dyqik
Well-Known Member
My take on this is:
Firstly, liquor in brewing means water, not finished wort or beer, which is why the brew sheet refers to both liquor profile and target liquor, and we have hot liquor tanks. Nothing else makes sense here. Wort and beer are not called liquor by brewers.
Secondly, using stated addition of 18g/5 gal of gypsum in the listed source liquor profile pretty much gives the target liquor profile. You can show this in Bru'n'water or any other water calculator. So the target profile is consistent with the stated additions.
Thirdly, the target liquor profile is a pretty close match to Burton-on-Trent deep aquifer water, which is widely used by many brewers to produce very hoppy beers. It's one of the built-in profiles in almost every brewing water calculator. It's completely plausible that this is used as the water profile of a very hoppy beer.
Fourthly, brewing beer with that liquor will change the mineral content in the final beer in an unknown way. You don't know whether the entire process will add or subtract sulfates, calcium, magnesium etc. from the finished beer - remember that spent grain, trub and yeast are all removed and may carry some of these minerals along with them, as well as adding minerals of their own. In particular, magnesium and calcium will get taken up by the yeast, which is then mostly removed. You cannot take the mineral content in the final beer and infer the liquor profile without accounting for these losses.
I'm unconvinced by the arguments above that the brewsheet is some kind of misinformation and that a brewer would for some reason target final mineral content in their beer rather than using the standard brewing procedure of producing a water profile that they brew with.
EDIT: I also haven't seen any statement or calculation in those other threads that suggests that significant sulfates are coming from the malt. Mg and Ca, but not sulfates. I don't know if grain contributes sulfates to the beer, but no one else has suggested it those threads (there is one post saying that someone else said it, but I can't find where they did actually say it). And how are the calculations accounting for minerals lost to material removed from the beer during the brewing process? Not everything going into the brewery ends up in the can.
Firstly, liquor in brewing means water, not finished wort or beer, which is why the brew sheet refers to both liquor profile and target liquor, and we have hot liquor tanks. Nothing else makes sense here. Wort and beer are not called liquor by brewers.
Secondly, using stated addition of 18g/5 gal of gypsum in the listed source liquor profile pretty much gives the target liquor profile. You can show this in Bru'n'water or any other water calculator. So the target profile is consistent with the stated additions.
Thirdly, the target liquor profile is a pretty close match to Burton-on-Trent deep aquifer water, which is widely used by many brewers to produce very hoppy beers. It's one of the built-in profiles in almost every brewing water calculator. It's completely plausible that this is used as the water profile of a very hoppy beer.
Fourthly, brewing beer with that liquor will change the mineral content in the final beer in an unknown way. You don't know whether the entire process will add or subtract sulfates, calcium, magnesium etc. from the finished beer - remember that spent grain, trub and yeast are all removed and may carry some of these minerals along with them, as well as adding minerals of their own. In particular, magnesium and calcium will get taken up by the yeast, which is then mostly removed. You cannot take the mineral content in the final beer and infer the liquor profile without accounting for these losses.
I'm unconvinced by the arguments above that the brewsheet is some kind of misinformation and that a brewer would for some reason target final mineral content in their beer rather than using the standard brewing procedure of producing a water profile that they brew with.
EDIT: I also haven't seen any statement or calculation in those other threads that suggests that significant sulfates are coming from the malt. Mg and Ca, but not sulfates. I don't know if grain contributes sulfates to the beer, but no one else has suggested it those threads (there is one post saying that someone else said it, but I can't find where they did actually say it). And how are the calculations accounting for minerals lost to material removed from the beer during the brewing process? Not everything going into the brewery ends up in the can.