Made the Primer water, now bad eff. and no hop flavor

My beer was plagued by a weird metallic taste since going AG and using tap water from a new city water source. I finally narrowed it down to the water. I had to do a 9:1 RO : tap and added the acid malt, CaCl and gypsum as recommended. since doing this, my any hop flavor is gone, my eff% is under 50% (used to be 70%)- BUT the metallic flavor is gone. I have boiled down to under 4g batches to get the right OG. Which results in it's own weird off-flavors

HELP?!?!

Are you checking your mash pH? If so, what's going on with it? If not; you really should be.

I always heard the strips aren't worth it and the meters are expensive. I used the 5.2 stabilizer last time and it didn't make a difference. I will try the strips next batch.

I could really use some help here, guys....I am brewing tomorrow and have gone back and forth on what to do. It has to be the water changes. Could I have too few minerals in the primer? I'm going to make a stout tomorrow and think I'll try about 3/4 RO to 1/4 tap.

It's pretty hard to screw up a stout and one made with mostly RO water plus calcium chloride plus calcium sulfate if you want the hops punch (per the Primer) should be fine (don't use sauermalz for a stout). If you can't make a good beer using the Primer guidance then there is something wrong besides the water. Beyond that we really can't tell you much about what to do with your water unless we have an analysis.

AJ, you recommended a 9:1 to make the primer for me when I gave the analysis after talking about how "metallic" tasting my beers have been. The metal taste is gone, but so is my efficiency and the hop flavor. That's the only change I made. You don't mention ca. sulphate in the primer. Would that help? Thoughts?

try this ph meter

Cool....thanks! I will.

Gypsum is calcium sulphate. That would bring up the hop bitterness but not the flavor necessarily. But if you followed the primer you should not have lost efficiency. Quite the contrary. So something else must be wrong.Without having any details as to grain bill etc. it is hard to give advice.

Tell me what details you need and I'm glad to provide it.

Last batch was one I brewed many times before, just first time with the primer.

Honey Hefe:

6 lbs. wheat malt
1lb honey malt
4 lbs. Pilsner
1oz Hallertau at 60

I made this one because I thought I couldn't go wrong after 2 batches U had to throw out because of the terrible eff.

1tsp CaCl/5g, 9:1 tap to RO ratio and 2% acid malt

Mash at 154 batch sparge twice and call it good.

I have done all these recipes before with 70% eff. before I changed to the primer to get rid of the off flavors. This is just one example. It's been less than 52% every tie since changing to this water. Let me know what else it could be.......

When I brew that recipe (or one very like it i.e. same wheat to pils ratio and same amount of sauermalz approximately) with 9:1::RO:tap plus supplemental CaCl2 I get better than 70% efficiency and that's calculated based on the ratio of the amount of extract that gets delivered to the kegs divided by the weight of the grain that went into making the beer i.e. it's a much more conservative efficiency than efficiency calculated in the usual way. IOW there is nothing wrong with the water you have synthesized nor in the recipe nor in the temperature at which you have chosen to rest. That means it has to be somewhere else and, of course, I have no way of knowing what that somewhere else might be. If you brewed it before using the same process then something has to have changed besides the water. Thermometer or hydrometer out of cal? Slack malt? Less modified malt? Mill setting slip? Scale used to measure sauermalz way off or sauermalz unsually high or low in lactic acid? Poor sparge efficiency?

I'd like to know the mash pH just to confirm that pH isn't the problem but I can't see how even if that was high or low by a couple of tenths it would make the difference between 70 and 50% efficiency. But I wouldn't waste even $13 on the pH meter suggested in #7. You'll need to spend about $80 to get a meter useable in brewing.

Alright, AJ. I have a new batch of grain going into my batch tomorrow. I will report back. Can't be the hydrometer, because I can taste how watery my recipes have been.

I sense your frustration but we will get to the bottom of this.

OK...I'll give you the play by play on the brew day:

Warmed up mashtun (10g cooler)
Mashed in 13.75 lbs. grain for the stout with 16.56 qts. 9:1 RO to tap + 3/4 of a tsp CaCl. with 170 water for a mash temp of exactly 154.
It's supposed to be a final of 5.5g recipe.

Got some test strip for kicks and it looks right about 5 or a bit higher. They are not very good because they only test in whole numbers. It's not 4 or 6 though.

That all looks good to me.

Have you verified that your mash thermometer is correct? I had a digital go wonky on me. I am fortunate that I always leave a floating thermometer in the mash tun as a backup; otherwise, it would have been a 144F mash.

Heating up my batch sparge water to 180. Two 2.20 gallon sparges with just under 1/2 tsp CaCl each in the boiler.

Franc103 said:

Have you verified that your mash thermometer is correct? I had a digital go wonky on me. I am fortunate that I always leave a floating thermometer in the mash tun as a backup; otherwise, it would have been a 144F mash.

Click to expand...

Got two of them going since the "black day of beer dumping" began. One digital and another old school alcohol.

Just gave it a re-check and we're holding at 154

Just because I'm standing here thinking about it, I think the problem may lie in the sparge. The mash always looks great and comes out good, but the sparge looks weak then super weak as I'm getting the last drain out of the cooler.

1 sparge soaking for 10 minutes. Second heating up same as first but heat to 170.

Second sparge is soaking and I'm letting them go 10 minutes to see if that is the problem. The last couple of batches I have taken them out in less time reading that there is no need for a mashout if you batch sparge.

You should be able to generally exceed 50% into the kettle easily without sparging. Download Kai's mash efficiency spreadsheet and make sure you are getting nearly full "conversion efficiency" as he defines it.

Remember that 100% efficiency is based on a Congress mash which uses distilled water. People vastly overestimate the importance of minerals in the mash.

If you are using Rahr as your base malt, that stuff apparently gives a distilled water mash pH of 5.5 (lower than dark munich) for some reason. There may be other brands like that. For those base malts and most grist, no acid is probably the correct amount. That said, even with the assumption that your base malt mash pH is that low and the amount of acid malt you used, you should be at 5.2 at least which is lower than ideal but can't be responsible for horrible efficiency.

OG into boiler???????

1.046. Right where it used to be. 69%. Geez, it's like taking your car to the mechanic.

It must have been either the crush from morebeer or the lazy sparges I have been doing.

I will post to this thread when I get it all finished.
Thanks again for all the help, AJ and Remilard!

Kayos said:

1.046. Right where it used to be. 69%. Geez, it's like taking your car to the mechanic.

It must have been either the crush from morebeer or the lazy sparges I have been doing.

I will post to this thread when I get it all finished.
Thanks again for all the help, AJ and Remilard!

Click to expand...

For what it's worth, I had a very mysterious drop in efficiency one time when I ordered an all grain kit from an online supplier who shall remain nameless. I've always been happy with their products (both before and after) so it's nothing against them...but I'm about 99.99% certain that the kit they sent me actually contained much LESS than the reported amount of grain. I'm sure it was a mistake; the person who put the kit together probably mis-read the scale or whatever. Anyway, I literally got like a 58% efficiency on that batch. I assumed the kit contained 12 pounds of grain as advertised (but I suspect it more likely contained closer to 10 or 11). Moral of the story is pretty obvious: always make sure to measure everything for yourself.

I have since verified for myself the hops and grain measurements for all kits that I've purchased and have not seen another discrepancy in my efficiency. I also re-measure the grain and hops that I hand pick from my LHBS once I get home just in case their scale is off!

Anyway, good luck.