Why does recipe call for gypsum?

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joe s. sausage

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Been looking at some recipes for my first homebrew. The IPA i'm looking at calls for gypsum- what does this do for the resulting brew and what the heck is it?

Also, the recipe calls for, 5.5#"light or amber plain dried malt extract". does this mean 5.5# malted barley or the equivalent of 5.5# of malt extract syrup?

Also, the 666 brew sounds like a cool project, will it be too complicated for a neophyte brewer, i'd like to try it.
 
Gypsum altars the color and the flavor a little bit. the 5.5# just means that you should at 5.5 pounds of DRY malt EXTRACT, either amber or light, to your boiling wort.

I'm also interested in the 666 brew...
 
SkewedAle said:
Gypsum altars the color and the flavor a little bit. the 5.5# just means that you should at 5.5 pounds of DRY malt EXTRACT, either amber or light, to your boiling wort.

I'm also interested in the 666 brew...

Gypsum won't alter the color.

You add gypsum to a batch to raise the acidity and hardness of the water.
You shouldn't be too concerned with it if you are an extract brewer, but may need it for mashing if you have extremely soft water, which will ultimately affect your PH when mashing.
 
Gypsum adjusts your water chemistry. Various classic beer styles around the world are just as dependent on the water chemistry as on any other technique, ingredient, yeast strain, etc. So, as homebrewers, we can try to adjust our water to imitate the water used to make, say, Pilsner Urquell or Bass Pale Ale.

In order to adjust your water chemistry you have to know what you have and what you want to have. In general, water chemistry is not the first place to start in your brewing. It is complicated and, in general, yields only subtle results. If your water tastes good to drink, then it'll probably be good to brew with. If you are making your first few extract brews, you aren't going to be precisely imitating Pilsner Urquell anyway, right?

In my opinion, it's strange to have gypsum as an ingredient in a recipe. Whether or not you need gypsum is dependent on your water chemistry and the style you want to shoot for. So it's not really an ingredient in your brew, per se.

In short, ignore it. Cheers :D
 
I notice that in "Joy of homebrewing" he seems to put it in many of his recipes (particularly like you guys said, for mashing or partial), in Palmer's book he seems to discourage the addition of it at all. When you do need to add sats though, Palmer's instructions appear VERY COMPLEX.
 
Thanks for the info. The basic recipe is from papazian's book. My h2o source is fine so i'm going to brew it. after that i'll try the imperial hellfire red or whatever you guys are calling it. once again, thanks for the info.
 
joe s. sausage said:
Thanks for the info. The basic recipe is from papazian's book. My h2o source is fine so i'm going to brew it. after that i'll try the imperial hellfire red or whatever you guys are calling it. once again, thanks for the info.
I haven't chimed in yet but that one has my vote! Says it all!
 
Dude, I have to inform you that it HAS been claimed that gypsum will turn lagers a bit red.
 
Well, now that you put me up to it, I kind find a durn thing. I'm pretty sure it's in Dave Line's book, but there's so much info in there I can't dig out the exact line I'm looking for (and it could be somewhere else, but I thought I read it a couple of nights ago.) I'll keep looking. :confused: Also possible that I'm just barking up the wrong tree. It has happened once before.
 
Sasquatch said:
Dude, I have to inform you that it HAS been claimed that gypsum will turn lagers a bit red.

Can you tell us wher you found it? This thing is so confusing that I'm just reading all the books I have on the stuff. So far Palmer and "The Joy" both seem to indicate it will do nothing except change water chemistry as Dude had mentioned.

Like I said, Palmer even DISCOURAGES the use of it. His recomendation is to not even add it in (unless you know you need it).
 
Common name: gypsum
CaSO4: calcium sulfate, from papazians homebrew companion, see pg 76, but the short story is that gypsum, calsium sulfate, contributes nothing to the brewing reactions, it's contribution is to, at levels not exceeding 500ppm, augemnt the bittering characteristics of hops, or to provide a drying effect to the flavor. Also, he states that the sulfate portion in solution privides a source of sulfur for the yeast. So given this i can see an antibacterial effect and some flavor effect, i think i'm going to go without gypsum. The recipe which i refer to reguires 2teaspoons for a 5.5 gallon batch. I think that i'm not going to sweat this ingredient and leave it out, i'm trying to take an old school approach. thanks for the consideration.

imperial hellfire red, you know dude, that does sound cool, now think of the flames from that one guys label....can your taste it? later.
 
dont be scared of gypsum...i put a tsp. or so in every pale ale i do. Ive seen a recipe for brooklyn chocolate stout that calls for 8 tsp! that seems like alot.

i dont know anything about palmer, is he from England? that could be the reason he doesnt like gypsum. Thats the idea behind it...to mimick british water which makes for good ales, but english water already has alot of calcium sulfate (among other 'things'). so its redundant.

you could get a water report, this will tell you whats in your water, but ive brewed in 3 states (new jersey, cali, virginia) and all of them have really good water, so i doubt yours is any worse.
 
The whole water chemistry thing IS pretty complicated. And the really scary thing is that you can almost always find contradictory advice. Hardness itself, being split into temporary and permanent (carbonate and sulfate) hardness serves to further confuse. I think unless you're trying to mimic a certain beer outright, you'll find that adding gypsum (Ca sulfate) isn't going to be the difference between good and bad beer.

And I'll be damned if I can find my reference! Grr. Maybe Sasquatch had one too many.
 
Sasquatch said:
The whole water chemistry thing IS pretty complicated. And the really scary thing is that you can almost always find contradictory advice. Hardness itself, being split into temporary and permanent (carbonate and sulfate) hardness serves to further confuse. I think unless you're trying to mimic a certain beer outright, you'll find that adding gypsum (Ca sulfate) isn't going to be the difference between good and bad beer.

And I'll be damned if I can find my reference! Grr. Maybe Sasquatch had one too many.

I've done a TON of water research lately ( I started a thread on it somewhere) and altering your water chemistry all depends on your local water profile. To blindly add gypsum to your water can have more negative affects on your beer than positive. That goes the same with other water salts too. You have to know what your water is low (or high in) to counteract other chemicals.

Sasquatch--you may very well be right. I hadn't ever heard of that before but it is just one of those things that doesn't make sense to me and I'd like to learn more about it. That's all. Don't miss your next brewday trying to find some link! :p
 
LOL I wouldn't miss brewday unless someone's nailed me in a coffin. The redness thing doesn't make sense to me either - where would it come from? BUT I'm sure I read it somewhere.

Like you say, you can only tinker appropriately with your water if you know what you are starting with.

I have a chemistry degree in my distant past, and I'm STILL not sure I have this stuff under any kind of control.
 
cgravier said:
i dont know anything about palmer, is he from England? that could be the reason he doesnt like gypsum.

John Palmer, Author of: How to Brew: Ingredients, Methods, Recipes, and Equipment for Brewing Beer at Home

He is quoted a lot here. He is an incredible website too:

http://www.howtobrew.com/
 
I'm a chemist. Something I can tell you is that I use 5.2 buffer, well water, and I pray.


From the way I see it, you have two options. 1) use your water and see if you like it. The ph is most important for the biological conversions. 2) Go OCD and take on a water project and spend more time worrying than drinking.

My worst beers taste better than 95% of the crap at the store. When I started I bought big 5 gallon jugs of distiller water. I put all the little powders in there. I measured the dk, ph, calcium, orp, etc. I thought I was kicking butt and awesome... Then one day, I was too lazy. My wife and I were positive it was going to be inferior. It tasted the same if not more refreshing. Plus it now only took me 3 to 5 hours to make a batch.

I will tell you now tho.... I am debating about adding oxygenation to fermenting... That's something I never did.
 
anyone used them? Since we now brew about 40 - 50L in a batch we want to get two of these.

1) will you be able to ferment up to 50L in a 60: bucket or would you need more headspace.

2) I hear they can be pressurized. any one have experience in priming in one of these and bottling straight from the fermenter? (transfer beer off the yeast into second bucket and condition/prime in there, then fill bottles with already carbonated beer).

3) any news or experience with a thermowell?

Not sure how this would look but would it be possible (or even desirable) to fill bottles from one of these guys using a beer-gun
 
Thanks for the feedback.
and sorry for reviving old threads. just make a new one next time i guess...
 
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