Water profile for a hoppy amber ale?

(That's water to the rest of us!) Beer is about 95% water, so if you want to discuss water treatment, filtering etc this is the place to do it!
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donchiquon
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Water profile for a hoppy amber ale?

Post by donchiquon » Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:53 am

I'm squeezing in an impromptu brew-day tomorrow and thought I'd try a hoppy amber.

Is there a profile that would work well for this on GW's liquor treatment calc?

Thanks!
Ian

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Re: Water profile for a hoppy amber ale?

Post by donchiquon » Fri Oct 20, 2017 2:12 pm

I decided to go for the sweet pale, as I wanted a rounder maltier profile. Not sure how much the darker grains (40g chocolate) affected things.

pH was 5.6 so I brought it down to 5.2 with some acidulated malt.
Ian

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Jim
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Re: Water profile for a hoppy amber ale?

Post by Jim » Fri Oct 20, 2017 2:34 pm

As it's a kind of hybrid I doubt if a perfect water profile exists on any calculator. You're breaking new ground here! :)
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Re: Water profile for a hoppy amber ale?

Post by MTW » Fri Oct 20, 2017 2:53 pm

Funnily enough, I've just this minute cleared up after brewing what could also be described as a hoppy amber/golden ale! I went for 157 ppm sulphate to 127ppm chloride for this one. Starting with my 130ppm CACO3 tap water, I get to that with about 20ml AMS in 35L and 4g each of gypsum and calcium chloride. Calcium was about 100. I want a good balance of malt and the EKG/Perle hops on this one, which is quite robust at 1.064. Around 40 IBUs.
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Re: Water profile for a hoppy amber ale?

Post by donchiquon » Fri Oct 20, 2017 8:13 pm

Jim wrote:
Fri Oct 20, 2017 2:34 pm
As it's a kind of hybrid I doubt if a perfect water profile exists on any calculator. You're breaking new ground here! :)
I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing! :wink:

I'm also thinking that I probably checked the mash pH too early (5.6 @ 15 mins) and that had I waited longer the dark grains would have pulled it down naturally. I only added enough acidulated malt to drop the pH by 2 points and it dropped 4 :shock:

Although I want a well rounded beer I'm going to be dry hopping quite heavily with Columbus and Citra, so looking forward to the result.
Ian

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