Questions on campden, co-pitching, calculations and more

[TwoLeggedPirate]

Hi.
I was supposed to begin a new batch last week, but local brewing store shut down a week to refurbish. At least it gives me time to ask some more questions.

1) Trying to figurer out campden powder, I was told there might be problems with campden powder inhibiting the production of CO2 after botttling. I imagine this might be true if using to large amounts of the stuff, but is there any worries if using recommended amounts?(also,what is recommended amount for fruit?)

2) Recipe I'm trying to follow calls for pitching WildBrew Sour Pitch and US-05 into room-temperatured wort. Reading some other forum answers there was a possible issue about one yeast 'overpowering' the other. Is this a real issue or will the lacto just so it's business and leave the sacc to do the rest of the job?

3)I've been figure out the whole deal of calculating OG/FG for a set amount of finished wort. Currently using the brewfather app. Just as a current example; I'm using 2/3 pilsner and 1/3 wheat malt. 60 min at 68C. If I'm aiming for 25 liters of wort with OG/FG of 1045/1012, am I doing my calculations correct if I go for 3.2 kg pilsner and 1.6 kg wheat?

4)On fruiting and amount of fruit. Recipe calls for 70g of blueberry/liter (if my calculations is not completely off), but when elsewhere I read that I might want to quadruple that. I guess it depends on how much fruit-flavor you want. Anyone have any input here?

And that's about what I wanted to ask so far. Thanks for any feedback.

 

[Nagorg]

WOW... A lot of different topics for a single thread. But I'll bite on #1 about campden.

Campden (potassium metabisulfite) is often used post fermentation with wine and cider making in order to kill active yeast so that back-sweetening can be done without risk of additional fermentation.

With brewing beer, its used for treating water prior to the mash and boil for the purpose of removing chlorine and chlorimine's.

The reported concern for homebrewing beer is that using campden could cause problems for natural bottle conditioning where you rely on any residual active yeast to process priming sugar for carbonation.

I've personally found that when using campden in the suggested amounts (~1 tablet for up to 20G ) pre-boils has absolutely zero affect on post fermentation yeast health; hence not inhibiting the CO2 production for bottle conditioning.

 

[TheBrewingDutchman]

In that case I'll bite on #3:
Did the calculations for you and the numbers you got are about right. They differ ± 1 max, so, that's possibly a rounding difference.

FG does depend on the yeast used; mainly on the attenuation of the yeast.
US-05 (att. 81%) will give you an FG of around 1.009 (5.1% ABV)
Wyeast 1768 (English Special Bitter, att. 72%) will give you an FG of 1.014 (4.4% ABV)

 

[Leezer]

For #4, I aim for one pound of fruit per gallon. I’ve done this with raspberries and strawberry/rhubarb and gotten a nice level of flavor. But with blueberries, not so much. First attempt I couldn’t taste them at all, second attempt I used more but still could barely taste them. I thought of trying blueberry juice but haven’t yet.