First time brew with RO water

[r8rphan]

I joined in your thread about treating your RO brewing water. To make predicting brewing water pH, and other water qualities, easier to understand I suggest you try ezBrewingWater-RO©

I use it all the time and it is very accurate. Best of all it is easy to use and easy to understand.


Thank you and good luck on your brewing water adventures.

Vince

Okay, I found an old copy of office to install, and got the "ezBrewingWater-RO.xlsx" spread sheet loaded, but I have no idea what I'm looking at..

It has profiles for specific beers, but when I want to add one, it appears you have to know the profile ahead of time.. and it's talking about adding other ingredients in addition to Calcium Chloride and Lactic Acid.. I'm not sure where it tells me how much of each to add, or even if I've given it enough info to give me the right answer...

The first time I brewed with RO, I was told (earlier in this thread) that there was a standard base addition (2.5grams of calcium chloride and 2% acidulated malt per 5 gallons), and I calculated it to my water volume using acidulated malt... But now I want to use lactic acid instead of the acidulated malt..?

Is all of this water profile calculation stuff necessary to just create a basic standard base water profile that tells me how much lactic acid to add for 5 gallons of RO to replace the 2% acidulated malt?

 

[dyqik]

For starting out (or for american IPAs generally, as there's no classic city for them), ignore the specific city types, and just go with the descriptive beer types for picking a profile. "Yellow dry" should be right for an IPA.

If you only have calcium chloride and and lactic acid to hand, you won't be able to meet that with RO water though, as it will ask for some sulfate - gypsum (calcium sulfate, probably only available at the LHBS) or epsom salts (magnesium sulfate, should be available at a pharmacy as well as LHBS) would be required to get somewhat close to that profile. You should never try to chase the profile exactly btw, within 20% on sulfate, chloride and calcium content will do.

However, if you don't have gypsum to hand for this brew, you should ignore the target profiles entirely, and just use the mash pH and sparge acidification page to work out how much lactic acid is needed in the mash and sparge (which you aren't doing with BIAB, I guess). For this go round, I'd recommend just adding some calcium chloride and lactic for acidification.

This procedure here won't give a typical IPA water profile, but it will give a good mash pH:

0) Treat RO water as zero minerals (pretty good approximation), so don't enter a starting water profile, just enter your volumes on the water adjustment page
1) add enough calcium chloride on the water adjustment page to get get to 40-50ppm of calcium (for oxalate reduction) - 0.5g/gallon of water should do it.
2) enter the recipe on the grain bill page, and look at the predicted pH there or on the water adjustment page - should be 5.50 if you use 0.5g/gallon CaCl in the 11.35g of strike water with your recipe.
3) go back to the water adjustment page, and add lactic acid to the adjustment until the pH is in the 5.3-5.4 range. 0.2ml/gal should get you to pH 5.40

If you do have or can get gypsum for this brew, then adjusting the gypsum and calcium chloride numbers on the water adjustment page will let you get close to the "yellow dry" profile. 0.7g/gal of gypsum and 0.25g/gal of calcium chloride, with 0.2ml/gal of lactic looks to get you close to the profile with a mash pH of 5.35. Drop the lactic slightly if you want to get to pH 5.4.

 

[nobadays]

Edit....Duhhhh I just saw I missed where you "DID" install ezBrewingWater-RO... never mind...


I have received great advise from ajdelange myself... he is a "water guru!"

As you (and I) are using straight RO water this simple calculator(from another respected forum member) based solely on starting with RO is well worth a look:

ezBrewingWater-RO

Cheers!

 

[r8rphan]

Okay, so Saturday I just kinda 'winged it'...

Friday night I tried preparing the water.. Since my pressure pump for the house puts out lower pressure than the old one, and the water is barely above freezing this time of year, I bought a cheap chinese diaphragm pump for less than 20 bucks off of ebay, with the plan being to fill a bucket with hot water (135 degrees), and then hook it to the pump and let the pump pressurize the RO filter to increase output... The plan was to do this in the house and collect enough water to pour into the keggle in the morning...

Worked like a champ for about an hour or so and then burned up...

So, I called it quits for the night and thought about what I should do... It dawned on me, that if I were to crack the kitchen sink hot water so that just barely enough water flowed to keep the tankless heater heating the water, I could put the RO filter out on the porch with the brewery, and feed hot water to it out there on the porch directly into the keggle without buckets or anything else...

So the next morning I tried it and it worked like a charm...

Anyways, on to brewing... So I crushed the grains, and started the mash.. I needed just over 11 gallons for the mash in, so I added 1 TBS of Calcium Chloride, and searched through the posts on this thread and found that Bobby M said he uses 2.5 milligrams per five gallons of lactic acid... So I added 1 TSP of lactic acid to the water and started heating for the mash...


After I removed and squeezed the grains, I poured rinse water over them and squeezed them again to get the needed amount of make up water for the boil... But I forgot (too late) to treat the rinse water... It was pure RO water...


I mashed in and everything was going well... used iodine to test for complete conversion) Recipe called for 9 ounces of DME to get the OG I wanted in the limited volume of the kettle.. It didn't raise it enough to get to the OG I was after so I added more... My mash efficiency was down from the last time (was 88% before, this time was more like 82%), possibly because of the untreated rinse water, so I added more DME, and still didn't get where I wanted, but didn't want to keep pouring that expensive stuff in there after I had put in about 18-20 ounces...

So my OG and FG were going to be slightly lower... Recipe predicted .060 OG and I was around .056 -.057... So adjusting for those numbers when I test to see if the beer is finished...

I added 1 tsp of Wyeast nutrient to the boil ten minutes from finish, and then added the yeast (2 packs of US-05) to the wort that I had collected from the system (after I pumped all I could to the fermenter) to pour into the fermenter (ie what was still in the pump, left in the chiller and lines, etc.).. pitching temp was around 64 degrees (a couple three degrees lower than I was shooting for, but I'm still getting to know the system).. I set the fermentation chamber at 68 degrees...

I ran the inline oxygen at 4 lpm for about two and a half minutes as it was being pumped into the fermenter, then shut it off...

Hooked up the airlock, cleaned up the system and waited...

Woke up the next morning and 'nada'.. was disappointed... Checked several more times that day and still nada... I failed again, no ferment... I raised the temp of the ferment to a bit under 70 degrees (21 celsius) and left it alone...

So I figured the only thing left that could be the problem was that the grain was just too old (been stored between 3-4 years)... I figured I'd wait a few days to see if it ever took off and if not, dump it and go buy some fresh grain and try again... I had done everything else that I could think of to help the ferment...

So, I was bummed, but it was what it was..

Went out next morning, and viola, I could see through the side of the Speidel fermenter that the wort had changed color to light gravy color and the air lock was motorboating along just fine... Yippee! Now this is what I expected to see the last time I brewed! Just took a lot longer to take off than I expected.. That was Monday morning...

Just checked again (Wednesday afternoon) Gas production has slowed way down, and the color is still light gravy colored so it's still in primary.. It appears I'm getting a full primary and it will finish fermenting... I'm gonna have beer this time! Yippeee!

So glad!

So now I'll wait till after primary is done and the color darkens again and will take a reading.. Probably bump the temp up a little then too.... Then let it finish fermenting plus some extra time to condition and keg it!

So... SUCCESS!

Man, I never had so much trouble before, but the system is now more complex and there's a learning curve getting to know it's quirks and adjust for them...

I'm just glad I'm gonna have beer this time as opposed to pseudo beer that I had to mix with bottled beer to make drinkable.... and of course not have to dump out all that wort after all the work and expense of making it..

Now, on to dialing the process in, and then 'experimenting' using minor, documented changes to get the 'perfect brew'... and of course other recipes even styles...

Finally, after all that time, money, and work building it up, the new system produced...

I am happy!

 

[r8rphan]

I've been gradually raising the ferment temp by 0.9 degrees per day (half a degree celsius), and just a few hours short of 1 week in ferment, it's still producing gas, in fact more gas than it was when I first started raising the temp...

I plan to take it up to about 73-74 degrees before I leave it be to finish out secondary....

Will take my first gravity reading tomorrow...

I think I'm gonna get a complete ferment! Yay!

So, the combination of using yeast nutrient and pure oxygen seems to have solved the ferment problem... Won't know for sure until it's in the keg and carbonated... or at least ready to cold crash...

Can't wait to drink it!

 

[r8rphan]

After 9 days (took somewhere between a day and a day and a half of that to get started), airlock activity is basically gone, so I took a sample this morning and it's at .022...

Expected it to be somewhat closer to FG, but I know this doesn't necessarily mean anything... There appears to still be a lot of yeast suspended in the beer, but then again I am sampling from near the bottom..

Roused the yeast by rocking the fermenter a few times...

Will wait a few more days and check again... Hoping it gets down closer to the target FG of .014

 

[r8rphan]

2 more days since last sample and it dropped 2 more points, now at .019

Getting there.. Beer tastes kinda 'watered down' and slightly wine like.. But it's not done yet, so we'll see...