Holden Caulfield
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- Apr 21, 2020
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Brewing a porter, 5 gal batch this weekend, and could use some direction on bicarbonates (HCO3).
First some background - the porter I am brewing is 12% brown malt, 9% crystal 60, and 3% chocolate malt (450L), and the remaining 76% is Maris Otter. I will be brewing this with RO water and will be adding gypsum and CaCl to the mash to achieve about 60ppm calcium. As this recipe does not have a huge amount of roasted malts, I will only be adding 1 gram of baking soda to the mash, which will provide about 50ppm HCO3 in the mash.
Per MashMadeEasy, the predicted PH is 5.5. Bru'n water predicts a much lower PH which I find to be the case when roasted malts are part of the grain bill. I tend to go conservative a try to find an HCO3 level that works ok for both.
My questions:
First some background - the porter I am brewing is 12% brown malt, 9% crystal 60, and 3% chocolate malt (450L), and the remaining 76% is Maris Otter. I will be brewing this with RO water and will be adding gypsum and CaCl to the mash to achieve about 60ppm calcium. As this recipe does not have a huge amount of roasted malts, I will only be adding 1 gram of baking soda to the mash, which will provide about 50ppm HCO3 in the mash.
Per MashMadeEasy, the predicted PH is 5.5. Bru'n water predicts a much lower PH which I find to be the case when roasted malts are part of the grain bill. I tend to go conservative a try to find an HCO3 level that works ok for both.
My questions:
- Are bicarbonates (HCO3) important to the flavor profile of the finished beer - mouthfeel and flavor?
- If they are important, should I target a black balance bicarbonate level, which according to Bru'n water is 140 ppm in the finish beer?
- As I can't add more baking soda to the mash as it will raise the PH too high, and I don't want to add it to the sparge water as this may lead to tannin extraction, can I just add it to the kettle? About 2.5 grams will get me to about 100 ppm HCO3, and will keep the sodium in the 35 ppm range
- Black balanced profile says about 65 ppm SO4 and 56 Cl, is this about right for a porter?