My water profile and wanting to make a Imperial IPA

[BFBrewhouse]

I'm looking into making an Imperial IPA and want to fix the water to make the best IPA I can for an upcoming event.

The specs are attached.

Someone told me to add a bit of gypsum and tried using brewers friend to adjust them so they were all green but it ended up with ~6 tsps of Gypsum. Is this correct?

 

[ajdelange]

There is nothing that you can do to the water by itself to make the best IPA you can. Making the best IPA you can will be an extended process involving selection of grain types and quantities, mash program, hops and hops schedules, yeast type, fermentation temperature, dry hopping.... and continuously adjusting these until you get to what you want.

But the water is an important part of this. It's alkalinity is almost 4 mEq/L and something will need to be done about that. The simplest would be to dilute it down to under 1 mEq/L with RO water but as this would require a 3:1 dilution you might as well use all RO and that is probably the best advice I can give. You would then add CaCl2 and CaSO4 to get to the chloride and sulfate levels you like.

The alternatives is to decarbonate the water. If you happen to live in the UK you will have AMS/CRS (a equiequivalent blend of HCl and H2SO4) which would be ideal for this situation as it will simultaneously get rid of the alkalinity and boost the low chloride and very low sulfate levels to something typical for an IPA. Sans AMS you can, of course, get the same result with separate H2SO4 and HCl sources but you probably won't be able to obtain them in food grade and as they are both corrosive I do not recommend that home brewers handle them. Lactic acid is pretty strongly flavored and enough to get rid of this much alkalinity will quite possibly be perceivable in the finished beer. That pretty much leaves phosphoric acid which is more flavor neutral.

The water can also be decarbonated by boiling or by treatment with lime but will need to have its calcium augmented to at least 4 mEq/L (80 mg/L) first. It is, if you can source it, much easier to use RO water than to use any of these decarbonation methods.

In any case decarbonated or RO, chloride level will need to be brought up to about 60 mg/L. Now we get to the hard part. What to do about sulfate. This depends on whether you like its effects or not. More people do than don't so as you don't, presumably, have time to experiment to find the best level for your likes I suppose I'd shoot for 150 ppm or more.

See if you can find in some recipe data base a popular IPA recipe to steer you in choice of grain bill, hops schedule and sulfate level.

 

[couchsending]

What he said..

Do you make many beers with that water? Really it’s only good for making darker beers based on that level of alkalinity.

RO is your best bet for most beers unless you’re really gonna spend some time learning how to work with that alkalinity as AJ described.

I’m of the camp that prefers CaSo4 to CaCl.

I would use all RO, aim for CA around 100ppm based on 75% So4 25% Cl. You’ll probably need a little acid as well, either lactic or acid malt would be easiest to find/use.

 

[BFBrewhouse]

I primarily make dark beers and mead with it. I have made one IPA but it seemed that it didn't come out very bitter at all or flavorful. I have a very good setup for being very oxygen free environment through out the process as well. Closed purged transfer and everything. So I'm looking to make changes to the water profile in order to make it more in line with IPA styles.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

6 tsp of gypsum is not correct, unless you are making huge batches. Something on the order of 6 grams of gypsum in the mash water (plus the same as to its ppm contribution added to the sparge water) would be more in line with typical 5-6 gallon size home brew size batches, and with due respect to the specific style you are shooting for. You could also add something on the order of 3 grams calcium chloride to the mash water (plus the same as to its ppm contribution added to the sparge water).

But as A.J. already mentioned, you will need to neutralize the waters alkalinity by adding acid first. And depending upon your recipe you may also need to acidify somewhat beyond that point. And as A.J. also stated, water alone will not assure that you will make a good quality beer.

 

[BFBrewhouse]

Thats what I meant 6 grams. Ill give it ago and i also ordered a PH meter as well. Ill report back.

 

[carloslavin]

Put me on the "just use RO" camp.

I used to make very decent dark beers but my APAs/IPAs I wasn't particuarly fond of until I switched to all RO, since the water here is pretty much as hard as yours. RO is not that expensive if you happen to know where some of those RO water stations are, and you take out the variability in water that can happen in a lot of areas. Makes for a more controlled/predictable process.