Looking for water profile recommendations

[iahomebrew]

Hey everyone. I’m brewing a clone of Legend Brewing Company’s Utebier. It’s based on Norwegian style that is meant to be a beer that you enjoy outside on the first warm day of springtime. I can’t decide what water profile to use from Beersmith and would really value some input.

Here’s the recipe:

(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.056 FG = 1.014
IBU = 24 SRM = 8 ABV = 5.5%

Ingredients
7.5 lbs (3.40 kg) 2-row pale malt
2.5 lbs (1.13 kg) 2-row pale ale malt
1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg) honey malt
0.25 lb. (0.11 kg) flaked wheat
2 AAU Cascade hops (30 min.) (0.25 oz./7 g at 8% alpha acids)
10 AAU Cascade hops (15 min.) (1.25 oz./35 g at 8% alpha acids)
25 AAU Amarillo® hops (0 min.) (2.5 oz./70 g at 10% alpha acids)
6 AAU Cascade hops (0 min.) (0.75 oz./21 g at 8% alpha acids)
8 AAU Apollo hops (0 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 16% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) orWhite Labs WLP001 (California Ale) or Safale US-05 yeast

Mash at 154 and boil for 60 minutes.

Recipe also recommends a sulfate to chloride ratio of 1.5 to 1. Hoppy Pale Ale and Sweet Pale Ale are the two profiles I’m considering but I really don’t know if those are realistic profiles.

Thanks,
Luke

[voodoo_donut]

Based on the significant amount of flameout hops(I didn’t calculate total IBU), but I would go with hoppy pale ale.
And I think roughly 150 mg/l of Sulphate to 100 of Cl should be fine….

[iahomebrew]

I should have posted this screenshot initially! In the Hoppy Pale Ale profile, the sulfate to chloride ratio is obviously about 6:1 so do you think adjusting it to 150:100 ppm will throw anything off?

With the FG of 1.014 and the honey malt I was initially leaning towards the sweet pale ale profile but didn’t know what to think of the bicarbonate level. Does the higher level of bicarbonate bring out sweetness?

strong text

[voodoo_donut]

Bicarbonate should not. Chloride may via enhancing maltiness.
150:100 should be fine ….6:1 is a bit extreme, I don’t think I’ve ever gone there.

[iahomebrew]

Thank you. I’ll report back in a few weeks and let you know how it turned out

[mikem]

Agree with all above. In addition, if after you taste it, its a bit too hoppy and you want to sweeten it up a bit, can add a very small amount of salt to a test glass of beer. This reduced the sulfate to chloride ratio further. It only takes a small amount of salt in a glass to do this. Since most of us don’t have scales down to 1/100 of a gram, you may have to make up a concentrated slurry of salt water and add with medicine dropper to beer. Once you fine tune dose in glass, can measure amount of salt and add to keg.

The 1.5 ratio will give you a slightly hoppy profile so you should be fine. I use the palmer brew cube as a guide. Link below about half way in presentation you will see brew cube.

Putting Brewing Water in Perspective John Palmer Brewing

[iahomebrew]

Thank you for the tip! I have never heard of doing that before. Will check out the brew cube

[iahomebrew]

Reporting back.

The 150:100 Sulfate to Chloride ratio ended up being a good decision. I’m very happy with the mouthfeel. The beer is somewhat hoppy (how could it not be with all the Amarillo!) but it’s not West Coast IPA hoppy. Thank you for the suggestion!