The Homebrew Thread

[Allstar Knights]

Does anyone know where to get stubby sized plastic bottles? Can only find 750ml ones.

 

[TiggaPlease]

Does anyone know where to get stubby sized plastic bottles? Can only find 750ml ones.

I've only ever seen the longie sized ones.

You could try Plasdene, People in plastic, or your local plastic people. They usually have a minimum spend though. When I bought some glass bottles from Plasdene I think the minimum spend was $120.

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

I want glass stubbies. Been looking for months on gumtree

 

[Allstar Knights]

Surprised their isn't much of a market for stubby sizes.

 

[Frank_Grimes]

Ebay?

 

[Frank_Grimes]

When I used to bottle I used Corona stubbies. I found them ideal due to the pop top and clear glass. Just about any Mexican bottle is good for this though. I found a local Mexican restaurant and asked them if I could go through their recycling dumpster for the bottles. It was a gold mine. The only tough part was getting the rotten lemon and lime wedges out of them while cleaning.

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

Dont really want clear bottles even though I store my beer in the dark. I have read that it doesnt take much sunlight exposure to ruin it.

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

And I am only looking to pick up the bottles, not have them posted. Costs way too much for shipping

 

[TiggaPlease]

Honestly I found the most cost effective way to get stubbies was to drink a case of Oettinger a week. $30 for 24 good quality bottles and drinkable German lager thrown in as a bonus.

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

made my stout today. Efficiency improved by abiout 12% compared to my more pale beers i have made and i added half the dark malts in the last 15 min of the mash. If I added all of them at the start i would imagine efficiency would be higher

I am confident my efficiency issues are all to do with mash PH.

 

[TiggaPlease]

That's awesome news!

 

[Frank_Grimes]

What was your final efficiency? And did you track your mash efficiency?

I'm definitely going to try adding some gypsum salts to my next brew. I'm thinking I'll do a Smurtos Golden Ale as a good baseline beer that I've done a few times before to track any improvements in efficiency.

Tried the Mandarin Ale last night - superb. Super happy with the tartness the mandarins give it , and the experimental grapefruit hops would go great just on their own. Head retention isn't the best, so I would add a bit more wheat next time.

I'll rack the blonde ale onto the raspberries today and then leave it for another week before cold crashing.

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

Total efficiency was 58.4% and mash efficiency was 64%.

Pre boil volume was 25L and got 20L into the fermentor. 5Litres lost through boil off, tun dead space and trub loss.

My worst efficiency was my Saison which was under 40% efficiency of which I used Pilsner and wheat, so basically the lightest of grains.

My best efficiency is my amber ale which had 1.4kg of light munich, 280g Amber and 120 grams of chocolate malt which makes sense because this mash profile would have produced the most acidic mash, closely followed by my stout.

So now I need to figure out the best way to bring my water alkalinity down from 110ppm to about 50ppm for the lighter malt profiles. Whether I just add gypsum or some lactic acid I dont know yet.

 

[Frank_Grimes]

So here is what I've been tooling around with in terms of additions based on the Palm Beach water profile. The Target Profile is one I found from Bru'n Water and is supposedly suitable for Ales and IPA's alike:

https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/

Here is my first shot at it:

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

Dont you want the HCO3 to go in the opposite direction? I see that profile has the target HCO3 as 0?

You will need to add some acid to the mash I would think? Or does the higher mineral content bring the mash PH down when mashing begins?

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

Also your sulphate to chloride ratio is about 6. The top of the range for a bitter/hoppy beer is 2.3 and malty beers about .5. For a balnced beer 1.3 is the ideal ratio.



You probably dont need your calcium that high, reduce the gypsum to about 2-3g which will still get your calcium over 50ppm but will get your sulphate down. If you added around 3g of gypsum, your sulphate/chloride ratio would be around 1.5-1.8, which would be good for a bitter/hoppy pale ale.

Even adding 3g of gypsum still has your sulphate over 100, so maybe add 2g of gypsum and .5g of calcium chloride to bring calcium up and keep sulphate in check.

The problem with chalk is it increased your carbonates which keeps your mash ph higher

Have a read of this https://lifefermented.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/water-treatment-for-brewing-1-the-basics/

Also found this

Sulfate (SO4)
Sulfate plays a major role in bringing out hop bitterness and adds a dry, sharp, hoppy profile to well hopped beers. It also plays a secondary role to lowering Ph of the mash, but the effect is much less than with carbonates as sulfate is only weakly alkaline. High levels of sulfate will create an astringent profile that is not desirable. Normal levels are 10-50 mg/l for pilsners and light beers and 30-70mg for most ales. Levels from 100-130 mg/l are used in Vienna and Dortmunder styles to enhance bitterness, and Burton on Trent pale ales use concentrations as high as 500 mg/l.

re: http://beersmith.com/blog/2008/08/24/brewing-water-hard-or-soft/

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

Your water looks really hard to balance lol.

Looking into it further, your magnesium is obviously too low, adding epsom salts is a must, but that also adds sulphates lol.

My head hurts.

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

Ok so I have been playing around a bit.

For a simple lighter coloured beer (90% pale, 5% wheat, 5% carapils) My current water profile has my mash ph at around 5.77 which is way too alkaline.

For me to achieve the following for a 20L mash:

Mash Ph of around 5.44
Sulphate/Chloride ratio of around 1.25 (for a balanced hop/malt flavour)
Sulphate 140
Chloride 112

Calcium 103
Sodium 57
Bicarbonates 41

I need to add the following

Dilute my tap water with 25% distilled water

add

4g Gypsum
2g Calcium Chloride
2g Baking Soda

3ml Lactic acid


I could not for the life of me achieve the recommended profile for a balanced light coloured beer in Brun water.

It appears the only way to achieve the exact recommended profile is to start with distilled water.

There is no way I could get the mash ph down to desired levels without the addition of lactic acid. If you dont use the acid and rely too much on adding salts then it really drives either sulphates or chloride up to undesired levels. Also adding acid or diluting with distilled water is the only way to bring down bicarbonates.

Simply adding Gypsum wont bring my mash Ph down anwhere near the desired levels without making sulphates go up too high and out of whack with chloride.

 

[TiggaPlease]

On the weekend I kegged my latest Amber and the Pale ale using Tardiff De Bourgogne. Both were very tasty, I think the gypsum has definitely improved the hop profile. The Amber is like Mountain Goat fancy pants on roids!

I also brewed a fairly straightforward Pale Ale with Barbe Rouge Hops, forgot to take OG reading though - Pitched straight on to yeast cake of previous pale ale:

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 28.26 l
Post Boil Volume: 24.96 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 22.00 l
Bottling Volume: 20.60 l
Estimated OG: 1.051 SG
Estimated Color: 17.7 EBC
Estimated IBU: 37.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 70.9 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
15.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent 1 -
5.00 kg Pale Malt, Ale (Barrett Burston) (5.9 EB Grain 2 90.9 %
0.20 kg Acidulated (Weyermann) (3.5 EBC) Grain 3 3.6 %
0.20 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 65L (Bairds) (128 Grain 4 3.6 %
0.10 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 110L (Bairds) (21 Grain 5 1.8 %
10.00 g Barbe Rouge [6.60 %] - First Wort 60.0 m Hop 6 8.1 IBUs
10.00 g Hallertau Magnum [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 m Hop 7 15.7 IBUs
0.50 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 5.0 mins) Fining 8 -
60.00 g Barbe Rouge [6.60 %] - Steep/Whirlpool Hop 9 13.4 IBUs
1.0 pkg American West Coast Ale (Danstar #BRY-97 Yeast 10 -
30.00 g Barbe Rouge [6.60 %] - Dry Hop 10.0 Days Hop 11 0.0 IBUs

 

[Chicken_Hunter]

Yeah, Gypsum increases the sulphates. Sulphates enhance hop flavour.

But 15g of gypsum? Really? That seems like a crazy amount. You sulphate levels would be over 400ppm, which I think is an undesired level for any beer.