chumpsteak
Well-Known Member
This is kind of a repost from a thread I started in the general forum, but I think I've narrowed my issue down to my water and was hoping to get some input from the water gurus as to how I should proceed.
The issue is that I'm getting a very sharp almost tart bitterness in my IPAs, Pale Ales, and other hop forward beers right in the front of the beer. While my beers taste good I'm frustrated because I crave the deep rich bitterness I taste in commercial IPAs.
Here's a copy of my water report I got about 6 months ago:
pH 7.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 136
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.23
Cations / Anions, me/L 2.4 / 1.8
ppm
Sodium, Na 13
Potassium, K 1
Calcium, Ca 27
Magnesium, Mg 5
Total Hardness, CaCO3 88
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.3 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 7
Chloride, Cl 6
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 72
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 59
Total Phosphorus, P 0.22
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
While I don't think the water in this report looks too bad I recently discovered that my neighborhood is fed by several different wells and the city rotates them every couple months or so, so my water will never be very consistent. To make things worse the Alkalinity and minerals can vary substantially from one well to another. The pH across all wells seems to be somewhat consistently in the high 7's though.
My question is, what is my best course of action for making sure I don't leech tannins and get any astringency that may be causing my sharp bitterness?
I do 10 gallon batches and do a double batch sparge exclusively. I treat my mash with gypsum and calcium chloride and always add about 2% acidulated malt in order to get my estimated mash pH in the mid to low 5's. I don't have a pH meter but I use the spreadsheets and test with strips to get a rough estimate.
My concern is that when I batch sparge with my questionably high alkaline water at a pH of 7.8 that I may be actually pushing my grains over 6 and leeching some astringency out. I've also been batch sparging with water at around 200 degrees to get the grain bed up to 168 which probably isn't helping things.
Anyway, I know I should probably just go to RO water and build it up, but my water really doesn't seem that bad and I'd rather not pay for water if I can just add some acid to the sparge water to keep my pH in check. I don't fully understand the relationship between pH and alkalinity, so my thinking may be way off, but I was thinking I could add some lactic or other acid to my roughly 8 gallons of sparge water to get it down below 6pH so that I don't get astringency when I batch sparge. Does this sound reasonable or should I just go RO and forget it?
The issue is that I'm getting a very sharp almost tart bitterness in my IPAs, Pale Ales, and other hop forward beers right in the front of the beer. While my beers taste good I'm frustrated because I crave the deep rich bitterness I taste in commercial IPAs.
Here's a copy of my water report I got about 6 months ago:
pH 7.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 136
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.23
Cations / Anions, me/L 2.4 / 1.8
ppm
Sodium, Na 13
Potassium, K 1
Calcium, Ca 27
Magnesium, Mg 5
Total Hardness, CaCO3 88
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.3 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 7
Chloride, Cl 6
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 72
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 59
Total Phosphorus, P 0.22
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
While I don't think the water in this report looks too bad I recently discovered that my neighborhood is fed by several different wells and the city rotates them every couple months or so, so my water will never be very consistent. To make things worse the Alkalinity and minerals can vary substantially from one well to another. The pH across all wells seems to be somewhat consistently in the high 7's though.
My question is, what is my best course of action for making sure I don't leech tannins and get any astringency that may be causing my sharp bitterness?
I do 10 gallon batches and do a double batch sparge exclusively. I treat my mash with gypsum and calcium chloride and always add about 2% acidulated malt in order to get my estimated mash pH in the mid to low 5's. I don't have a pH meter but I use the spreadsheets and test with strips to get a rough estimate.
My concern is that when I batch sparge with my questionably high alkaline water at a pH of 7.8 that I may be actually pushing my grains over 6 and leeching some astringency out. I've also been batch sparging with water at around 200 degrees to get the grain bed up to 168 which probably isn't helping things.
Anyway, I know I should probably just go to RO water and build it up, but my water really doesn't seem that bad and I'd rather not pay for water if I can just add some acid to the sparge water to keep my pH in check. I don't fully understand the relationship between pH and alkalinity, so my thinking may be way off, but I was thinking I could add some lactic or other acid to my roughly 8 gallons of sparge water to get it down below 6pH so that I don't get astringency when I batch sparge. Does this sound reasonable or should I just go RO and forget it?