Brewer's Friend Home Brewing Software

All Grain Water Chemistry Brewing Information

Understanding water chemistry in brewing is an important step to refining home brewing skills. It turns out less than a teaspoon of a couple key brewing salts can make a big impact in a batch of beer. This is mainly applicable to all grain brewing where full control over the mash chemistry is available.  However, the flavor profile is impacted by water chemistry in all brewing styles.

Tuning water to a particular style of beer adds a lot of fun and satisfaction. Balancing flavor ions gives absolute control over the final product. Water chemistry is also important for hitting the correct pH in the mash and can impact efficiency.

The first thing to do is obtain your local water report. Most cities provide this online with far more information than you will use in brewing. The values to look for are:

• Calcium (Ca⁺²)

• Magnesium (Mg⁺²)

• Sulfates (SO₄^-2)

• Sodium (Na⁺)

• Chloride (Cl^–)

• Bicarbonate / Alkalinity

Brewers living in cities with soft water are the most fortunate because they have complete control over the mineral levels in their brewing water. For brewers in places with hard water (high alkalinity and mineral content), dilution with distilled water and then re-adding depleted minerals is the easiest solution. Well water is a tough one as it will require lab analysis to be sure what the levels are, but it can be expected to be packed with minerals.

To help navigate all this information, we created the Brewer’s Friend water chemistry calculator. It helps you hit target concentrations and advises about minimum and maximum levels for each ion. Too much of a given salt can ruin the beer and cause side effects to those who drink it. The calculator also reports how the ion concentrations impact the flavor and bitterness of the beer.

The Brewing Salts:

Adjusting your source water the target water is done through adding a combination of brewing salts.

• Chalk – Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3)
  Boosts alkalinity and source of calcium. Good for adding alkalinity to soft water for brewing dark beers.

• Baking soda – Sodium Bicarbonate (NaHCO3),

  Boosts alkalinity and source of sodium.

• Gypsum – Calcium Sulfate (CaSO4 * 2 H20)

  Source of calcium, sulfate enhances hop bittering, but must be balanced with chlorides.

• Calcium Chloride (CaCl2 * 2 H20)

  Source of calcium for low chloride water.

• Epsom salt – Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4 * 7 H20)

  Sulfate enhances hop bittering, but must be balanced with chlorides. Magnesium has a low ppm threshold for being safe (brewing range 0-30ppm), so use this one sparingly if at all.

Target ranges for mineral levels in beer brewing:

Flavor Ions:

• Calcium (Ca⁺²) – target range of 50-150 ppm
• Magnesium (Mg⁺²) – target range of 0-30 ppm
• Sulfate (SO₄^-2)- target range 50-150 ppm for normal beers, 150-350ppm for highly bitter beers.
• Sodium (Na⁺) – target range 0-150 ppm
• Chloride (Cl^–) – target range 0-250 ppm.

Harmful levels:
Concentrations above these levels are harmful to the beer, and much beyond they become harmful to our health!

• Calcium (Ca⁺²) – 250 ppm
• Magnesium (Mg⁺²) – 50 ppm
• Sulfate (SO₄^-2) – above 750 ppm
• Sodium (Na⁺) – above 200 ppm
• Chloride (Cl^–) – above 300 ppm

Sulphate and Chloride should be balanced in beer:

• 2:1 SO4 to Cl is good for bitter beer
• 1:2 SO4 to Cl for mild ales
• 1:3 SO4 to Cl for stouts and porters
• Chloride and Sodium add the maltiness of a beer.
• Sulfate highlights bitterness and reduces malt flavor.

Alkalinity Range:

Alkalinity impacts the pH of the mash, a key factor in efficiency. Bicarbonate (HCO₃^–) – ppm depends on style of beer, lower for lighter beers, higher for darker beers.

• 0-50 for pale beers
• 50-150 for amber beers
• 150-400 for dark beers

Sources:
Palmer, John, How To Brew, 2006
Daniels, Ray, Designing Great Beers, 1996

Posted in Brewing, Ingredients | 10 Comments »

Recording Keeping Tips

Consistency is the Virtue of Homebrewing
Part 2: Record Keeping

It’s no good to brew a great beer once, only to fail to recapture that glory every other time. In the last article, I discussed the importance of good hygiene procedures in brewing consistent beer. Good hygiene practices mean your beer contains just you intended it to, and nothing else. But if cleanliness means keeping out everything but what you want, then it’s record keeping that ensures that every batch contains exactly what you do want, each and every time.

Good record keeping is part of the brewing process, from start to finish. Since home brewing is a hobby, it may seem natural to ‘trust to memory’ when you make changes or experiment with a beer. Variation and experimentation are the heart of fun homebrews, and the key to discovering new & delicious beers, but trusting to memory is a sure way to never return to those new discoveries again. And if you can’t brew a consistent batch, it’s hard to know whether the changes from batch to batch are because of the changes you intended to make, or the ones you failed to control.

Beer brewing starts with the recipe. The first mistake many home brewers make is viewing the recipe solely as a shopping list. While it does have a list of ingredients, it should also include the mash schedule, the hops schedule, as well as all necessary adjunct information. Many computer programs will also calculate the anticipated starting and ending specific gravity. The calculators at this site can aid in getting to numbers such as (OG, FG, IBU, SRM, etc) and learning how to interpret them.

The grain, hops, & yeast for a recipe are usually purchased at your local homebrew store; as supplies vary from time to time, some substitution may be necessary. Any deviation from the recipe, no matter how trivial, should be recorded if consistency is your goal. Changing from American two-row grain to English two-row grain will definitely affect the flavor of your beer! The hop schedule on the recipe templates at this site don’t just include the name of the hop, but also include the alpha acid percentage; when substitutions do need to be made, having that extra information lets you make a closer match! Surprising to some, yeast can have a huge impact on flavor as well. Consider the difference between a Belgian Abby yeast, and a California common ale – both produce quite different result and apply to different styles.

Adjuncts need to be not only listed as ingredients, but also need every step of preparation included in the recipe. Adding roasted nuts to a beer can add good flavors, but the recipe needs to include not only the type and weight of nuts used, but also the time & temperature used for roasting, and the details on when the nuts are added. (mash, boil, primary fermentation or secondary) When you consider all the details for an adjunct like that, it’s obvious that ‘trusting to memory’ means never getting the same beer twice.

Record keeping continues through fermentation and bottling, as well. It’s useful to know what the final gravity is at bottling, and how long the fermentation was. If you bottle or keg-condition, it’s helpful to know when the beer is minimally carbonated for drinking, when it’s ideally drinkable, and when it’s gone past its prime.

Testing the final bottling gravity of the beer, noting how long the fermentation was, and keeping notes on minimum bottle-conditioning (if used) all add up to success the second time around. Fermentation temperature also plays a role. Advanced brewers setup temperature controlled fermentation chambers to dial this in, even for their ales, to keep them at a consistent 68F, for example.

Even if you’re unsatisfied with the results, keeping good notes on what you disliked, and what you did the first time gives a good starting point for what to change the second time around. As long as you’re still tinkering with a recipe, you should keep all previous notes to know how each variation changed. The ideal recipe should tell you what you need to buy, how you should prepare it at each step, how long it will take, and what to expect at the end.

Assuming that you’re using good cleaning and sanitation procedures, there’s no uncontrolled fermentation occurring in your beer and no unexpected trace flavors or contaminants. At this point, you should be keeping thorough, detailed records of each batch, so you should also have a pretty good ‘road map’ for brewing a particular batch. But there is still one source for uncontrolled, unplanned variations from batch to batch. The next article in this series explores how to refine the actual processes you use in your brewing to reduce unintentional changes from batch to batch.

Please check out our brew day checklist sheets, recipe templates and brewing calculators for more information about brewing with consistency.

The next article in this series is about brewing process improvement ideas.

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Cleaning and Sanitization Tips

Consistency is the Virtue of Home Brewing
Part 1: Cleanliness

One of the most frequent comments heard about home brewed beers is “this guy brewed a batch of really good beer, this one time…” meaning he never managed to duplicate the feat. Consistency is the first, best virtue of a home brewer. Being able to produce a consistent beer means that when you do change the yeast or grains or hops, you’ll be able to know exactly what that change did to the taste and aroma. And on a personal level, there’s nothing quite as frustrating as brewing a wonderful beer, and then failing to reproduce that first, delicious batch.

Consistency starts with cleanliness. Anything that the water, mash, wort, or beer comes in contact with needs to be cleaned and sanitized, because these elements could carry wild yeasts, mold, or bacteria that can alter the final product. Fermenting beer is a sugar-rich, oxygenated liquid stored in a dark, temperature-controlled environment, perfect for encouraging yeast growth, but also for bacteria and mold. Cleanliness is the first, easiest, and most effective step in keeping unwanted agents out of fermenting beer.

My own exposure to the “clean and sanitize as you go” approach was Boy Scout camping, where the penalty for failing to clean your cookware was a case of the Kybo Quickstep (excessive need for the out house). That’s not a risk in homebrewing, but the practice remains the same. After using a tool (mash tub, boil pot, spoon, siphon, strainer, etc.) it should be cleaned in soapy water and scrubbed as necessary. Both in Scouts and in brewing, we like to keep a bucket on-hand filled with soapy water used exclusively for washing. Any soap suitable for dishwashing can be used, but many brewers favor no-rinse cleansers such as One Step or Star San; these products don’t leave a residue and don’t require additional rinsing, which is a plus. PBW is another popular cleaner used by brewers that helps get rid of stains and grime, but is not a sanitizer and needs to be rinsed off.

After cleaning, the item should be immediately sanitized in a one step sanitizing solution. Again, we kept a second bucket on-hand filled and waiting. A third and optional bucket is empty, having been sanitized beforehand, and works as a ‘catch bucket’ where cleaned, sanitized items can be put without re-contaminating them. Using the catch bucket is optional, some people just soak their items, but it depends if you are using a no rinse sanitizer or a bleach or iodophor solution.

Do not rinse items after they’ve been sanitized; while the water might be sanitized, the taps and hoses it goes through aren’t, and rinsing cleaned items undoes the work of the sanitizer. With bung and corks that should be dry before use, air drying is fine, set on a fresh towel on a clean table. Many new home-brewers make their sanitizing solutions much stronger than necessary, which will leave a residue behind. Until you’re sure of the correct concentration, iodophor is a safer choice than bleach, as its residue is neutralized by exposure to sunlight, while bleach residue is reactivated by exposure to water. Bleach taint is a serious concern for flavor contamination.

When you put away supplies, beware of standing water. Pots and mash tuns should be stored uncovered, upside down, with any spigots open to allow for full drying. Tubing should be given close attention to make sure no pockets of water or beer remain inside when put away. Standing water (or beer) are prime sites for mold growth, and even a small amount of mold in a tube is enough to infect a batch of beer if that tube is used to transfer beer.

There is one other aspect of cleanliness that isn’t addressed above, and that’s maintaining your equipment. Just a small patch of mold is enough to ruin 5 gallons of beer, and a small amount of bacteria can skunk your latest batch. Cracks and scratches in your tubing or food-grade buckets are perfect sites for bacteria to live: they’re nearly airless, inaccessible to cleaning tools, and difficult to fully sanitize. A scratch or crack, especially one that has visible discoloration, is sign that the item shouldn’t be in contact with the beer any more. Cracked or scratched buckets work fine for holding soapy water or sanitizer or as catch buckets, but we don’t want to be pouring wort or beer across their surfaces.

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but it’s only one part of brewing consistent beer. In the next article, I’ll discuss the role that good record keeping plays in consistent brewing. Like cleanliness, it’s something you do both before and after the boiling, fermenting, and bottling, and like proper sanitation, it’s a good habit to develop early.

Please see the next article in this series on record keeping.

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Mashing and Lautering Basic Concepts

Mashing and lautering are terms used in all grain beer brewing to describe how brewers go from malted grain to wort in the kettle.

Mashing is the process of of creating sweet wort. We are lucky because in today’s world we start off with malted grains. Malting is a time intensive process best done on a large commercial scale. Malting prepares the grain for mashing and makes the process simple and easy. Nature pretty much does it for you. Mashing starts by combining malted grains with water at specific temperatures. The grains have to be crushed or milled first to enable the water to seep in. The hot water activates enzymes in the malt which triggers starch in the grain to convert into fermentable sugar. In general, the target temperature is between 150 and 158 F (65-70 C), held for one hour.

Mashing is performed in a container called a mash tun. It could be a modified picnic cooler, a converted keg, a kettle with a false bottom, or even a plain bucket. Heat retention is important and that is why coolers work so well.

Mashes are conducted on a temperature rest schedule. The default mash schedule is generally for one hour, between 150 and 158 F (65-70 C) at a water to grain ratio of 1-2 quarts per pound. For example to get a ratio of 1 quart per pound with 10 pounds of grain, add 10 quarts of water (2.5 gallons).

This site has a mash schedule calculator here which will help you plan infusion style mashing.

Depending on the grain or the type of beer, there may be several temperature levels, called rests, to proceed through. For example a less modified malt (such as Pilsner) may produce a higher yield under a schedule such as: 122F for 20 minutes, 140F for 20 minutes, and finally 155F for 20 minutes. A more advanced approach called decoction mashing involves removing a portion of the mash, boiling it, then re-adding it to the mash. This process of boiling and recombining may be repeated several times during a decoction mash. These advanced schedules are designed for total control over the beer, and compensate for less modified malts. Most malts out there (such as Americal Pale 2-Row) are highly modified and convert easily with the standard one step rest schedule lasting 60 minutes. Advanced brewers explore these more challenging and time intensive mashing techniques to produce a certain style, or fine tune a recipe to be totally authentic.

The mashing process:

1. Start off with your empty mash tun:

2. Add milled grains:

3. Add strike water and let sit for 60 minutes:

Now you are ready to drain the wort, the process called lautering which pretty much does itself if your manifold is well built. Lautering is the process of separating the spent grain husks from the sweet wort. After lautering the sweet wort ends up in the kettle and the boil begins!

Other terminology in mashing:
Crushed grain is also referred to as grist.

Mashing-in is when the water is first added to the grist. This initial water is called the strike water, and is added at a strike temperature to achieve the first rest’s temperature.

Mashing-out is increasing the temperature in the mash tun (through heat or infusing hot water) to 170°F (77°C) which stops the conversion process and makes the wort more viscous.

Sparging is the act of draining water through the grain bed to try to extract additional sugars.

The wort originally collected is called the first runnings.

Wort collected after sparging (if batch sparging) is called the second runnings.

The Vourlof phase is the very first wort that comes out of the mash tun. It is cloudy, and the first few pints are collected and poured back into the mash tun.

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Recording Keeping For Extract Brewers

Most beginning brewers start with malt extract. Compared to all grain brewing there is a lot less to track, but it can still be overwhelming at first. Our Brew Day Sheet for Extract Recipes will help you to make sense of this, and brew more consistently.

The most basic thing to track at first is the exact batch ingredients:

• Pounds and type of malt extract (dry or liquid)
• Steeping grains (optional but recommend)
• Hops, variety, alpha acid content, and boil time for each amount
• Yeast
• Other, such as gypsum, Irish moss, gelatin, flavoring herbs, etc
• It is also useful for some people to track the cost of the batch.

The main variables to keep track of for an extract brewer are:

• OG – Original Gravity, basically how much sugar you started with. This involves taking a hydrometer reading before pitching the yeast.
• FG – Final Gravity, how much sugar you were left with. To measure this, take a hydrometer reading at the time of bottling before adding priming sugar.
• IBU – International Bittering Units, how bitter your beer will be.
• ABV – Alcohol by Volume, uses OG and FG to calculate.

Calculators at this site can be used to generate these numbers.

Check out the Brew Day Sheet for Extract Recipes, it is a free resource.

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Pick the Correct Size Secondary Fermenter

Oxygen is the enemy of beer after fermentation. The main cause of oxidation in beer is exposure to oxygen when racking or bottling. Another culprit is the head space in the secondary fermenter. Make sure to use the smallest size secondary fermenter possible as not to expose the beer to oxygen in the head space. For example a typical 5 gallon batch should use a 6.5 gallon carboy or bucket as the primary fermenter, then a 5 gallon carboy as the secondary. There will be almost no head space in the secondary if done correctly.

Rules of thumb:

• Head space is needed in the primary, since there will be a lot of foam during the krausen phase of fermentation. Oxygen in the head space is not an issue during primary fermentation because it will be replaced by CO2 when fermentation kicks off and any dissolved oxygen will be utilized by the yeast. Some will also be pushed out through the air lock with the escaping CO2.
• Head space is bad in the secondary. Since the beer is fermenting slowly, it will take longer to push oxygen in the head space out through the air lock. This means most of the oxygen in the head space is getting into the beer and causing harmful effects.

Why is oxygen harmful in the secondary?

Oxygen (O2) is a reactive molecule. During primary fermentation the yeast use oxygen quickly as part of the metabolic reaction that produces alcohol. Inside the secondary the yeast metabolism has settled down greatly. This leaves any newly introduced oxygen free to interact with larger desirable molecules responsible for flavor and bittering. When the oxygen hits these molecules it splits them apart making for undesirable byproducts in the beer. Wet paper bag or cardboard taste is generally the telling sign of oxidized beer.

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Lagering At Home Video

This video shows you what an in home lagering setup looks like. Also includes a look at corny kegs and the temperature controller needed for fermentation of a lager.

The beer being fermented is a Munich Helles!

Posted in Brewing, Kegging and CO2, Lagering | No Comments »

Money Saving Tips – Hops Utilization Factor

Minimizing costs and maximizing beer is a wonderful thing to put into practice. This post discusses the idea of getting more bittering potential from hops. With hops going for $32/pound this is worth paying attention to.

Alpha acids in hops are isomerized into bitter flavors during the boil.  The utilization factor is a number that expresses how easily and completely this process takes place.  Higher utilization translates into a higher amount of international bittering units (IBUs). The utilization factor decreases as the boil gravity increases. This means the more sugary your wort is, the less bittering you will get per ounce of hops.   Therefore by lowering the gravity of the boil it is possible to stretch hops bittering quality.

This tip really only applies to extract brewers who are able to add fermentable sugars in a more flexible manner than all-grain brewers who need a full wort boil. All grain brewers do not suffer from such setbacks in hops utilization because their wort boil gravity is essentially what the original gravity of the recipe is. Most extract books say to add all the dry/liquid malt extract at the start of the boil to 3 gallons of water, then dilute to five gallons afterwards. This hurts the hops bittering potential!

The basic procedure to get your wort gravity down is to use half of your extract for the entire boil at the time the bittering hops are added.  With 15 minutes to go (usually after 45 minutes of boiling), add the rest of the extract to bring up the gravity to where the recipe calls for. This will sanitize the extract and sufficiently integrate it into the wort before cooling.

You can see this in action by playing with this website’s IBU calculator.

Let’s consider an example: a simple lager with 2 oz of Hallertauer hops, Alpha Acid rating of 3.9, boiled for 60 minutes, no other hops additions.

In the case of an extract batch with an original gravity of 1.055 for a 5 gallon batch, but only boiling 3 gallons, we get 18.53 IBU’s.

If we tell the calculator the boil gravity was only 1.028 (half the sugars), we get an IBU rating of 27!  For calculation purposes we get close to what we would see with a full wort boil (enter 5 gallons for boil size and 1.055 for gravity) and it comes out to around 25.

A 38% increase in hops bittering potential is pretty good. That translates into a 38% savings in the cost of our bittering hops. It also means more bitter beer which a lot of home brewers really like – including the author!

Note: this practice may throw off the style of beer your batch fits into by boosting bitterness beyond where it needs to be. It will also allow you to make your next IPA much more bitter for the money.  IPAs are particularly expensive to make these days because they call for 2x-3x hops, and about half of that is for bittering.

Posted in Brewing, Economics of Brewing | 2 Comments »

Halloween brew

This is pretty spooky looking. Shine a flashlight through all the gunk that builds up on the inside of the carboy when fermenting a dark or high gravity beer!

Whoo-hahahaah!

If you don’t wash it out after racking I bet it gets even spookier!

Speaking of spooky, I’ve been thinking about some ingredients people used in the past, like dandelion for bittering. That sounds like a witch’s brew. I could be wrong but that *might* be the reason why they don’t make it in today’s time.

I’m going to try a cranberry mead in a week, that should be more in line with my personal taste. I’ll let you know how it goes!

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When to use a blowoff tube

For dark beers or beers with a specific gravity greater than 1.060, in my experience, a blow off tube is need to keep from having an overflowing mess.

Here is a picture of a porter that is only 24 hours into fermentation. You can see the amount of gunk on the glass in the head space got up to the airlock. I pitched two cups of slurry from a previous batch of English Pub Bitter and the fermentation took off like a rocket. In five hours the tube was making a tapping noise every couple seconds as it bubbled. The strain is White Labs British Ale Yeast.

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