1A - Pilsner Malt

[DrDually]

Thanks Brahn
I already use lactic acid and calcium chloride to adjust pH
However, would like to check pH with a meter to make sure it is as needed
I will PM you prior to next brew day and thanks for offer

[lexuschris]

I think you are all on the right track. I finished my spreadsheet, and in my last 7 brews, 2 of them had this grainy flavor to some extent. There are 2 factors common to these 2 beers, and absent from the rest: homegrown hops & no water salts used.

I've used my homegrown hops in other beers without any issue. I'm leaning more towards a lack of pH control by not adding any water adjustment salts.

I've been using a Palmer spreadsheet for water adjustments for a few years now, but have never measured the actual pH during the mash or sparge. I've also brewed some simliar pale beers in the past without noting this taste. Could there be a difference because of the lack of pH control AND my new equipment?

On my old gear, I would batch sparge by draining the MT for my 1st runnings. Then I would pour the entire sparge water volume onto the grainbed, quickly & with good force. The grainbed would be completely mixed with the new sparge water almost instantly. I would presume that allows for remaining grain sugars & acidity to lower the pH enough that it was not a big issue.

However, on my new rig, I am pumping the 1st runnings out, then going back and pumping the sparge water from the HLT onto the grainbed a bit more slowly and without much agitation. Could it be because the untreated sparge water was slowly filtering over the grainbed, and staying at a higher pH longer and thus extracting more tanins from the husks?

Last year, during a brewday at BrewmasterBrad's, I noticed he used Lactic Acid on his sparge water. Having never done that and loving Brad's beers, I got myself some lactic acid and have started using that on my last couple of beers. However, I did not do that for either of the 2 batches that went grainy. 1st one was before Brad's brewday. The 2nd beer was after, but I wanted to eliminate salts as a cause of the grainy taste. Looks like it could confirm it instead..

Love all the comments! This is really helping me! Thank you!

--LexusChris

[DrDually]

However, on my new rig, I am pumping the 1st runnings out, then going back and pumping the sparge water from the HLT onto the grainbed a bit more slowly and without much agitation. Could it be because the untreated sparge water was slowly filtering over the grainbed, and staying at a higher pH longer and thus extracting more tanins from the husks?

Yes
Have you tried continous sparging? This will lower the pH of sparge water
Otherwise treat sparge with lactic acid as well
The spreadsheet allows both calculations

Chris

[BrewMasterBrad]

Astringency can definitely be the result of over-sparging or your mash pH getting too high during the sparge. You can also extract tannins by sparging too hot. Depending on your source water, you may benefit from buffering the mash on your pale beers with some calcium chloride or gypsum. Adding lactic acid to your sparge water to lower the pH can help as well. I haven't had a chance to check out spreadsheet, but that is probably a good place to start.

You are carbon filtering all your brew water, correct?

[lexuschris]

Yeah, been using a hard carbon filter for my water nowadays.

I did experiment with fly sparging a bit when I first got my rig, and I think that is what went wrong on the earlier batch of Pale Ale. Not only did I not know what I was doing, I was distracted and started pumping full speed wort out and sparge in. Did the entire 13 gallon collection in under 5 minutes. Rookie move. However, because of that, I switched back to batch sparging, which is what I've been doing for a few years now and have had good results. At this point, I'm trying to eliminate variables and hold constants until I get a solid batch of Pale Ale again.

I'm feeling pretty confident that my lack of sparge water treatment (ph too high) was an issue on both batches. Fast fly-sparging contributed a bunch on the 1st one.

At some point, I will have to get another batch going to test out this new theory and get me back to my pales.

Side note: My Beligan Pale Ale came out pretty good, so I'll bring that to the meeting next week. The gruit version will have to wait a couple of months .. too early to tell, but smelled rather phenolic. Same wort, same process, different yeast & spices. It always takes time for gruits to settle down....

Thanks all!
--LexusChris

[ocluke]

Kai has a fairly extensive brewing water calculator that he's built. His blog post on it is here:

http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2013/01 ... alculator/

There is a link to the calculator at the bottom of his post.