Cream corn DMS off flavor, All Grain

[Croyzen]

To follow up, I have recently brewed a 1 gallon batch of this using calcium chloride. I used 1 gram per gallon of distilled water. This was my only water manipulation. I added this to my pre-boil water which was just over 2 gallons. (So about 2 grams total.) It should be noted that when my scale read a gram of calcium chloride I removed a bit in hopes of not adding too much. My scale weighs out to the nearest gram. Based on this experience this is not acceptable. The resulting beer was far worse than the first one and in fact made the first one taste award winning! The beer's dominant flavor was a slightly salty and very twangy version of that I brewed before. So bad, it's not fit for human consumption.

What I did for the next batch of pale ale was cut my filtered tap water with distilled by about 35%. This seemed to help with mash efficiency big time. It was suspected my water's alkalinity was high and it seems dilution worked for that aspect. I will have to taste this next beer for a final judgement to see if it's less harsh. It won't be ready to drink for a while.

 

[dougdecinces]

I don't mean to be a thread hijacker, but I just tapped a supposed to be blonde ale that had a moderate amount of DMS. I brewed this on a prototype of a Blichmann electric pot. It was only 120V and because of this I only boiled off about 0.45 gal in an hour. This is the only thing I could think of that caused this. What do you guys think? I can post a recipe if needed.

FWIW, it's still a good beer. I'm just calling it a cream ale instead.

 

[robfar]

Croyzen,
A half gram error is not going to work for small batches like that. As you found, it's easy to get too much.

 

[CraigKing]

So if buying store bought water, buy the jugs of water labeled "Drinking Water" and not "Spring Water" ?

Or am I better off buying an inline carbon/charcoal filtration canister and still using my tap water?

 

[CraigKing]

So if buying store bought water, buy the jugs of water labeled "Drinking Water" and not "Spring Water" ?

Or am I better off buying an inline carbon/charcoal filtration canister and still using my tap water?

Bumping my question - still curious to what water is better to use.

 

[robfar]

Whatever water you use, you need to know what the mineral content is. The charcoal filter would be the most economical with your tap water, but what's your water profile? Only reason to buy water is if your tap water is highly alkaline or has high iron.