybe it works against me though. Plus a longer time makes for dry beer and I do know a little sweetness can enhance the perception of malt. I also wonder what the boil does in the way of flavors. Commercial setups are enclosed and take steam out through a pipe. But I’ve tasted some good homebrews too so this can’t be that important.
Mash schedule and technique is important. For awhile there, I thought I might be mashing too high and I was getting sweet beers. Too sweet. Then I picked up a Thermapen and it confirmed my fears… my old probe was off. So I dialed it down a little bit and kept playing with it and I ended up making some beers that were too dry. You don’t want a festbier, vienna or other “rich-tasting” beer to come out overly dry… it takes all of the charm out of the beer. I keep thinking back to Denny’s experiment where he did a number of beers using different mashing techniques (including decoction) and he says that decoction doesn’t produce better beers. Then there is the decoction underground that says that decoction produces flavors that you just can’t get anywhere else and adding any amount of Munich, Aromatic or Melanoidin malt will not do the same thing. Only by personal experimentation will you find what your tastebuds truly want. Cheers.
BTW: This is true for any style. I have a pale ale and an amber ale on tap right now where everything fell neatly into place: the beers are balanced nicely with malt base and hop bitterness, flavor and aroma. The more I think about it, the more I realize that a great beer is a perfect balancing act and everything that you use and everything that you do has an impact on what ends up in your glass.
[quote=“Ken Lenard”]
Using good malt is one thing, for sure. I find that a lot of the European malts (whether it be English, Belgian or German) have much more depth and character than a lot of domestic malts. I made a few Festbiers recently and I used a little aromatic to add some depth. I have not sampled these yet, but that grain is quite rich and malty. Honestly, this could be a tough call because that character you’re looking for could come from a number of places. Water, mash schedule, type of grains used, etc. Eventually, you’ll dial it in and when that happens, please share it with us! Cheers.[/quote]
I was just at Sierra Nevada last month and was in their malt room smelling different malts. It may have been me just amped up but I swear I’ve never smelled malt so good in my life. It seemed like any malt I’ve ever used paled in comparison with what they had and I’ve always felt like I’ve had an issue getting the most malt flavor out of my beers.
It’d be a double-edged sword if commercial outfits get fresher/better malt. It would be nice to know I wasn’t doing things wrong, but a bummer that I couldn’t get the best malt.
Even though a barley crop only comes in once a year (or is there spring and fall?) they may only malt it as needed.
[quote=“tom sawyer”]It’d be a double-edged sword if commercial outfits get fresher/better malt. It would be nice to know I wasn’t doing things wrong, but a bummer that I couldn’t get the best malt.
Even though a barley crop only comes in once a year (or is there spring and fall?) they may only malt it as needed.[/quote]
See, this was my question in another thread. How can it be fresh if there’s only one crop a year? That’s mean they’d malt it, put it in sacks, and it’d sit in a warehouse until it got shipped out to a brewery or homebrew shop. I don’t know…
[quote=“Beersk”][quote=“tom sawyer”]It’d be a double-edged sword if commercial outfits get fresher/better malt. It would be nice to know I wasn’t doing things wrong, but a bummer that I couldn’t get the best malt.
Even though a barley crop only comes in once a year (or is there spring and fall?) they may only malt it as needed.[/quote]
See, this was my question in another thread. How can it be fresh if there’s only one crop a year? That’s mean they’d malt it, put it in sacks, and it’d sit in a warehouse until it got shipped out to a brewery or homebrew shop. I don’t know…[/quote]
I don’t think it was fresher but it was a different brand than what I use. One reason I don’t use their brand is it’s way too expensive.
I am brewing a Belgian style IPA today. I don’t expect it to have a lot of malt flavor, but I have been paying closer attention to what I am doing today. I am using 18 Lbs of Weyerman German Pils malt and 2 Lbs of Weyermann Munich. Both bags smell fresh and malty.
I am doing a step mash. 3 gallons was city water and 3 gallons was RO water. I added 1 teaspoon of calcium carbonate. I did 124 for 10 min. Added boiling water to raise the mash to 144 for 30 min, added boiling water to raise the mash to 152 for 30 min then added 180 degree water to mash out and recirculate. The mash smells very malty. My pH when the mash was 144 was 5.5. I added a teaspoon of gypsum to the boiling infusion water and added that when I raised the mash to 152.
I had 10 gallons of sparge water. 7.5 gallons was city water (Bi carb 218, Calcium 77, Chloride 16, Magnesium 16.5, Sodium 11, Sulfate 25) and 2.5 gallons was RO water. I added 3/4 tea spoon of lactic acid, two tea spoons of calcium carbonate, and 2 tea spoons of gypsum. My pH of the sparge water before heating was between 6 and 7 and probably closer to 6. I was afraid to add more lactic acid because I have had problems with the pH dropping all of a sudden and then it its too low.
I collected 10 gallons of wort. The pH of my first runnings was 5.5. The pH of my end runnings was 6.2. My pH after adding 2 Oz of Centennial (8.4 AAU) and boiling for 2 hrs (I over sparged) is 5.5.
When comparing to commercial versions, is there any merit in looking at the fermentation time? They usually will ferment the bare minimum to increase profits. As a home brewer, I let things sit around a long time. Can you lose malt flavor in the yeast clean-up? Or gain some from under-attenuating? Just a thought.
As mentioned earlier, you might get quite a bit of mileage out of adjusting your chloride/sulfate ratio to 3:1 or more.
Also, if you don’t want sweetness but want to get as much malt character as possible, it might be worth trying a Hockhurz mash, where you do a 45 minute rest in the mid-upper 140’s and then another 45 minutes in the 154-158F range.
I’ve done this once in the interest of producing a wort that would attenuate well but also maintain some malt character despite the low FG. I liked the result, but without a side-by-side comparison using my standard single-infusion technique, I can’t swear that my perception was based in fact as opposed to expectation/wishful thinking :mrgreen:
With a base grain only grist, you could probably mash with no salt additions at all - adding chalk raised the pH and then you had to add gypsum to bring it down. And you shouldn’t be adding chalk and lactic at the same time, they work against each other. If this were my beer, I would have mashed with no additions, then treated the sparge water with either chloride or gypsum (or a combo) to lower the pH, and left it at that. For IPAs, I shoot for carbonates as low as possible (so never use chalk) and sulfate:chloride of at least 2:1 - you’re looking for more malt character so a balanced ratio would work too.
Sounds like it is time for me to re read some of Noonan’s Brewing Lager Beer. I think I need to work on my sparge water because I know my pH was too high on my last brew. I am buying good ingredients and my last mash was a step mash in the Hockhurz style. The mash smelled very malty, and that kind of went away after the sparge.
I did not mean to say I added calcium carbonate. I meant to say I added calcium chloride to the mash water and sparge water. No extra chalk was added. I don’t even own any because our water is full of it. I was thinking that the chloride would add sweetness, and the Calcium would lower the pH. Is this correct, or should I just add some NaCl without iodide and silicates to get my chloride level up?
Just know you are not alone!
I tried out a high temp no-sparge yesterday on a Scottish 70/-. Golden Promise with 16% British crystal 85L, Brewers Gold at 60min to 18 IBU. It smells promising but then they all do, I’ll report back if it turns out well.
I didn’t add all the water to the mash right away either, did a more conventional mash of about 2qt/lb and then added the rest of the water to get to 170F right before runoff.
What was you efficiency doing it that way? I’m thinking of trying it tomorrow on a cream ale. Did you treat all your RO water or just the amount you mashed in with?
You are going to be reading mostly about decoction then. There is a little about infusion in the new brewing lager but it explains decoction really well. It makes me want to do Vienna lager with decoction.
What was you efficiency doing it that way? I’m thinking of trying it tomorrow on a cream ale. Did you treat all your RO water or just the amount you mashed in with?[/quote]
I added the calcium chloride to the total amount of water, then heated it all and added what I needed for the mash. I generally get about the same 75% efficiency that I’ll get from doing a single sparge. Thats for a regular 1.050’s brew where you’ll use 10lb of grain and need about 7.5gal of water to get 6.25gal preboil. 6.25/7.5 = 83% so my process is not limited by this method.
Thanks for all the feed back everyone. It is getting me to try some new things. I brewed an Alt yesterday with a modified single decoction. I say modified, because I never really do a decoction (pulling out some of the mash.) I start with about 40% of my grist in the decoction cooker (5 gal stainless pot) at 100 and then go through the step mash at 122 (10 min), 144 (15 min), 152 (30 min) and then to boiling for about 10 min. While this mash is resting at 152, I dough in the rest of the grist to do a 10 minute protein rest at 122-128 in my keggle, and then add the boiling first mash to the main mash. This rested at 152 for about 45 min. I then added some sparge water to mash out. I did the same water treatments as I listed above, but my pH ranges seemed better because I was using a small amount of cara fa II, cara-Munich, and about 44% Munich malt. My end runnings were at 5.5-5.8.
I think the beer was malty, but my nose is still stopped up so I am not smelling or tasting anything very well right now. I think I threw a little bit of everyones suggestions into this one.
