9 grams doens't seem like much...

[DSorenson]

Following Yooper's idea, I weighed out 9 grams of gypsum for my 5.5 gallon IPA I am working on. I'm using distilled water.

My scale was accurate to within 1 gram.

Is this really the amount I'm working with? It seems to piddly.

I got back to my digital scale to make sure I it zeroed out with the plate on it.

It came back as weighing 3 grams.

I'm pretty sure I zeroed it out before I weighed.

 

[hunter_le five]

I wouldn't expect it to be very much. I've never used more that ~1 tsp for a 5 gallon batch myself. Not sure what that comes out to by weight.

 

[Rivenin]

1 tsp if i recall correctly is 4g give or take a smidgen.
last pale ale batch i did i think it was only 4.5g of gypsum anyways. so it's not much at all

 

[DSorenson]

Thanks for the fast replies!

In a stupid... (plethora of cuss words)... ing move, I forgot to put my bazooka screen in.

I just got back from the LHBS with 14.25 more lbs of grain... Back to heading up the mash water...

GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

 

[IslandLizard]

You didn't dump that grain because you forgot the screen, did you?

4 gr of gypsum is about 1 tsp
4 gr of calcium chloride is about .9 tsp - not sure if that's the little beads or ground up.
4 gr of magnesium sulfate is about .9 tsp

I use Brewer's Friend calculator or Bru'n water's.

 

[DSorenson]

I did dump the grain. I had no confidence I could separate the the mash...

Did you have a better idea?

 

[IslandLizard]

I did dump the grain. I had no confidence I could separate the the mash...

Did you have a better idea?

Hell yeah!

First, finish the mash as you intended. You just can't lauter it easily without the filter in place. Then just scoop the mash out into another container, bucket or whatever. Mount the filter and dump back, start lautering.

I have to be careful not to knock the manifold loose. One learns quickly how not to stir and lift things up from the bottom...

 

[AnOldUR]

I did dump the grain. I had no confidence I could separate the the mash... Did you have a better idea?

Like IslandLizard said. A long while back, I bumped my braid with the mash paddle and it came off. After the mash was over, I dumped everything into my bottling bucket, re-attached the braid and dumped the mash back into the tun. Beer!

 

[MikeInMKE]

I did dump the grain. I had no confidence I could separate the the mash...

Did you have a better idea?

Trip to Home Depot (Sherwin-Williams stores have them too). Buy 5G paint strainer bags (two to a pack). Insert bag into your boil kettle. Scoop grain from mash tun into the strainer-lined kettle. Lift & squeeze bag, leaving behind wort in your brew kettle. Done.

 

[LovesIPA]

I did the same thing once. My manifold got disconnected and I had to dump the mash out into my kettle, fix the manifold and pour it back in.

As far as gypsum goes, I use about 4 grams in a 5 gallon batch. 9 grams seems high to me.

 

[zwiller]

I think 9g is conservative. I use nearly twice that to hit 350ppm sulfate for my house IPA. Works great and makes a noticeable improvement.

 

[DSorenson]

Interesting results here: I have been using what is probably calcium deficient water, and the switched to this distilled water with nine grams of gypsum.

My beloved Nottingham, which in previous beers was docile, has ejected what looks to be a half gallon of beer through my cautionary blow off tube. It is temperature controlled in my fermentation chamber.

I wonder if the calcium made the yeast happy...

 

[MikeInMKE]

I wonder if the calcium made the yeast happy...

I bottled a blonde (BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde), and got lazy and dumped a whole 5 ounces of priming sugar into the bottling bucket.

Months later, a female friend opens one of the bottles, and as foam slowly proceeds out of the bottle, down the side, and onto the table, she asks what it means. I told her it must be happy to see her.