Brewing Today!! Phil's IPA OG 1.050

[Madbrewer]

Brewing Today Phil's IPA OG 1.050

Just Mashing this as I speak/type. This time planning something stronger than my usual beers here's the Malt Bill :-
Pale Malt 5,000g
Crystal 300g



Water treated with 1.5 tsp CRS *edit added to boiler** & 2g gypsum & 2g Calcuim Chloride added directly to mashtun
67c



This will be a first outing for my Wyeast 1275, which was split into 4 500ml bottles as well as the starter for this which is bubbling away. The taste test I did indicated no infection no off flavours in fact to be honest it tasted a little like a flat american 'lite' beer



Near as I can tell with these test papers, I am in the PH 5.2-5.3 ball park too! Will definetely be batch sparging again Really happy with my beers since I stopped using my sparger.

Hop's
30IBU's of target will be boiled for 90mins,
17 IBU's of First gold for 60
Will steep 50g of fuggle at 80c and dry hop with Syrian.
5g irish moss will be added with 15 mins to go

Wish me luck .....

[Andy]

Good luck Phil!

[Matt]

Hi MB, that sounds like a tasty hop combo.

Will definetely be batch sparging again Really happy with my beers since I stopped using my sparger.

Interesting comment - can you expand on that?

Matt

[Madbrewer]

Interesting comment - can you expand on that?
Matt

I was 'leeching' undesirables from the grain and not aware I was doing it until I went to a North Hampshire brewing meeting and got some advice off a guy called SteveD do who posts on here. Anyway by lowering my efficiency (not strictly necessary but a method of getting more of the 'nicer' sugars in there) and by not rinsing these nasties out the grain/less astringency my beers have all been great since. Anyway I knew that beer was not 100% but didn't know that was why.

TBH I'm not sure I ever did sparge below 1.008 but who knows maybe I sparged too forcefully or something. Anyway Batch Sparging is so easy to do it's become habit for me now.

[Matt]

Thats interesting. I worry about my fly sparging technique and have thought about going to batch.

So you found that the taste of your beers was basically OK but the tell-tale sign was a slight background astringency?

[Madbrewer]

So you found that the taste of your beers was basically OK but the tell-tale sign was a slight background astringency?

Basically yes. TBH others tasted the beer and though said it was 'OK' just not on that night. The stringency hasn't come back since though. Funnily enough though at least two of the pub beers we had, had 'faults' also that night.

I think you need to be careful where your proportion the blame there before you start alarming people unnecessarily Phil .

Chris I really AM happy to defer to your obvious wisdom regarding chemistry, & where my problems 'may' lay. But not sure where I am alarming people? As in my experience (and presumably the guy that gave me the advice) batch sparging seems to improve beer (my beer at least) from the points that I have observed & noted. I'm not saying to people don't fly sparge (Apologies if that's the way it's being interpretted.) It may indeed be down to alkalinity as you suggest. For me Batch Sparging is the easy way to go.

[Madbrewer]

Even though I treat my water I prefer to batch sparge as it is quicker and easier, I would advocate it over fly sparging for those reason but fly sparging isn't really the bogey man here it's the carbonates in our water.

Forgive me then for trying to oversimplify the issue. TBH Water Chemistry is probably the hardest part of the brewing process to understand (for me at least). Working through what Fix, Daniels and the other authors have to say on the matter (and that's dealing with the mash not the sparge) may clarify certain points of it, but it is not easy. If You have to grab the bull by the horns and calculate stuff (astringency aside) a calculator like GW's is probably the way to go. Even so rather than just add the additions as it - I find myself doubting the processes I used to key-in the initial variables so subsequently to better asses the accuracy I err on the cautious side putting in the half the recommended additions to asses whether I should add the rest next time.

[Matt]

Cool.

I was asking as I have had some slightly astringent batches recently. I think mine is a straight infection, but I'd wondered about over-sparging-induced astringency.

[Madbrewer]

well it never hurts to experiment ... that sums up just about all of my beer brewing .... Experiments!