First all-grain BIAB

[Northern_Brewer]

My brother in law... has made a dozen beers on his own, he wont engage with me on the water issue.

You need to have words with your sister about a replacement....

Perhaps the way to do it is to spike samples of some of his or your brew with chloride or sulfate solution and get him to try them blind. If he's a hophead, perhaps present them as new hops, maybe even give him one or two samples beforehand of a neutral brew spiked with a pellet or two of different hops (recap and leave 3 days if you're using commercial lager for that). If he can see that water chemistry causes difference as great as different hop varieties then maybe he will get the message.

I'm still trying to put all of this into proper order w/o intimidating a student. I have been chipping away at home brewing since the late 1980's, so how do I impart enough knowledge to a student in a 6 week evening course meeting twice a week? This is a tough one.

Interesting one - not least to fit within the time constraints, both of the whole course and a single session - the latter will push you mostly towards extract I assume? And no-chill? How about one session a week is more "practical" (with some teaching in between), the other more classroom and ?tasting commercial beer styles? and off-flavours etc? Have a big theme to each week, exemplified by the brew. If you do the first and last of 5 brews, and the students are in groups of three then each will end up with one batch of beer but will have had hands-on experience of three. So something like :

Week 1 - "Water" - you do an extract lager to show basic process (and needs time to lager) More on the "flavour ions" side, Burton etc.
Week 2 - "Malt" - they do an extract stout - nice easy recipe and should be fairly forgiving of mistakes, no hops after the kettle
Week 3 - "Hops" - the one they will have been waiting for They do an extract West Coast IPA, with whirlpool hops
Week 4 - "Yeast" - and beyond the Reinheitsgebot - they do an extract fruit sour. Now's the time to go more into detail on pH, when they can taste it! Also wood chips in some of the stouts from week 2?
Week 5 - "All grain" - you demonstrate an all-grain NEIPA - at least the mash stage, even if you have to finish it after the lesson, once it's in the kettle there's nothing they've not seen before. Theory of mashing, more on hops, theory of dry-hopping etc.
Week 6 - "CO2" - packaging, troubleshooting, more dry hops in the NEIPA (and let them take some away, so they taste an all-grain brew), drinking the homework!

 

[h22lude]

I plan to approach the Director of Continuing Education and ask his thoughts on a course...they may balk at promoting brewing since alcohol is involved on a conservative campus. Age restrictions may be a topic, then equipment. I wouldn't want to have the lab portion of the class at my house so I'd need to set up a brewing lab there. There are other schools that offer degrees in brewing science, so this is not a totally foreign idea. But this would be a non-credit course that would mostly cater to specific interests in the evenings after work. A friend of mine there teaches a pilot's ground school course....selective subjects people are interested in.

I'll propose classroom periods followed by on hands lab experiences where we'd brew. I hate to sound non-creative, but it would be simple to build a course format using Palmer's How to Brew book. This may be my required course book for information, but like we are discussing, re-shift the focus on water as a major component instead of "we'll get there sooner or later". If water seems to be an afterthought, students may not realize the impact (or importance) this subject matter will have on the finished product.

I wish you were closer as two minds are better than one....especially in the design phase of the course. I need to focus on the major building blocks of knowledge that will be a foundation. To be sure, water will be a major building block.

Being a conservative college, it may be tough but brewing science is becoming bigger at a lot of colleges. A local well known culinary college (Johnson and Wales) just added brewing courses. Not sure if it is a degree or certificate.

Using HTB as your outline is a great idea. No point in reinventing the wheel. You may need to talk to John or the publisher on using it but I'd bet they would allow it especially if you make it a required book each student has to purchase.

 

[njohnsoncs]

Revisiting this thread... I'm considering getting distilled water and building up the profile from there as suggested by several people. One question I have is if I plan on brewing a 3 gallon batch using ~2.5 gallons for the mash and ~1.5 gallons sparge, do I need to treat the sparge water or can I just use tap?

 

[Morrey]

Being a conservative college, it may be tough but brewing science is becoming bigger at a lot of colleges. A local well known culinary college (Johnson and Wales) just added brewing courses. Not sure if it is a degree or certificate.

Using HTB as your outline is a great idea. No point in reinventing the wheel. You may need to talk to John or the publisher on using it but I'd bet they would allow it especially if you make it a required book each student has to purchase.

The Dean laughed at my request to teach a brewing course on campus. He referenced that fact they don't allow tobacco on campus...so what makes me think alcohol will fly?

Anyhoo, a buddy just re-opened his brewery in a new location with room to spare. We chatted and he may be interested in kicking tires and seeing what we may come up with. There is hope yet.

 

[h22lude]

The Dean laughed at my request to teach a brewing course on campus. He referenced that fact they don't allow tobacco on campus...so what makes me think alcohol will fly?

Anyhoo, a buddy just re-opened his brewery in a new location with room to spare. We chatted and he may be interested in kicking tires and seeing what we may come up with. There is hope yet.

That's too bad.

That would be cool if you could do something at your buddy's brewery.

 

[njohnsoncs]

Revisiting this thread... I'm considering getting distilled water and building up the profile from there as suggested by several people. One question I have is if I plan on brewing a 3 gallon batch using ~2.5 gallons for the mash and ~1.5 gallons sparge, do I need to treat the sparge water or can I just use tap?

It seems like I may only need to treat the mash water since the sparge is only for rinsing the sugars off the grain. Thoughts?

 

[Biscuits]

It seems like I may only need to treat the mash water since the sparge is only for rinsing the sugars off the grain. Thoughts?

Typically you treat both, except your sparge water pH is okay if it is more acidic...so you won't add any acid to it, you only need to add stuff like calcium chloride and gypsum.

 

[njohnsoncs]

Typically you treat both, except your sparge water pH is okay if it is more acidic...so you won't add any acid to it, you only need to add stuff like calcium chloride and gypsum.

My tap water has a lot of chlorine / chloramines so I've been using campden tablets to treat it for my partial mashes. Now that I'm moving to all-grain, I've been told I need to treat my water more so I plan on using distilled water and building the profile. For the mash water I understand why but for sparge water I do not understand why I need to do anything if I'm using distilled. If I want to use tap for sparge, it seems like I only need to use campden to get rid of the chlorine / chloramines. Thoughts?

 

[Biscuits]

My tap water has a lot of chlorine / chloramines so I've been using campden tablets to treat it for my partial mashes. Now that I'm moving to all-grain, I've been told I need to treat my water more so I plan on using distilled water and building the profile. For the mash water I understand why but for sparge water I do not understand why I need to do anything if I'm using distilled. If I want to use tap for sparge, it seems like I only need to use campden to get rid of the chlorine / chloramines. Thoughts?

The other salts like Chloride / Gypsum are flavor salts and effect the presentation of malt/hops so you want those in your sparge water to maintain their effects otherwise you'll be essentially diluting what you've added to your sparge water. Now, if you're only adding those salts to your mash water for their effect on pH then, no, you won't worry about them in your sparge water...but at that point I would argue why add them at all and not just use baking soda or acid to raise or lower your pH?

 

[Possum55]

h22lude, What is, (for the water primer you need to use RO). Specifically "water primer". Just curious. Thanks

 

[Possum55]

Good info h22lude. How does one get a good profile on private well water? Thanks lude dude.

 

[Bobby_M]

Send a sample to ward labs for the household mineral test go 20 bucks