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Wth?

Mashing
#1

I will try to keep this short and hopefully something will jump out at you and you can tell me wtf I’m doing wrong. I will give two example recipes that are not too similar but not too differant either. One came out excellent, one came out like $h!t. I always want to blame to water/mash pH. Both of these recipes used about the same amount of water and grain but I boiled the pumpkin longer and got less vloume/higher sg.

Here they are, pumpkin came out awesome and the PA came out bad. And by bad I guess its bandaid. Its really bad too and i may dump all 15 gallons.

Starting water:
Ca 24
Mg 4
NA 12
SO4 9
Cl 5
CaCo3 98

Pumpkin:
30 lb 2-row
2.4 lb C80L
2.3 lb Victory
Water additions (all in tsp):
Mash: .5 gypsum, .5 epsom, 1.5 cacl
Kettle: .5 gyp, .5 epsom, 2 cacl

Pale Ale (the bandaid beer)
30 lb 2-row
2 lb C60L
Water additions (tsp):
Mash: Gypsum 2, epsom 1, cacl 2, 1/3 tsp lactic acid
Kettle: same except without acid

Pumpkin was about an 11-12 gallon batch and the PA was 15 gallons.

I am wondering if its a pH problem or a grain temp problem. I did double batch sparges on these, first with 6ish gallns of 190 deg water and the second with 6 ga 180 deg water.

#2

Also, I have controlled fermentation temp, 64 deg with a slight ramp up at the end and used US-05 on both beers.

#3

Bandaid is often caused by chlorine in the water. Did you filter or treat (assuming it’s tap water)?

#4

It is tap water, and I always do the same thing before each brew. I collect all the water in buckets and let it sit over night. I have added campden on short notice but I believe these two just sat over night without campden.

Also, bandaid is just my interpretation. It may not be bandaid. Its just god awful off flavor. But given all the off flavor desciptions, I have to lean toward bandaid with this one. It’s like aspriny too. Bitter astringent.

#5

I should also add that this seems to happen with the lighter beers I make. The PA is lighter than the pumpkin but I also added more salts. May be just a fluke that it happens with the lighter beers.

Another thing to note is that I do have a pH meter but I think I may need a new probe. I measured the pH on the PA and it was very low, about 5.0. I dont believe the meter is correct though. And I also dont believe there are any off flavors like this associated with low pH but I may be wrong.

#6

That makes me think to high of a mash ph, possibly combined with to high of a mashout temp or bad hops??

#7

Really hard to diagnose without some additional details/questions:

  • Are you using high temperature food-grade tubing?[/*]
  • Are you vourlaufing sufficiently? Do you have any noticeable grain husks in the boil kettle?[/*]
  • Do you have a more complete water report, including Bicarbonate, carbonate, chloride, and pH?[/*]

At first glance, I’m kinda shocked by the amount of salt additions. I opt to dilute with RO so that my salt additions (for a 5 gal batch) are on the order of 1-5 grams, as a sum total for all salts combined. And I have water very heavy in bicarbonates, so my salt additions are usually needed to accommodate the pH. You’ve got to be adding in 20-25 grams into the mash alone, not counting the lactic acid.

What does a calculator like Bru’n’Water say you should expect for your mash pH, given your pale ale recipe?

#8

[quote=“Silentknyght”]Really hard to diagnose without some additional details/questions:

  • Are you using high temperature food-grade tubing?[/*]
  • Are you vourlaufing sufficiently? Do you have any noticeable grain husks in the boil kettle?[/*]
  • Do you have a more complete water report, including Bicarbonate, carbonate, chloride, and pH?[/*]

At first glance, I’m kinda shocked by the amount of salt additions. I opt to dilute with RO so that my salt additions (for a 5 gal batch) are on the order of 1-5 grams, as a sum total for all salts combined. And I have water very heavy in bicarbonates, so my salt additions are usually needed to accommodate the pH. You’ve got to be adding in 20-25 grams into the mash alone, not counting the lactic acid.

What does a calculator like Bru’n’Water say you should expect for your mash pH, given your pale ale recipe?[/quote]

Actually for some strange reason I couldnt use Bru’nWater for this batch. It was like the cells were locked and I couldnt find an enable button. I ended up using EZ Water. It came up with a room temp mash pH of 5.59

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