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Post #2 made 12 years ago
by joshua
GD, If you let the wort drain thru almost any Cloth/Filter material, as you drain the wort into the fermenter, the Wort will be as clear as the Filter material allows.

I use 8-10 layers of Cheap CheeseCloth. or a single sheet of of Polyester cloth.
Honest Officer, I swear to Drunk, I am Not God.
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Post #3 made 12 years ago
by 2trout
JD

You could go the lazy route! Don't worry about the trube until bottling/kegging. Mash, boil with a hop sock, cool and dump into your fermenter. Ferment away, and cold crash when fermentation is complete. Add gelatin to settle everything out during cold crash. Your beer will be clear and clean :P
"All I know is that the beer is good and people clamor for it. OK, it's free and that has something to do with it."
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Sv: Clearer preboil wort

Post #4 made 12 years ago
by johnny_dove
Thanks guys, I get clear beer. I use cold crash and gelatin. Agree it is great. Was thinking about the wort before boiling. Is it ok to boil husks and all? Tannins etc? If I filter with cheese cloth or such before boiling I risk hot side aeration which some claim reduces the time the beer keeps fresh substantially.

Post #5 made 12 years ago
by GuingesRock
Hi Johnny_dove, I never worry about beer being cloudy. I prefer it to be slightly cloudy as it looks more real to me that way. I never add clarifiers or filter. After about two weeks in the keg, in the keezer at 4C, it always becomes crystal clear for some reason. It probably does that just to annoy me :)
Last edited by GuingesRock on 11 Feb 2013, 06:22, edited 2 times in total.
Guinges

Post #7 made 12 years ago
by Aces high
You shouldn't get any husks in the boil. I have 2 different voile bags, one very fine and the other one is courser,at one stage i was using the fine bag inside the course one. One day the fine bag went missing so i just used the course bag on its own and noticed no difference in either the boil trub or the clarity of the final product.

I certainly didn't detect any tannans either

Post #8 made 12 years ago
by PistolPatch
Johnny, have a read of the BIABrewer post here.

If we work from that post, we can see that a cloudy pre-boil wort is not a problem but...

You don't want to get ridiculous. As Aces mentioned above, there shouldn't be husks in your wort at all. There's two reasons for this...

Firstly, if your pH is out of whack, then this will give you a tannin problem. (If your pH is okay, it won't - decoction mashers are boiling their husks every time.)

Secondly, all crap has to come out of your brew at some stage. Removing grain 'crap' with the bag is the easiest way. Simple as that.

If you are worried about the clarity of your final beer, this doesn't really have anything to do with pre-boil clarity. It's a whole different subject and it applies to every all-grain brewer not just BIAB'ers. What works for me on clarity, may not work for you. There are a lot of factors involved and even micro-breweries can have problems from time to time with it.

I think the safest practice is to minimise trub as early as you can without it requiring a lot of work. It's very easy to do this so why not follow that rule at least when starting out?

Get lazy later :P,
PP
Last edited by PistolPatch on 11 Feb 2013, 20:43, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #9 made 12 years ago
by johnny_dove
Thanks! Great articles under that link and great news for us preferring the easy biab process to 3v. Have pretty hard water. High alkalinity. So i do worry a bit about ph. The article on ph was a bit on the brief side. I normally do an acid rest while mashing. Thinking i may need to do more before full water volume mashing? Can I do a full volume mash with this water?

My water
pH 7,7
Alkalinity 390 mg/l as HCO3
Total hardness 17 dH
Calcium 110 mg/l
Magnesium 9mg/l
Sodium 20 mg/l
Sulfate 29 mg/l
Chloride 17 mg/l

Post #10 made 12 years ago
by BrickBrewHaus
JD, your alkalinity is pretty high and is almost certainly causing your mash pH to be high as well. High alkalinity in full volume mashing exacerbates an already problematic mash pH. But its easy to deal with...

If you take a look at a post of mine, I talk about mash pH with different water compositions. According to the graph, you could dilute your water with distilled or RO water in a ratio of 3 parts distilled/RO to 1 part tap water. This will reduce your alkalinity by 75% making it much more manageable. If you had a pH meter, you get by with doing a much higher dilution, but I wouldn't recommend that until you can actively check the mash pH. By doing this, you also dilute everything else (calcium, magnesium, etc), some of which are below a value which is considered acceptable. Just add a teaspoon per 5 gallons of calcium chloride or calcium sulphate (gypsum) to compensate. Brewing water manipulation doesn't have to complicated (I can be if you want it to), what I've shared here is really all a brewer needs to know.
Last edited by BrickBrewHaus on 14 Feb 2013, 22:07, edited 2 times in total.

Post #15 made 12 years ago
by BobBrews
Here is a new link for me about water quality.http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemi ... alculator/

February14, 2013 - Water Chemistry Calculator
Kai Troester talks about his Mash Chemistry and Brewing water Calculator and walks us through using it to improve our water for brewing.

http://ec.libsyn.com/p/7/4/0/740dedf09e ... id=5398183

It is from Basic Brewing Radio. http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio
Last edited by BobBrews on 15 Feb 2013, 03:49, edited 2 times in total.
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tap 2 Bourbon Barrel Porter
tap 3 Czech Pilsner
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Post #17 made 12 years ago
by mirogster
My apologies for excessive OT.
@ BobBrews Kudos for that excellent find. I recommend all, just to subscribe to Kai's blog as well.

Gents, may I ask: how do you input your water volumes into that calc? Mash water as a full volume (BIAB in its best). And/Or sparge water apart (ex. for dunk sparging)?
I was 'playing' with that calc since few days, and it's most sophisticated but also user friendly tool, so far (at least as a web application) :)
Probably during this weekend, I'm going to brew some small batch, along with my trusty pH meter - just to test drive that precious ;P
I'm extremely curious about your opinion and impression with BrauKaiser's calc :)
Cheers!

Post #18 made 12 years ago
by BrickBrewHaus
johnny_dove wrote:Thanks. That calculator is useful. Will play around and post a profile. The dealer i buy from has something called ph 5.2 stabilizer. That stuff useful? Not sure what it will do for the final flavour? Not only ph important. Taste of the water also a biggie:grin:
I've never heard many good things about it, bit I've never used it myself. The only way to know if it works is to test your mash pH and see what happens. My approach, when dealing with brewing water, is to take the "less is more" approach. You've already got quite a bit of minerals in your water, do you think adding even more will be beneficial to the taste of the beer. There are some resectable homebrewers that would answer that question "no". I personally haven't had the opportunity to test their theory, but I can say that my beer is pretty good by diluting alkalinity with distilled water instead of using 5.2. YMMV.
Last edited by BrickBrewHaus on 16 Feb 2013, 21:18, edited 2 times in total.

Post #19 made 12 years ago
by PistolPatch
[EDIT: Ignore the below as I totally misread the post above. See next post here for details.]

I know I am an old scalie and know very little about water but I will post here to totally back BrickBrewHaus's thoughts up.

For now, don't trust spreadsheets you find on the net, let alone 'respected' software... The fact is that, mirogster is asking excellent questions and they totally pricked my ears up. I have a lot more to ask you mirogster!

The nice thing about the BIABacus Project is that it does ask the right questions. (EDIT: Just removed my ramble - way too long :) )...the question being asked here can be quickly answered if you ask the right question in the right format. Anyone who publishes any sort of software that doesn't clearly define their terminology is useless to you/us.

Some very good questions being asked here by you mirgoster :salute:.
PP
Last edited by PistolPatch on 17 Feb 2013, 02:21, edited 3 times in total.
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Sv: Clearer preboil wort

Post #20 made 12 years ago
by johnny_dove
The calculator suggests boiling all water may help alkaline ion precipitation/reduce mash ph. True? Seems to make sense since boiling my water leaves some chalk like residue. Impressive that this calculator knows how much it will affect mash ph. Wonder how calculated? Boil first, cool then add the various salts?

Sv: Clearer preboil wort

Post #21 made 12 years ago
by johnny_dove
ÒPp, I would prefer ro water or distilled water but I don't have access to any affordable sources of neither distilled water nor ro water. I live on an island so I can't drive anywhere and get other water. My dealer does not have acidulated malt. He does however carry lactic acid. According to the tool bob posted and a few other sources a mere few ml's of lactic acid would bring mash ph and ra down to acceptable levels. Don't want to be brewing stouts so I need to find a solution:grin: Anyone use lactic acid? According to this article http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?ti ... pH_control one can use up to 0.25 g/l without noticable affects on taste. I would need less than that from what I gather from the ph and water treatment tool.

Post #22 made 12 years ago
by PistolPatch
Hey there johnny :peace:,

Sort of ignore my last post above. My brain was fried and totally mis-read the question above properly at all. I thought we were talking about spreadsheets maybe because I had spent the whole day on them - lol! (I thought that BBH had said he hadn't heard any good reports on that spreadsheet and I've seen enough dodgy ones to believe that.)

But...

You were talking about pH5.2 though. I've tried it and I think it is very expensive and that there are much better ways of adjusting your pH. I use acidulated malt (which you can't get) but have used lots of different things in the past including things like citric acid. Haven't tried lactic sorry.

I agree totally with BrickBrewHaus on the ph5.2 and on adding more things to your water. Above I wrote, "sort of ignore my last post above," but there was a point to it. Please have a listen to this Beersmith podcast w3ith Gordon Strong. In this he talks about spreadsheets, water and how, like BBH has said, brewers often add too much to their water. It's an excellent, informed podcast.

That's probably the only good advice I can give as I really don't know much about this area. Will enjoy reading what you guys write though.

:salute:
PP

P.S. I'll add an edit to my last post now so as other readers aren't led astray :) .
Last edited by PistolPatch on 18 Feb 2013, 06:16, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #23 made 12 years ago
by johnny_dove
Thanks pp. Will try listen to that pod cast tomorrow. Citric acid could be an option since I am planning to use a lot of cascadian citrus hops for next brew:grin: Agree with your basic assessment to keep additions to a minimum. Magnesium sounds like something that should not be exaggerared. Lactic acid is in yoghurt. Should be harmless in small amounts. They treat acidulated malt with lactobacillus so it contains lactic acid. Bob's newfound calculator estimates the equivalent percent of acidulated malt as compared to the added lactic acid. Some pils malt and lactic acid should be the same thing as the acidulated malt:grin:

Post #24 made 12 years ago
by BrickBrewHaus
If you're considering water adjustments, I would definitely recommend a pH meter or at the very least pH strips. How much acid you add is dependent upon your starting water and also your grain bill so you simply cannot listen to others suggestions. The only to know if you've added the correct amont o acid is to measure the resulting mash pH.

Clearer preboil wort

Post #25 made 12 years ago
by mirogster
BBH I'll second to that. Better to add a little less, than to be sorry later :)

My last weekend batch, with a help of Braukaiser's water calc, went really smooth. I was checking pH levels all the time, during all stages (premash, salt&acid additions, mash, sparge water). Almost all the time I was in a ballpark.
For final result, I have to wait few weeks. But on the paper, all went well :)
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