Graham Wheeler's water treatment calculator

[floydmeddler]

Hi all,

Brewing tomorrow and wanted to experiment with some water treatment. Couldn't get CRS at my local homebrew shop... Only managed to get Gypsum salts and of course I have common salt in my home. Here's the results that GW's calculator came up with.

untitled.JPG (116.68 KiB) Viewed 2406 times

My worry is that 12.13g of gypsum seems like a lot. Any one have any views on this before I go for it tomorrow?

Here is my recipe:

Ingredients:
4.5 kg English 2-row Pale
500 g Medium Crystal
130.0 g Chocolate Malt
27.0 g Target (9.6%) - added during boil, boiled 90.0 min
20.0 g Goldings (4.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
20.0 g Goldings (4.0%) - steeped after boil

Many thanks!

[mysterio]

12g of gypsum is fine, I balked when I first added that amount to my beer, turned out great though.

[adm]

Seeing as how it looks like you don't know your total alkalinity number (you could buy a Salifert test kit for your next brew), just bung a teaspoon of gypsum in the mash, and another in the boil. That'll be around 10-12 grammes anyway...

If you've got Camden tablets, crush half of one up and stir it into your mash water as well.

That should see you right!

[floydmeddler]

Seeing as how it looks like you don't know your total alkalinity number (you could buy a Salifert test kit for your next brew), just bung a teaspoon of gypsum in the mash, and another in the boil. That'll be around 10-12 grammes anyway...

If you've got Camden tablets, crush half of one up and stir it into your mash water as well.

That should see you right!

Going to do exactly this as I have some CTs in my brew cupboard. Was advised to buy the kit by another member a while back too. Going to go for it before my next brew.

Cheers!

[WishboneBrewery]

just bung a teaspoon of gypsum in the mash, and another in the boil. That'll be around 10-12 grammes anyway...

Is it just that easy?

[floydmeddler]

Just bought this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0383964175

After being inspired by this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCpcQ7uh ... annel_page

If I'm not mistaken, this video was created by our very own Chris?? Could be wrong.

[adm]

just bung a teaspoon of gypsum in the mash, and another in the boil. That'll be around 10-12 grammes anyway...

Is it just that easy?

Hmm....i think it can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it!

What I've picked up from here though, is that the two main steps are: 1) Knock your alkalinity down to a reasonable level (say 20mg/l CaCO3) with CRS (or by boiling), then add enough calcium to make sure the mash reactions happen properly by adding Gypsum.

It seems to work well for me and is my "standard" approach for Pale Ales....if I want to do something different like Stouts, or Belgians, then I'll play with Graham's calculator and get a bit more pernickity, but other wise, CRS and a couple of teaspoons of Gypsum works great! It's definitely worth finding out more about you water though in case you have extreme levels (or lack thereof) of anything...

[WishboneBrewery]

Hmm....i think it can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it!

Thats the Impression I've got from the Graham Wheeler book. In one part he just says chucking 5g of Gypsum in the boil as a matter of routine.

What I've picked up from here though, is that the two main steps are: 1) Knock your alkalinity down to a reasonable level (say 20mg/l CaCO3) with CRS (or by boiling), then add enough calcium to make sure the mash reactions happen properly by adding Gypsum.

It seems to work well for me and is my "standard" approach for Pale Ales....if I want to do something different like Stouts, or Belgians, then I'll play with Graham's calculator and get a bit more pernickity, but other wise, CRS and a couple of teaspoons of Gypsum works great! It's definitely worth finding out more about you water though in case you have extreme levels (or lack thereof) of anything...

I'll have to try and make sense of the Yorkshire water report, when I first found Jim's someone told me Keighley had 'Good Water'... I'm just not sure what that is, probably Soft water