Help! Water Treatments left out

[Skittlebrau]

Hi all

I've just chilled today's brew down and am about to transfer to the FV, and I've realised I forgot to put my water treatments into the boil (the mash treatments did go in). Shall I dump them into the FV and drop the wort on top or am I better just leaving them out now?

Cheers for any advice

Tim

[Dave S]

Hi all

I've just chilled today's brew down and am about to transfer to the FV, and I've realised I forgot to put my water treatments into the boil (the mash treatments did go in). Shall I dump them into the FV and drop the wort on top or am I better just leaving them out now?

Cheers for any advice

Tim

The mash treatments are the more important. It would be interesting to find if adding them to the FV would have much if any effect. I think I'd probably leave them out. You still might get a very drinkable beer.

[Skittlebrau]

Cheers, I think the beer will certainly be good in any event. But looking at this, I think I might be better putting them in....

http://www.winning-homebrew.com/brewing-water.html

[Skittlebrau]

Put about 80% of them in. Figured that on balance the beer was more likely to benefit from this than be harmed by it. We'll soon find out if I was wrong!

[mark4newman]

Hi

You can always wait until the fermentation is done. Then pour a glass and taste. Depending on this, add very very small amounts, weighed out on a very accurate scale, of cal sulf or cal chloride. Then adjust the final taste.

Then you need to scale up this adj for the bAtch.

Caso4 will add bitterness
Calc will make it more rounded, and bring out the malt.

Ps, make sure the additions are dissolved before adding.

[Jymbo]

Hi

You can always wait until the fermentation is done. Then pour a glass and taste. Depending on this, add very very small amounts, weighed out on a very accurate scale, of cal sulf or cal chloride. Then adjust the final taste.

Then you need to scale up this adj for the bAtch.

Caso4 will add bitterness
Calc will make it more rounded, and bring out the malt.

Ps, make sure the additions are dissolved before adding.

Not sure about this - it was my impression that calcium chloride improved the malt flavour by assisting with conversion during the mash, and I'm pretty sure that the calcium sulphate helps absorb hop flavour into the wort during the boil, so I don't think it would help to add them after fermentation. This is the reason why you don't need to worry about water treatment (other than chlorine removal) when doing kits.

[Skittlebrau]

The water and the mash got treated. This story ends happily - I added about 80% of the treatments for the boil into the fermenter and poured the wort on top. The resulting beer is now in the KKBT, tasting great and clearing nicely.

[hopsinjoor]

I wonder if adding the treatments into the FV made any difference, or whether it would have been tasting great without the treatments. My first 10 AG brews were done without water treatment (as I hadn't heard about it then) and they weren't so bad for 'new brewer' beers.

I'm with Jymbo, I was lead to believe that they helped with conversions during the mash and boil stages by changing the ph and the properties of the waters. After that it would be like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted?

Aah well, I'm glad you got a great tasting ale.

[far9410]

Itll be fine, learning curve n all that

[mark4newman]

Hi

Brewing salts have two purposes

1 to help to get the mash ph right. However this stage had been left out so nothing could be done.

2 to bring out the malt or hop bitterness. This can be done at at anytime, and the is even a brewer in the USA who fine tunes then beer, by adding small amounts of sulphate or chloride to a glass of beer and then scaling up. However, the chorine side works better, as it dissolves much easier.

Please feel free to try this, but you will need good small weight scales.