Whining for Help Again... (astringency)

Hi fellow brewers !!

Just lost 3, 5 gallon batches to astringency.
I own Palmer's and Papazian's bibles....

Process is Bobby's All-Grain. (Modified Slightly)

7lb14 oz Briess 5596 (2 row pale).
2oz coffee chocolate malt
1.25 Qts per Lb of grain (10 Qts)
150 degrees for 1 Hour in beverage cooler
No mash out. First runnings yield about 1.75 gallons
Sparge in two steps using 2 gallons of 160 degree water.
Stir, no waiting, vorlauf, drain, repeat. ( Tannins Here)?

Boil for 45 minutes using 1/2 oz 16.7 aa (Warrior) pellets at rolling boil.
Leave hop bag dangling in boil until time to add aroma hops.
Remove bag, clean, add 1/2 oz 6.5 aa (Willamette) aroma hops.
Run thru sterilized counter flow chiller into sterilized fermenter.
I use Fermentis Saflager 23, at 55 degrees either from a packet or ranched from the previous good batch . I find either works well.

This works most of the time and my friends like the result. So do I.
I use well water that goes thru a water softener.
I drew off 5 gallons of water this evening and had to add 3 tablespoons of 5.2 to get it in range using test strips from the LHBS. Could water be my problem ??
Am I by dumb luck catching the water after the softener ran?
Or, just before it is getting ready to ??

Is it normal to have to use more than the prescribed 1 tablespoon of 5.2 ?
24 lbs of grain, 9 hrs, and 18 gallons of water down the Sh***er.
Any insight would be appreciated...
Joe

how's your thermometer? I had the same thing happen, i calibrated at room temp but it was significantly off around 170F. I ended up going with a thermapen and haven't had issues since.

outside92129 said:

how's your thermometer? I had the same thing happen, i calibrated at room temp but it was significantly off around 170F. I ended up going with a thermapen and haven't had issues since.

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That was my first thought as well.

Hmm, interesting scenario. I would examine the water you used. If your softener uses sodium to precipitate the calcium and magnesium along with the phosphate buffering by the 5.2 I am not sure what you will end up with. If I were you I would send off a sample of water to Ward Labs and the adjust your water according to your results. The thing about 5.2 is that it really depends on what you start with. If you don't know what that is then how will you know what you will end up with.

Could you elaborate on the astringency?

Thanks for the clues....
I think I may throw the by-pass valve on the softener and try it that way.
There's a water testing lab in town on the way to work. How much does Ward labs charge? I'm told the local guys are expensivo...
My thermometers are K-type thermocouples in copper thermo-wells
feeding a Fluke meter. ( ALMOST guaranteed dead on balls accurate)
I will take the temperature measurement set-up to work and compare it to one there.
The softener uses salt to do it's deed.

kb2kir said:

Thanks for the clues....
I think I may throw the by-pass valve on the softener and try it that way.
There's a water testing lab in town on the way to work. How much does Ward labs charge? I'm told the local guys are expensivo...
My thermometers are K-type thermocouples in copper thermo-wells
feeding a Fluke meter. ( ALMOST guaranteed dead on balls accurate)
I will take the temperature measurement set-up to work and compare it to one there.
The softener uses salt to do it's deed.

Click to expand...

If you have hard enough water to need a softener you probably have way too much salt already. If you're adding 5.2 buffer (which you shouldn't use, btw) you're adding even more salt to your beer. You should probably do a batch using RO water following the Water Primer sticky in the Brewing Science section. If you follow the primer you'll get a pH that's at least in the ballpark of the right mash pH.

afr0byte said:

If you have hard enough water to need a softener you probably have way too much salt already. If you're adding 5.2 buffer (which you shouldn't use, btw) you're adding even more salt to your beer.

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^This.

But have you been doing this all along to your water and getting some good batches?

5.2 buffer works good on tomato plants, just sayin; but I wouldn't use it on anything else.

Snafu said:

5.2 buffer works good on tomato plants, just sayin; but I wouldn't use it on anything else.

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The wife bought me some 5.2 but my water really does not need it. Can you tell me how this works with growing tomatos? Do you add it to the soil or use it when watering the plants?

Sorry if this is too off topic but I would like to use this for something other than brewing.

I've tried using my tap water and it is great for stouts as long as I get the water from the outside faucet that is not hooked to the softner.

Everytime I have tried to use the softened water even if it's cut with RO water it ends up with a very late bitter bite to it.

SInce then I've installed an RO system at the house and use straight RO water along with the water primer from the brew science portion of HBT with much better results.

Update: Came home for lunch yesterday and bypassed the water softener. The wife used all the water she needed to. Ran a batch last evening, and did not use 5.2. I noticed no tannin like taste in the finished wort....(the others tasted like Lipton)
It's bubbling away happily in the spare keezer.... We'll see in a week.
DOK, Thanks for the link !!!! I will indulge...
Joe

Update Again.....
Made the batch mentioned in the previous update, and one Mexican Cerveza Kit.
And then a second all grain. All while the water softener was bypassed.
These three batches are good. So I guess it was the water....
Thanks for the ideas !!

One other interesting thing. Be careful of eBay. I just bought a new TES-1310 k-type thermocouple thermometer and it's off by 5 degrees across the scale and it will not calibrate using the instructions. A $20.00 doorstop.. ( I did NOT use this on the ruined batches). My Taylor oven thermometer, Fluke 27/FM and an old school mercury bulb thermometer agree at 153 degrees. I'll stick with these.....
Joe

kb2kir said:

One other interesting thing. Be careful of eBay. I just bought a new TES-1310 k-type thermocouple thermometer and it's off by 5 degrees across the scale and it will not calibrate using the instructions. A $20.00 doorstop.. ( I did NOT use this on the ruined batches). My Taylor oven thermometer, Fluke 27/FM and an old school mercury bulb thermometer agree at 153 degrees. I'll stick with these.....
Joe

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Good to hear of your success by skipping softened water. Your results are typical. The beneficial hardness is removed while the alkalinity is unchanged in the softening process. This produces a much higher residual alkalinity and the mash pH was probably much higher than desirable. If your unsoftened water tastes OK, it is ALWAYS better to brew with that water than the softened water. Hard water = good, Alkalinity = bad.

Regarding your thermometer probes. What is the reference thermometer that everything is being calibrated to? Hopefully you have a NIST-traceable thermometer serving as your reference. An old school mercury thermometer can be as far off as anything else. Just because all three of those other thermometers agree doesn't mean that any of them is correct. In my opinion, every homebrew club should have a NIST-traceable thermometer that is brought out to the club meeting a few times a year so that the members can check their thermos to.