Brewing water

[cire]

Scottish and Newcastle Brewers destroyed the brewing industry in Scotland in the 70's it was difficult to get a decent beer they had so many pubs. Then some free house pubs started bringing in some nice English beers Fullers, Marson's and Taylors come to mind. Then some new Scottish beers started to find their way into the market but there has been a huge resurgence of really great small breweries since then. Oddly S&N bought The Caledonian Brewery over but it still turns out some really nice beer.

A great subject to debate, but such a multifaceted subject that web discussion rarely serves good purpose, so I'll limit my comments here mostly to the better side. We'll discuss the rest when we are face to face in a decent pub with a range of decent beers. I think the demise of the once great British Brewing industry was due to financial management, as it was in other industries. I worked in industry for the first half of my working life, the second half in finance after manufacturing moved abroad. S&N was run for the investors without concern for the customer.

I loved McEwan's beers on draught in my home town. Younger's was always a better bet than drinking Courage's in London. Newcastle was all right and you could always tell how good the draught beer was in a Blue Star pub by the number drinking bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale.

The Caledonian Brewery was exceptional. Water at Duddingston must have been perfect for treating to make perfect brewing liquor. By the end of the 19th century virtually every square foot of Duddingston was taken by some brewer or another. The Caledonian was owned by Vaux before S&N had it, when Vaux continued brewing Lorimer and Clark beers. Lorimer's Scotch was a favourite of mine and a beer I've tried to replicate many times, but when Vaux moved the brewing to Sunderland, it didn't compare to the original product.

My recollections are of losing many wonderful beers from established family owned breweries, latterly replaced by kegged, filtered, pasteurised and sometimes oxidised alcoholic flavoured beverages. Now, in parallel, we have up and coming smaller breweries making great attempts to replicate what we once had, and I wish them all, good and bad, the best of luck in their ventures.

 

[jambop]

A great subject to debate, but such a multifaceted subject that web discussion rarely serves good purpose, so I'll limit my comments here mostly to the better side. We'll discuss the rest when we are face to face in a decent pub with a range of decent beers. I think the demise of the once great British Brewing industry was due to financial management, as it was in other industries. I worked in industry for the first half of my working life, the second half in finance after manufacturing moved abroad. S&N was run for the investors without concern for the customer.

I loved McEwan's beers on draught in my home town. Younger's was always a better bet than drinking Courage's in London. Newcastle was all right and you could always tell how good the draught beer was in a Blue Star pub by the number drinking bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale.

The Caledonian Brewery was exceptional. Water at Duddingston must have been perfect for treating to make perfect brewing liquor. By the end of the 19th century virtually every square foot of Duddingston was taken by some brewer or another. The Caledonian was owned by Vaux before S&N had it, when Vaux continued brewing Lorimer and Clark beers. Lorimer's Scotch was a favourite of mine and a beer I've tried to replicate many times, but when Vaux moved the brewing to Sunderland, it didn't compare to the original product.

My recollections are of losing many wonderful beers from established family owned breweries, latterly replaced by kegged, filtered, pasteurised and sometimes oxidised alcoholic flavoured beverages. Now, in parallel, we have up and coming smaller breweries making great attempts to replicate what we once had, and I wish them all, good and bad, the best of luck in their ventures.

In the mid 80's I was brewing my own beer from DME, spray dried malt, crystal malt and hops bought from a local homebrewing shop at Morningside in Edinburgh ... and it was better than most beers I could buy in local pubs ... true story I am hoping that with my new kit I can return to making a decent drinking beer with all grain. I do not go in for beer having to be crystal clear as long as it tastes good and holds a decent head I am happy but most times I did get a real nice clear brew with extracts ... maybe more of a challenge with grain...

 

[z-bob]

My water looks similar to yours, but with about twice as much bicarbonate. (I don't know how; there are not enough positive ions to balance it) Most of the local homebrewers buy reverse osmosis water to brew with. I use the local tapwater, but I add acid to it. Usually 85% phosphoric, but I have also used lactic acid, Sauermalz, and hydrochloric. In my last brew, I used citric acid and a lot of it, but that was a ginger beer and I wanted the citric taste to carry thorugh to the end. It's in the fermenter waiting to be bottled. I'm curious to see how that turns out...

A few ounces of acidified malt or Sauermalz (same thing) added to your mash would do it. Actually you might have to acidify the sparge water too, but not much.

ETA: I bought the phosphoric acid from Amazon. The brand is Dudadiesel. (sp?) It was less than $30 for a quart, free shipping, and a quart will last me for many years.

 

[cire]

In the mid 80's I was brewing my own beer from DME, spray dried malt, crystal malt and hops bought from a local homebrewing shop at Morningside in Edinburgh ... and it was better than most beers I could buy in local pubs ... true story I am hoping that with my new kit I can return to making a decent drinking beer with all grain. I do not go in for beer having to be crystal clear as long as it tastes good and holds a decent head I am happy but most times I did get a real nice clear brew with extracts ... maybe more of a challenge with grain...

Your story of producing better beer with extract in the seventies and eighties than was available in the local pubs is totally believable. That was the reason I began brewed all grain, so I fully support your aspirations.

Yes, there is more to know when brewing all grain to achieve bright beer. It can be done and once the final cause is eliminated, you won't let yourself brew a hazy beer out of pride. I use 3 vessels for that very reason, but there's more to it than that. Good water treatment is essential and choice of yeast plays an important part if you want to avoid fining the finished beer. You might care to try this for water treatment.

@z-bob , that water cannot be and what you describe is quite a significant error. Have you tried measuring the alkalinity with a Salifert KH test kit? There has to be something well out of alignment.

 

[z-bob]

@cire , I have not tested it. I stored the water profile in Brewers' Friend water calculator and I use the amount of acid it says, and the beer turns out good. After a while, I don't even calculate it anymore because I know how much works.

Just from the amount of hard water scale we get on faucets, showerheads, and anything else where a little puddle of water dries, I think the calcium is way underreported.

 

[cire]

Yes @z-bob , my water has twice the alkalinity of that of the OP, and leaves scale as you describe. It also has more than twice the hardness of the OP's water., so it does seem your water likely has more calcium. I don't use any third party water calculator, but do have a spreadsheet of my own.

Yes, once you can control your water, you can repeat the process time and time again, problem solved.

 

[z-bob]

I just got back from a homebrew club meeting. (first meeting I've been to since the start of Covid.) People were talking to a newbie about RO water systems. I mentioned that I just use the local tapwater and add phosphoric acid; sometimes with some lactic acid or Sauermalz if I'm brewing a German style because those change the taste a little. And I had some good beer with me to back that up However it was a black beer, so maybe someone could brew that here even without water treatment. (there's a local brew pub that has crappy beer and most people think it's because all they do with the water is run it thru a carbon block filter. I've had one of their stouts and it was actually good, but their light-colored beers are meh.)

 

[jambop]

Your story of producing better beer with extract in the seventies and eighties than was available in the local pubs is totally believable. That was the reason I began brewed all grain, so I fully support your aspirations.

Yes, there is more to know when brewing all grain to achieve bright beer. It can be done and once the final cause is eliminated, you won't let yourself brew a hazy beer out of pride. I use 3 vessels for that very reason, but there's more to it than that. Good water treatment is essential and choice of yeast plays an important part if you want to avoid fining the finished beer. You might care to try this for water treatment.

@z-bob , that water cannot be and what you describe is quite a significant error. Have you tried measuring the alkalinity with a Salifert KH test kit? There has to be something well out of alignment.

Hi thanks for that water treatment calculator I will look into that it looks to be a very in depth calculator. However this just in ! I have a problem with a current batch of bottled beer which I primed at the correct rate but it is completely flat 14 days after bottling into swing tops?? Never had that happen before, honest but I have tasted the beer and it is actually quite nice, even though the brew was done with no water treatment at all ! It has been cold though and I did not have my fermentation fridge up and running at the time so the bottles were just on the worktop with a duvet round them. I suspect that it has not been warm enough so have shifted the bottles into the fermentation fridge and set it at 19C and will leave it for a week and retest a bottle. I was happy enough with the flavour of the beer but it is a bit insipid because it is flat and I suspect the sweetness of the unfermented priming sugar ? I have never ever had a beer that did not carbonate before though and find it had to believe that there is no yeast in the bottles, although fermentation had totally stopped two days before I bottled. I used Lallemand Nottingham yeast and it did drop out very well. If I still worked I would have taken the yeast to the lab and cleaned it up for reuse . My water treatment chemicals arrived today so for my next brew I will be able to add the required salts and acid, which I am sure will make a difference to not only the beer but probably the fermentation. One other thing do you use Irish moss? I have some but forgot to add it and there is quite a haze to the beer although that is probably down to the fact the brewing liquor was untreated.

 

[cire]

I just got back from a homebrew club meeting. (first meeting I've been to since the start of Covid.) People were talking to a newbie about RO water systems. I mentioned that I just use the local tapwater and add phosphoric acid; sometimes with some lactic acid or Sauermalz if I'm brewing a German style because those change the taste a little. And I had some good beer with me to back that up However it was a black beer, so maybe someone could brew that here even without water treatment. (there's a local brew pub that has crappy beer and most people think it's because all they do with the water is run it thru a carbon block filter. I've had one of their stouts and it was actually good, but their light-colored beers are meh.)

When I started brewing, I understood that hard water was good for making beer, so as my water was hard I just used it. That was in 1963 when the requirement for a licence to home brew was withdrawn in UK and initially I used malt extract, but the beer wasn't brilliant. My first all grain brew was to a Guinness recipe, which was magnificent compared to those early extract attempts, but my pale beers were sad by comparison. All that was in a time when there were few books on home brewing were few and contained little advice on water treatment other than to boil "chalky water" for pale beers and add a teaspoon of gypsum to the mash and another to the boil.

Over quite a few years, all in days before the internet and when lager wasn't popular, homebrewers learned the difference between hardness and alkalinity, that indeed hardness was good, but too much in an alkaline form was detrimental. Like many others, I used lactic acid to reduced alkalinity in stages over a series of brews, but before long a twang raised its head. The gamechanger came when home brew shops stocked CRS (carbonate reducing solution) when, with an alkalinity test kit from an aquatics supplier, alkalinity could be reduced to the known desired level without impacting on hardness.

In those days we knew the importance of pH but decent strips cost as much or more than some electronic meters today and meters were not a consideration. So we brewed as commercial brewers had since before there was a pH scale by treating water first. Fast forward a couple of decades and the world was electronically a different place with an internet and brewing forums and the recognition that, in very broad terms, water treatment is different in USA to UK. Due to the differences in geologies, climates and legislations it is inevitable that there inevitably will be differences in treatments, but why there is a difference when the waters might be all but identical, I struggle to understand. RO might be commonly available in USA, but in France and UK alike, there is virtually no demand, and in any case, it takes me no longer than 2 minutes to treat my water's alkalinity and another minute to weigh the necessary salts. I'm sure that could be the case for many US brewers who currently use RO.

 

[cire]

Hi thanks for that water treatment calculator I will look into that it looks to be a very in depth calculator. However this just in ! I have a problem with a current batch of bottled beer which I primed at the correct rate but it is completely flat 14 days after bottling into swing tops?? Never had that happen before, honest but I have tasted the beer and it is actually quite nice, even though the brew was done with no water treatment at all ! It has been cold though and I did not have my fermentation fridge up and running at the time so the bottles were just on the worktop with a duvet round them. I suspect that it has not been warm enough so have shifted the bottles into the fermentation fridge and set it at 19C and will leave it for a week and retest a bottle. I was happy enough with the flavour of the beer but it is a bit insipid because it is flat and I suspect the sweetness of the unfermented priming sugar ? I have never ever had a beer that did not carbonate before though and find it had to believe that there is no yeast in the bottles, although fermentation had totally stopped two days before I bottled. I used Lallemand Nottingham yeast and it did drop out very well. If I still worked I would have taken the yeast to the lab and cleaned it up for reuse . My water treatment chemicals arrived today so for my next brew I will be able to add the required salts and acid, which I am sure will make a difference to not only the beer but probably the fermentation. One other thing do you use Irish moss? I have some but forgot to add it and there is quite a haze to the beer although that is probably down to the fact the brewing liquor was untreated.

Sorry to hear of the delayed carbonation, I'm sure there will be sufficient yeast and by raising the temperature all will be well in due time. Nottingham yeast has a lot of virtues, but is one I don't use though a packet is always at hand in case of an emergency, but it could be 20 years since that happened. How long after pitching did you bottle?

My preference is for heavy top fermenting yeasts, but that's a story for another time. Nottingham does attenuate well and quite quickly leaves very little easily fermentable sugars. Did you add any priming sugars when you bottled?

I use Protafloc or BrewBrite and find such essential to enable clear wort be transferred to the FV. However, without suitable water treatment it is possible that even after Irish moss treatment there could be haze in cool boiled wort. Much that would be deposited in the boiler by Irish Moss will drop out later, some in the FV and the rest in the bottle.

What you have described is very typical of all grain brewing at the start, certainly nothing to give you concern, just part of the journey.

 

[jambop]

Sorry to hear of the delayed carbonation, I'm sure there will be sufficient yeast and by raising the temperature all will be well in due time. Nottingham yeast has a lot of virtues, but is one I don't use though a packet is always at hand in case of an emergency, but it could be 20 years since that happened. How long after pitching did you bottle?

My preference is for heavy top fermenting yeasts, but that's a story for another time. Nottingham does attenuate well and quite quickly leaves very little easily fermentable sugars. Did you add any priming sugars when you bottled?

I use Protafloc or BrewBrite and find such essential to enable clear wort be transferred to the FV. However, without suitable water treatment it is possible that even after Irish moss treatment there could be haze in cool boiled wort. Much that would be deposited in the boiler by Irish Moss will drop out later, some in the FV and the rest in the bottle.

What you have described is very typical of all grain brewing at the start, certainly nothing to give you concern, just part of the journey.

I used Nottingham because all the specs deemed it reliable for a bitter type beer. I doubt I will brew much in the way of light coloured beers unless maybe a Deuchars alike , an old favourite from Caley which was what I was trying to make this time, which is quite pale and a Weiss beer for the summer time. I am going to favour darker beers in the main though.
As to carbonation I added the suggested amount using the brewers friend calculator and it was bottled 16 days after pitching and straight from the fermenting vessel as I have always done. I am sure it will carbonate it was just at too low a temperature. As to the haze I suspect that you are right and that the water has not been quite right it was a light coloured beer of about EBC 7.5 ... trying to make that Deuchars IPA I love... ah well we live and learn as they say although it tastes not bad. I have Irish moss so will remember to add it next time... Doh!
I have new brewing system so I am going to make an ESB type for the first my first brew using it. Once I have perfected a clear'ish bitter I will return to the Deuchars IPA

 

[z-bob]

How did you prime it? Maybe not all the bottles got sugar.

I made an American Porter with Nottingham; it was almost ready to bottle when I went out of town for a week -- that turned into a month. I was concerned that it wouldn't carbonate because it was so clear, but it carbed just fine in about 2 weeks. I started drinking it at 3 weeks. I prime each bottle individually. The next day, I give each bottle a little swirl and gentle shake to mix in the dissolved sugar because it's all sitting at the bottom. That might be an unnecessary step because the yeast will find it, but I fear they might have trouble with it because it's too concentrated.

 

[cire]

16 days with Nottingham would be well attenuated, but you primed it, so as long as @z-bob advised, the priming was evenly distributed, all will be fine given time.

My beers are fermented for 3 to 4 days, letting temperature to free rise a little, then slowly cool to cellar temperature to clear, then cask a week from pitching. It could be bottled at that stage, but prefer a week or two initial conditioning in a pressure barrel.

I also give the bottles a daily swirl to rouse the yeast and speed conditioning.

Seems like you have a good plan in place.

 

[jambop]

How did you prime it? Maybe not all the bottles got sugar.

I made an American Porter with Nottingham; it was almost ready to bottle when I went out of town for a week -- that turned into a month. I was concerned that it wouldn't carbonate because it was so clear, but it carbed just fine in about 2 weeks. I started drinking it at 3 weeks. I prime each bottle individually. The next day, I give each bottle a little swirl and gentle shake to mix in the dissolved sugar because it's all sitting at the bottom. That might be an unnecessary step because the yeast will find it, but I fear they might have trouble with it because it's too concentrated.

No all the bottles were primed exactly the same... science training funnel in sugar in bottle moved from right to left funnel into next bottle from right and repeat I gave the bottles a swirl today as well even though I added the sugar two weeks ago

 

[z-bob]

No all the bottles were primed exactly the same... science training funnel in sugar in bottle moved from right to left funnel into next bottle from right and repeat I gave the bottles a swirl today as well even though I added the sugar two weeks ago

That's how I do it, but I go left to right. I also don't do all of them in one batch; I prime about a dozen bottles, then I fill them, and put them out of the way. Then do another dozen. Etc. When you swirled the bottles did you see anything happening at the bottoms?

 

[jambop]

That's how I do it, but I go left to right. I also don't do all of them in one batch; I prime about a dozen bottles, then I fill them, and put them out of the way. Then do another dozen. Etc. When you swirled the bottles did you see anything happening at the bottoms?

You know I forgot to look! They had been standing for a while so I suppose the sediment would have been raised? Anyway a watched beer never carbonates so I am just leaving them until next weekend.