So now that Megan is finished poking fun at my latest few beers which turned out terrible, I think weve licked the problem. It seems craven county (shop water) has added 3xppm chlorimines into our tap water. The result was four beers tasting like vinyl records. The last two beers weve made weve used RO water and built it to our specifications. My white IPA was treated with 2 tsp calcium chloride, 4 tsp gypsum, and 3% acid malt. The mashtun was treated similarly. This resulted in a mash with terrific alkalinity and a PH of 5.3. The beer is now 5 days old, and tastes great. The hops really pop and the yeast is chugging away. Megan made her oatmeal stout today with similarly treated water minus the gypsum, and her mash was perfect! This brings us to remember how important knowing what is in brewing water, the alkalinity of the mash, and mash and boil PH really are. Due to high chlorine levels the yeast was stunted in a few of those beers only attenuating to 1.020. After pouring through brewing notes and thinking about the problem for a while I remembered it is common practice for municipalities to dump more chlorine or add chlorimines in the water during the hot months due to the volatility of chlorine under warm conditions. To meet USDA and federal standards for the clean water act more chlorine must be added to kill the microbes in the source water. This of course is detrimental to brewing water. Food for thought; happy brewing.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 23:42:04 +0000