KMBS for brewing

For all-grain, you shouldn't use distilled or RO water, the wort and the yeast need them. For extract brewing, the minerals are already in the wort so no need to add more.
 
I'm fairly lucky that way, my municipal water supply is pretty good for beer.
 
Nosybear said:
For all-grain, you shouldn't use distilled or RO water, the wort and the yeast need them. For extract brewing, the minerals are already in the wort so no need to add more.
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The grains will add some minerals and you can also add yeast nutrient. RO is a good way to start from scratch to build up your wanted water profile. Whatever water source you chose its still a good idea to send in a sample to get analyzed to really see what your working with. I send a sample of my well water into Wards Lab every other year.
 
This is not a "mash" beer, but was made from 1- 3.3# can of Briess Special Dark liquid malt along with 1 # of Briess dry malt extract (traditional dark) to use with water to make around 3 gallons of extract beer. So I was not worried about the pH for the enzymes action. I was more or less trying to emulate hard water found in Dublin Ireland or other parts of U.K. You want to see really hard water? Go back to where I grew up in NW Nebraska. I used to sell water softeners for a while, and pH back there can run 8.5 to 9.0 right out of the tap. Take SW South Dakota and there is so much mineral in the water you get bruises if you turn your shower on too high!. Really, the coffee at Oelrichs SD tastes like someone put in a heaping tsp of baking soda in the pot before brewing coffee and left it there. The Black Hills are notorious for hard water and plenty of minerals.

The amount of sodium in water from an ion exchange unit, is only as much as the hardness it has to remove. If there is not a lot of calcium there is not a lot of sodium. Sodium ion is exchanged for one calcium ion, but in our system at the winery they also have special bead that require the addition of 2 lbs of Citric Acid to the salt, as these bead also remove the tannin in the water, which can be problematic.

BTW, racked the fermenting beer from the primary (bucket) into the 3 gallon glass fermenter I have. Fine bubbles and lot of them coming up the side... nice tan-brown foam on top. I used our Soda Stream to purge the carboy with CO2 before using. We have a soda stream carbonator that my wife mostly uses. I bought an adapter from paint ball to soda stream and 2 paint ball containers (25 oz) and use my newer 20# dip tube CO2 tank to fill the bottles. Cost me about $21.00 to refill the bottle when empty and that is a huge savings for CO2. Also doubles as a gas purger for stuff like this.
 
Aksarben said:
This is not a "mash" beer, but was made from 1- 3.3# can of Briess Special Dark liquid malt along with 1 # of Briess dry malt extract (traditional dark) to use with water to make around 3 gallons of extract beer. So I was not worried about the pH for the enzymes action. I was more or less trying to emulate hard water found in Dublin Ireland or other parts of U.K. You want to see really hard water? Go back to where I grew up in NW Nebraska. I used to sell water softeners for a while, and pH back there can run 8.5 to 9.0 right out of the tap. Take SW South Dakota and there is so much mineral in the water you get bruises if you turn your shower on too high!. Really, the coffee at Oelrichs SD tastes like someone put in a heaping tsp of baking soda in the pot before brewing coffee and left it there. The Black Hills are notorious for hard water and plenty of minerals.

The amount of sodium in water from an ion exchange unit, is only as much as the hardness it has to remove. If there is not a lot of calcium there is not a lot of sodium. Sodium ion is exchanged for one calcium ion, but in our system at the winery they also have special bead that require the addition of 2 lbs of Citric Acid to the salt, as these bead also remove the tannin in the water, which can be problematic.

BTW, racked the fermenting beer from the primary (bucket) into the 3 gallon glass fermenter I have. Fine bubbles and lot of them coming up the side... nice tan-brown foam on top. I used our Soda Stream to purge the carboy with CO2 before using. We have a soda stream carbonator that my wife mostly uses. I bought an adapter from paint ball to soda stream and 2 paint ball containers (25 oz) and use my newer 20# dip tube CO2 tank to fill the bottles. Cost me about $21.00 to refill the bottle when empty and that is a huge savings for CO2. Also doubles as a gas purger for stuff like this.
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Sounds a lot like San Antonio, my wife's hometown. I'd avoid the softened water, though. In SA, I can taste the salt from the softener when I run a glass of water. As I mentioned above, extract has already been mashed, no need to worry excessively about the water as long as it tastes good. Sounds like fermentation is going well for you. In extract brewing, any salts you add are for favor, the wort pH has been set for you by the producer. So carbonates, aside from being mostly insoluble, aren't necessary. Try using calcium sulfate (gypsum) to accentuate bitterness in your beer, chlorides to accent maltiness. Given the water problems I think you may be having, I'd use the cheap spring water you buy at the grocery store by the gallon to dilute the extract. It tastes good and its cheap.
 
Nosybear said:
I should be getting some Aromella juice either today or next week to do some hobby wine. I may be asking your advice on that....
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Aromella is an interesting grape variety, from Cornell. Cross of Traminette and Ravat 34. One of Traminette's parents is Gewurztraminer and this grape has an aromatic side. T/A seems to be a bit high and your pH will be fairly low. Traminette is always a juice that comes in at a very low pH. I have seen it below 2.95 many times at pressing. Should be a nice grape. If it is too acidic, you can ferment with SVG yeast from Scott Labs, which assimilates quite a bit of Malic acid during fermentation. Keeps it on the cooler side and slow ferment to allow the yeast to work.
 
Aksarben said:
Aromella is an interesting grape variety, from Cornell. Cross of Traminette and Ravat 34. One of Traminette's parents is Gewurztraminer and this grape has an aromatic side. T/A seems to be a bit high and your pH will be fairly low. Traminette is always a juice that comes in at a very low pH. I have seen it below 2.95 many times at pressing. Should be a nice grape. If it is too acidic, you can ferment with SVG yeast from Scott Labs, which assimilates quite a bit of Malic acid during fermentation. Keeps it on the cooler side and slow ferment to allow the yeast to work.
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Thanks for the advice! I think SWAMBO (it's her hobby) has decided on QA23 or EC1118 for the yeast. We can always run malolactic on it if we see the acidity is too high or if it tests out too high.
 
Or, take out about 2 pints of juice, add 1 tbs of that calcium carbonate (precipitated) that I used, to the juice and let it set overnight. Then decant the juice that has been deacidified (x-acid) back into the main batch. It will contain the sugars and the essence of the grape, but absolutely no acid. This is like taking a portion of the juice and removing all the acid and returning it, like taking out x amount of juice and replacing with water.... except it is juice that has no acid. DON'T decant back any CaCO3 sediment to the main batch.

This is just an "idea" to think about. I don't know your acid or your volume, only you know that. We have used this concept many times at the winery to take Vignoles juice from it's very high acid to something manageable, somewhere in the 0.900 range of TA, when before it was u around 1.200. The old term was Acidex but we knew the technique and modified it and a few years ago I bought around 900 lbs of precipated calcium carbonate from a near local chemical supply house as they were moving it out and gave us a great deal. We have years worth of this stuff and that is the CaCO3 that I used.

Just ordered 1500 lbs of Tartaric acid for Friday delivery and 20,000 lbs of sugar for Monday. :)
 
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Max pic file size is 1 meg.
 
I resized my beer picture down to 52 Kb and is 450 x 600 pixels using photoshop. Even the original was not that big in total size, 271 Kb. But when I click on upload a file, I get an error.
 
Aksarben said:
Or, take out about 2 pints of juice, add 1 tbs of that calcium carbonate (precipitated) that I used, to the juice and let it set overnight. Then decant the juice that has been deacidified (x-acid) back into the main batch. It will contain the sugars and the essence of the grape, but absolutely no acid. This is like taking a portion of the juice and removing all the acid and returning it, like taking out x amount of juice and replacing with water.... except it is juice that has no water. DON'T decant back any CaCO3 sediment to the main batch.

This is just an "idea" to think about. I don't know your acid or your volume, only you know that. We have used this concept many times at the winery to take Vignoles juice from it's very high acid to something manageable, somewhere in the 0.900 range of TA, when before it was u around 1.200. The old term was Acidex but we knew the technique and modified it and a few years ago I bought around 900 lbs of precipated calcium carbonate from a near local chemical supply house as they were moving it out and gave us a great deal. We have years worth of this stuff and that is the CaCO3 that I used.

Just ordered 1500 lbs of Tartaric acid for Friday delivery and 20,000 lbs of sugar for Monday. :)
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Great tip! I just forwarded it on to SWAMBO.
 
A jpg under 1 meg should work. Very strange.
 
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