Recent content by ep_brew

Hyperbolic

Unfortunately I haven't be able to visit the UK yet but I'll make it over one day. I did Brewlab's Craft Brew Recipe Formulation Online workshop last week. Before that I've been reading Graham Wheeler's and John Alexander's books. I can get UK raw ingredients and now with all this information I...

I had some training in British brewing techniques recently and @cire is correct, you use acid in the HLT to reduce the alkalinity and then you calculate any sulfate or chloride that it added to your water. The new totals then become the starting profile of your brewing liquor. Here's where the...

In addition to what Lallemand has disclosed about how they ended up with Nottingham yeast, I've been reading a book called "A Guide to Craft Brewing" by John Alexander which has some information regarding the possible origin of Nottingham. The author had been a homebrewer since the 1970's and...

I would say mashing is the most realistic and repeatable. I performed the mash tests in duplicate and I was within 0.01 each time but I followed the same schedule. Same mill gap, 67c dough in, hold at temp, stir at 15 min, cool at 30 over 8 min and measure at 23c. If you want an example of how...

Well I completed the cold water steep vs. mash temp and 90+ pH measurements later I think I have the answer. I tested 4 malts both pulverized and crushed at 1 mm under three conditions; room temp stirred, room temp shaken and mashed. All tests used distilled water. The pH of the cold water...

I highly recommend How To Brew 4th ed. It gives an overview of pretty much everything in homebrewing. Its better than the 3rd edition and much, much better than the Water book as an introduction to water and mash pH. I haven't brewed since COVID started but I've been reading a lot. So I...

Thanks for the follow up. For homebrewing (not research) the BC numbers I've seen in books and online always seemed linear enough across the narrow range we brew at. I did see where there was some bad phosphoric recently but ultimately if you can't trust the acid at the brew shop how do you...

I'm just imagining a simple test where you put something like 100 grams of fine grind malt with a few hundred mil of room temp distilled water in a ball jar and shake it up, test the pH. Then add a ml of 10% phosphoric, shake and test pH again. Then do the calculations. That's why I was curious...

I'm a lay person when it comes to this stuff but another thing I've wondered is why we need to buy special 0.1N acids or bases for these experiments. Couldn't we just increase the malt to 100-150 grams and use standard 10% phosphoric acid from the brew shop? HTB says its 1.1 mEq/ml. And for the...

Right but malt has some level of calcium intrinsically. Either way these titration mashes or congress mashes both use distilled water. Also I don't believe CWE (Cold Water Extract) is a congress mash. It's 5 grams fine grind malt in 50ml water at room temperature.

I've been thinking about this topic recently and some questions came up in my mind; I'm curious of your opinion. I was reading Stout by Michael Lewis and he shows a graph of pH values measured from CWE malt samples. The values on his graph lined up nicely with the Briess pH values in How To Brew...

This discussion reminded me of a recent podcast; Beer Foam with Dr Charlie Bamforth – BeerSmith Podcast #231. Bamforth said when he was at Bass he'd add a small amount of nitrogen to the kegged beers to increase foam stability.

The Extech PH100 / PH110 manual says: Temp. Compensation Automatic from 32 to 194F (0 to 90C) Just putting that out there, I don't own one.

I was a part of the Gourmet Brewing Crowdcast with Sierra Nevada Brewmaster Scott Jennings tonight. Award Winning Lagers - Scott Jennings, Sierra Nevada - Crowdcast The discussion was about lagers and he said he targets a mash pH between 5.2-5.5, while trying to stay close to 5.2. I had to ask...