Some Centennial Blonde Questions

[whovous]

Follow this logic:

I am going to take Braufessor's advice and make a variation on Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde recipe so that I can learn how to harvest Vermont IPA (Conan) yeast. Until now, the bulk of my rather limited experience has been devoted to learning how to make IPAs.

I have three questions.

First, is this a good water profile?
74 Calcium
5 Magnesium
0 Sodium
57 Sulfate
51 Chloride
-94 Bicarbonate

I got this by fiddling with a profile I found on Brewer's Friend that I thought called for too much Sulfate.
The negative Bicarbonate number is Bru'nWater's way of saying I've added Lactic Acid to my RO water to bring the mash pH down to 5.3.

Second, is 5.3 an appropriate mash pH target for this recipe?

Third, is there any point to dryhopping a beer like this? The basic recipe leaves a fair portion of my one ounce packages of Cascade and Centennial unused in my 2.5 gallon recipe. Should I add them as a dry hop or should I seal them up for use in some unknown future brew?

 

[Kerrbrewer]

Really cant speak to the water profile beyond that I have brewed his beer several times only monitoring mash and sparge ph. I have also done it full volume mash BIAB I just hold <6 and go with it. This beer never lasts long! I have never dry hopped it because im not much of a hophead but I would bet it would be good! I have done variations of replacing the vienna with munich and the crystal 10 with 60 for an off guidelines amber and that worked out nicely! I say go for it!

 

[marc1]

I made this beer as my first biab all grain brew. It was good, but after drinking it for a bit I wanted more hops, so I dropped an ounce each of citra and Simcoe into the keg in a voile bag. It was very instructive in how massively a dryhop like that can affect the flavor. if you prefer ipas, going with the dryhop is a good idea. If you keg, try it before dry hopping. If you bottle, try bottling some as is and dry hop the rest, then bottle.

 

[whovous]

Here, if I dry-hop at all, it will be with either or both of the half-ounce leftovers - i.e., Cascade and Centennial.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the water profile?

 

[rhys333]

Your water profile looks good to me... balanced and not overly minerally. I would also add 5-10ppm sodium in the form of salt, as I find it helps lift the beer flavors and bring everything together. It's like that pinch of salt in cookies. You only notice it when its not there.

 

[marc1]

I used RO water and added in minerals and acid. I used 8.75lbs of grain with 2.3mL 88% lactic acid in the mash, and treated all water with 1 teaspoon Calcuim Chloride/5 gallons.

 

[whovous]

Your water profile looks good to me... balanced and not overly minerally. I would also add 5-10ppm sodium in the form of salt, as I find it helps lift the beer flavors and bring everything together. It's like that pinch of salt in cookies. You only notice it when its not there.

OK, if I add 0.2 grams of sea salt to my four gallons of water, the original numbers change as follows:

ORIGINAL
74 Calcium
5 Magnesium
0 Sodium
57 Sulfate
51 Chloride
-94 Bicarbonate

ADJUSTED
74 Calcium
5 Magnesium
5 Sodium
57 Sulfate
59 Chloride
-94 Bicarbonate

which makes me even more balanced than before! Thanks for the replies. I need to get started on this now!

 

[rhys333]

Good luck!