Alkalinity and Hops

I'm going to be brewing Yooper's Surly Furious, and was wondering about my RA and how it interacts with hops. My past IPA beers have had a harsh bitterness and wondered if it is coming from my alkalinity. My version of her recipe, SRM 16.9, looks to fit perfecly into Palmers RA for this beer (98). The IBU for it is 99.

Here is my Ward report:
Na-26
Ca-60
Mg-16
SO4-48
Cl-39
Alk CaCO3-150
Total Hard CaCO3-217

My question is; Does my harshness relate to the SRM of the beer, or the interaction of alkalinity and hops? Would you dilute this with some RO?

Dog House Brew said:

I'm going to be brewing Yooper's Surly Furious, and was wondering about my RA and how it interacts with hops. My past IPA beers have had a harsh bitterness and wondered if it is coming from my alkalinity. My version of her recipe, SRM 16.9, looks to fit perfecly into Palmers RA for this beer (98). The IBU for it is 99.

Here is my Ward report:
Na-26
Ca-60
Mg-16
SO4-48
Cl-39
Alk CaCO3-150
Total Hard CaCO3-217

My question is; Does my harshness relate to the SRM of the beer, or the interaction of alkalinity and hops? Would you dilute this with some RO?

Click to expand...

I dilute my water with about 50% RO to lower my alkalinity. When I make this beer, here is the water I use:

Ca- 55
mg- 13
Na- 4
So4- 52
Cl- 32
HCo3- 114

I get that by a dilution of 50/50 and adding 2 grams gypsum and 2 grams CaCl2.

Dog House Brew said:

I'm going to be brewing Yooper's Surly Furious, and was wondering about my RA and how it interacts with hops. My past IPA beers have had a harsh bitterness and wondered if it is coming from my alkalinity.

Click to expand...

Some of it but indirectly. Water this alkaline will result in high mash pH which can lead to rough/harsh flavors. But I'm guessing that the major contributor is the sulfate which is actually at 144 mg/L (Ward Labs numbers as sulfur need to be multiplied by 3.

Dog House Brew said:

My version of her recipe, SRM 16.9, looks to fit perfecly into Palmers RA for this beer (98).

Click to expand...

SRM actually has little to do with it.

Dog House Brew said:

My question is; Does my harshness relate to the SRM of the beer, or the interaction of alkalinity and hops? Would you dilute this with some RO?

Click to expand...

As noted above, not the SRM, somewhat from the alkalinity and mostly from the sulfate. As such, a 1:1 or 2:1 dilution with some supplemental calcium chloride should fix you up. See Primer in the Brew Science stickies area

I forgot to add that I did multiply my Sulfate by 3. On my report was 16 so my 48 in acurate, sorry.

You may be correct that it came from the mash ph. I didn't check my ph on those batches. My beers have greatly improved, even though I haven't brewed a low srm beer. That would directly correlate with mash ph, which I have checked.

Just another thanks for helping all of us in trying to understand brewing water. I can see where it takes years of working with it, to get it, but I can say the improvements associated with mash ph and water have been pretty incredible. Thanks again...............until the next question.

Yooper said:

I dilute my water with about 50% RO to lower my alkalinity. When I make this beer, here is the water I use:

Ca- 55
mg- 13
Na- 4
So4- 52
Cl- 32
HCo3- 114

I get that by a dilution of 50/50 and adding 2 grams gypsum and 2 grams CaCl2.

Click to expand...

Yoop it looks like we have about the same water. I'm looking forward to this recipe. Never had Furious, but it looks like an awesome brew. Have to make adjustments in the hops to use what I have.

Dog House Brew said:

Yoop it looks like we have about the same water. I'm looking forward to this recipe. Never had Furious, but it looks like an awesome brew. Have to make adjustments in the hops to use what I have.

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Yeah, very similar water! That's why I posted mine for you to see. Nothing fancy at all, I just wanted to get the alkalinity down. It came out really, really good with the water profile I posted!

I'm definitely no water expert- and I've been learning so much from ajdelange about water lately.

Yooper said:

Yeah, very similar water! That's why I posted mine for you to see. Nothing fancy at all, I just wanted to get the alkalinity down. It came out really, really good with the water profile I posted!

I'm definitely no water expert- and I've been learning so much from ajdelange about water lately.

Click to expand...

There are several people on the forum you must pay some attention, ajdelange is one of them. Fortunate to have them posting on this forum