I’m going to be brewing up NB’s Sierra Madre All-Grain recipe this weekend as my first AG. I’ve been plugging in my local water chemistry into Bru’n Water and would like to use some acidulated malt in the recipe to bring my pH level down. Does this look good to everyone? Obviously, I would like to avoid getting any lactic sourness in this batch.
Sierra Madre Pale Ale
Style: American Pale Ale OG: 1.049
Type: All Grain FG: 1.012
Rating: 4.0 ABV: 4.85 %
Calories: 160 IBU’s: 45.16
Efficiency: 70 % Boil Size: 5.83 Gal
Color: 8.4 SRM Batch Size: 5.00 Gal
Preboil OG: 1.046 Boil Time: 60 minutes
Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp
Primary 14 days @ 66.0°F
Secondary 14 days @ 72.0°F
Bottle/Keg 14 days @ 74.0°F
Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
10.00 lbs 91.32 % Rahr 2-Row 60 mins 1.035
0.75 lbs 6.85 % Briess Caramel 60L 60 mins 1.034
0.20 lbs 1.83 % Weyermann Acidulated 60 mins 1.030
Hops
Amount IBU’s Name Time AA %
0.75 ozs 13.04 Pearle 20 mins 8.00
0.75 ozs 32.12 Chinook 45 mins 13.00
2.00 ozs 0.00 Cascade 0 mins 5.50
Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg American Ale Wyeast Labs 1056
Additions
(none)
Mash Profile
Sacch’ Rest 60 min @ 152.0°F
Add 16.42 qt ( 1.50 qt/lb ) water @ 167.4°F
Mashout 10 min @ 170.0°F
Heat to 170.0°F over 2 mins
Without knowing your water profile there is no way to answer your question acurrately.
Post your water profile and then we can provide advice.
Oops sorry.
Calcium - 24 ppm
Magnesium - 8.5 ppm
Sodium - 12 ppm
Bicarb- 101 ppm
Sulfate - 25 ppm
Chloride - 25 ppm
Nitrate - 0.1 ppm
pH - 7.6
Bru’n water suggested that I add 1.8 grams of gypsum to my mash water (3.5-4 gls.) and 2.5 grams to my sparge water (5-5.5 gls.) to get my calcium levels up. I also said I would be diluting my water with distilled water at 25%.
pH was estimated at 5.5
I have a question for ya.
What type of mash tun, kettle, fermenter dead space losses are you assuming?
I also see that your mash and sparge combined is about 9 gallons, leaving you with 7.75 gallons pre boil? Thats 2 gallons over the preboil volume listed in the recipe.
iBrewMaster calculated the pre boil volumes incorrectly I believe (once I remade the recipe from scratch and added a light body infusion and sparge it brought up the total water used to approximately 9 gallons). I’m using a 10 gallon round Rubbermaid cooler with a false bottom and a 15 gallon MegaPot from NB without a false bottom for my kettle. As this is my first AG go around, I am unsure of the dead space losses but when doing partial mash batches in my smaller 5 gallon round Rubbermaid, I was losing about half/little over half of a gallon to the grain/MT. I was also thinking about maybe dropping the Chinook addition down closer to 30 mins into the boil to lessen the IBU estimate.
So your looking at around 7 gallons post boil, 6 in the fermenter, 5 after fermentation? Seems like a lot of losses etc. for a 5 gallon batch.
Do you have any recommendations on the mash and sparge quantities I should be using instead?
Well that was kinda why I was asking. I wasn’t sure what your goal or plan was. Changin your mash and sparge procedure would also require you to change your recipe to account for having less loss. I just wanted to clarify prior to giving you water advice, as all of those things will affect your water and PH.
For this round I would stick where your at on the mash sparge procedure and recipe, if anything you will have lower dead space losses and end up with more beer in the fermenter and bottles. Obviously more beer is a good thing too.
The below assumes 25% RO water for both mash and sparge
*Add 3oz. Acidulated malt to the grain bill for PH adjustment
*Mash in with 17 quarts of 173F water treated with 3 grams gypsum and 1 gram epsom salt to raise your calcium, magnesium and balance your chloride/sulfate ratio towards the bitter side. Also add 1/2 capden tab for chlorine/chloramine removal.
*Sparge with 5.5 gallons of 175F water treated with 1/2 campden tab for chlorine/chloramine removal.
Resulting mash PH should be 5.51
Final water profile will be:
Calcium - 36 ppm
Magnesium - 9 ppm
Sodium - 9 ppm
Sulfate - 75 ppm
Chloride - 19 ppm
Chloride/Sulfate ratio 0.25
