Gypsum and mash PH.

[Jako]

so i have brewed 3 beers adjusting my water and the first one is finished now. i feel like the gypsum is a bit much and the bitterness is a little harsh (not by much at all). now i am worried about the other two i have brewed. i feel like i was using too much gypsum to cut down the PH in the mash.... going forward should i use lactic acid to to cut down PH a bit and tone down the gypsum?

 

[Miraculix]

No numbers, no proper answer.

 

[Dgallo]

so i have brewed 3 beers adjusting my water and the first one is finished now. i feel like the gypsum is a bit much and the bitterness is a little harsh (not by much at all). now i am worried about the other two i have brewed. i feel like i was using too much gypsum to cut down the PH in the mash.... going forward should i use lactic acid to to cut down PH a bit and tone down the gypsum?

Harsh bitterness could be attributed to a high sulfate ppm, incorrect mash/sparge Ph, wrong choice bittering hop...but stated before without any info it’s hard to help

 

[cire]

Sulfate dries a beer compared to a similar recipe with lower sulphate. This allows hop flavor and influences to be more prominent than they otherwise might be. They do however bring harshness out from some darker grains and caution should be taken with sulfate additions when brewing darker beers.
I have several times brewed pale beers with 400ppm sulfate, which would need a little over 0.7g of gypsum per litre or 2.7g per gallon of RO water. At this level the chloride content would ordinarily be much less, thereby ensuring low levels of malt and other grain flavors in the finished beer. Such brews of mine have not suffered from excessive bitterness from hops unless too many were added in the first place.

 

[Dgallo]

Sulfate dries a beer compared to a similar recipe with lower sulphate. This allows hop flavor and influences to be more prominent than they otherwise might be. They do however bring harshness out from some darker grains and caution should be taken with sulfate additions when brewing darker beers.
I have several times brewed pale beers with 400ppm sulfate, which would need a little over 0.7g of gypsum per litre or 2.7g per gallon of RO water. At this level the chloride content would ordinarily be much less, thereby ensuring low levels of malt and other grain flavors in the finished beer. Such brews of mine have not suffered from excessive bitterness from hops unless too many were added in the first place.

Sulfate can also elevate the perception of bitterness.

 

[Big Monk]

so i have brewed 3 beers adjusting my water and the first one is finished now. i feel like the gypsum is a bit much and the bitterness is a little harsh (not by much at all). now i am worried about the other two i have brewed. i feel like i was using too much gypsum to cut down the PH in the mash.... going forward should i use lactic acid to to cut down PH a bit and tone down the gypsum?

Unless you are you using whopping amounts of Ca and Mg salts, they aren’t sufficient to control pH.

So yes, if you have been attempting to lower pH into a desirable range with Ca or Mg minerals salts alone, you should adjust that practice and incorporate some sort of acid into your brewing.

Do you have a pH meter or a program you use to estimate?

 

[cire]

Unless you are you using whopping amounts of Ca and Mg salts, they aren’t sufficient to control pH.

So such practice is of no purpose when brewing a traditional style of Pilsen. A bit biased to one style, maybe?

 

[brewbama]

A traditional Pils would use Saurmalt or Saurgut as the acid source.

 

[cire]

A traditional Pils would use Saurmalt or Saurgut as the acid source.

Indeed, which makes one question what style of beer is being brewed.

 

[Big Monk]

So such practice is of no purpose when brewing a traditional style of Pilsen. A bit biased to one style, maybe?

I'm not sure what you are talking about. I don't brew Pilsner.

If you mean Trappist ale, then yes, I am biased...

The fact is that only a select few styles are using such massive amounts of Ca and Mg salts as to make a reliable impact on pH. In the case where you are using a low alkalinity water as your source, this may not be as true, i.e. they would likely make a much larger difference at levels such as in British ales where typically lower DI pH base malts such as Maris Otter are used.

However, in beers where starting alkalinity is higher and/or higher DI pH base malts are used, you'd have to add quite a bit of Ca and Mg salts to beer to get pH down to the nominal levels.

Point taken however. I've seen ungodly amounts of Ca salts in particular in recipes for British beers.

 

[cire]

I'm not sure what you are talking about. I don't brew Pilsner.

If you mean Trappist ale, then yes, I am biased...

The fact is that only a select few styles are using such massive amounts of Ca and Mg salts as to make a reliable impact on pH. In the case where you are using a low alkalinity water as your source, this may not be as true, i.e. they would likely make a much larger difference at levels such as in British ales where typically lower DI pH base malts such as Maris Otter are used.

However, in beers where starting alkalinity is higher and/or higher DI pH base malts are used, you'd have to add quite a bit of Ca and Mg salts to beer to get pH down to the nominal levels.

Point taken however. I've seen ungodly amounts of Ca salts in particular in recipes for British beers.

I am British and mostly brew British style beers, but not exclusively so. I use my water plus acids and salts to brew most of my beers, a traditional Pils is brewed using my daughter's supply.

My water has roughly 100ppm calcium, with alkalinity at 250ppm as CaCO3. For a typical British Pale Ale, alkalinity is reduced to circa 20ppm, using singly or in combination, sulfuric and hydrochloric acids. This produces, depending upon the grist, a mash pH in the region of 5.4. If 5g of gypsum is added to the mash of a 25 litre brew the pH will typically drop by 0.1 and the additional calcium in each litre of beer would be 46ppm.

This is of course so in my system, which is also based on traditional British Brewing practice. The effect in full volume mashes, which seem popular amongst several on this Forum, would not be as I advise. The water supply here is still in use for brewing (in at least one brewery for over 250 years) and used for production of beers sold around the world.

As you suggest, no practical amount of calcium salt added to my water would by itself reduce mash pH to a suitable level, unless alkalinity is also reduced. Using lactic acid would be impractical due to its imact on flavor and phosphoric acid has some practical limitations at this level too, the reason we continue to use mineral acids.

 

[Dgallo]

This got way off track didn’t it lol. The op needs to post his current numbers before anyone can truly help lol

 

[Dgallo]

.

 

[Jako]

https://brewgr.com/recipe/68623/english-brown-british-brown-ale-recipe?public=true

sorry i knew better then to post this with no real information. link above is my recipe i ended up adding 4 grams of gypsum over the 3 i planned on.

mash temp was 155.1

this was before i bought my PH meter... it was on the way. but i assume it was spot on because the other two recipes i just did i had no issues.

 

[Dgallo]

https://brewgr.com/recipe/68623/english-brown-british-brown-ale-recipe?public=true

sorry i knew better then to post this with no real information. link above is my recipe i ended up adding 4 grams of gypsum over the 3 i planned on.

mash temp was 155.1

this was before i bought my PH meter... it was on the way. but i assume it was spot on because the other two recipes i just did i had no issues.

So each grainbill will have a slightly different effect on your mash Ph. Darker bills will have the biggest impact. Do you have profile that you are building off? Or are you startung from R.O. Water. Sorry if you stated this earlier

 

[Jako]

180 PPM Alkalinity
200 PPM Hardness
9PH.

30% blend with distilled

10.30 gal of water boil size was 7 gal down to 6. and 5.5 into the fermenter.

 

[Jako]

Unless you are you using whopping amounts of Ca and Mg salts, they aren’t sufficient to control pH.

So yes, if you have been attempting to lower pH into a desirable range with Ca or Mg minerals salts alone, you should adjust that practice and incorporate some sort of acid into your brewing.

Do you have a pH meter or a program you use to estimate?

yes i do now at the time of this brew i did not have one yet.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

so i have brewed 3 beers adjusting my water and the first one is finished now. i feel like the gypsum is a bit much and the bitterness is a little harsh (not by much at all). now i am worried about the other two i have brewed. i feel like i was using too much gypsum to cut down the PH in the mash.... going forward should i use lactic acid to to cut down PH a bit and tone down the gypsum?

I would suggest reducing the gypsum addition and using lactic acid next time to lower pH. It's a great way to lower mash pH while reducing a mineral taste in your beer.

 

[Dgallo]

I would suggest reducing the gypsum addition and using lactic acid next time to lower pH. It's a great way to lower mash pH while reducing a mineral taste in your beer.

Lactic acid to bring Ph, baking soda or pickling lime to bring it up (depends on your brewing water chemistry on which one youll want to use)