Water for a Gratzer...

[Brewedout]

Hi Everyone,

I'm going to make a Gratzer this weekend, has anyone made one? What water profile did you go with?

Thanks

[Peatbogbrewer]

Built a smoker to smoke wheat malt for my gratzer, my research showed that the polish grodziskie liquor was reasonably hard? Are you going for 100% smoked wheat or adding vienna etc?

[Brewedout]

Built a smoker to smoke wheat malt for my gratzer, my research showed that the polish grodziskie liquor was reasonably hard? Are you going for 100% smoked wheat or adding vienna etc?

100% oak smoked wheat

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[AdamR]

I've brewed this style of beer twice and I did nothing to my water as such.
I read somewhere that the original beer may have been soured.
The first time I brewed I did an overnight mash with 100% oak smoked wheat, which gave a bit of souring and amazingly clear wort for a wheat beer and no issues.
The second time I used 94.8% oak smoked wheat 5.2% acid malt with a 1 hour single infusion mash. I had a nightmare collecting the wort and ended up dumping out the grains into a BIAB bag.
Both beers tasted very similar to each other, but looked massively different. The first being only slighty hazy the second very murky.
I always do overnight mashing for wheat beers now, I think it makes for a better beer.

[Brewedout]

I've brewed this style of beer twice and I did nothing to my water as such.
I read somewhere that the original beer may have been soured.
The first time I brewed I did an overnight mash with 100% oak smoked wheat, which gave a bit of souring and amazingly clear wort for a wheat beer and no issues.
The second time I used 94.8% oak smoked wheat 5.2% acid malt with a 1 hour single infusion mash. I had a nightmare collecting the wort and ended up dumping out the grains into a BIAB bag.
Both beers tasted very similar to each other, but looked massively different. The first being only slighty hazy the second very murky.
I always do overnight mashing for wheat beers now, I think it makes for a better beer.

That's interesting. Was the wheat malt the same? I intend on using some husk to help with the drainage. How long did it take before it was ready to drink?

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[AdamR]

That's interesting. Was the wheat malt the same? I intend on using some husk to help with the drainage. How long did it take before it was ready to drink?

Yes, Weyermans I think.
How long? About a month? 2 weeks fermenting, 1 week crash cooling @1°C and a week carbing.

[Brewedout]

A month is perfect timing. I'm considering using eden falls to brew with as my water after treatment with crs will have higher levels of sulphate.

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[Peatbogbrewer]

I've brewed this style of beer twice and I did nothing to my water as such.
I read somewhere that the original beer may have been soured.
The first time I brewed I did an overnight mash with 100% oak smoked wheat, which gave a bit of souring and amazingly clear wort for a wheat beer and no issues.
The second time I used 94.8% oak smoked wheat 5.2% acid malt with a 1 hour single infusion mash. I had a nightmare collecting the wort and ended up dumping out the grains into a BIAB bag.
Both beers tasted very similar to each other, but looked massively different. The first being only slighty hazy the second very murky.
I always do overnight mashing for wheat beers now, I think it makes for a better beer.

What was you hop schedule AdamR?

[AdamR]

What was you hop schedule AdamR?

Lublin pellets, 3.5%AA. 23l batch.
40g @60mins
25g @15mins
25g @0mins

Resulting in about 21IBUs, which is probably too much hops for style.

[asd]

Brought to you by the power of Wikipedia

Ingredients[edit]
The grain used in Grodziskie is malted wheat. During the malting process, the wheat is dried in kilns that are heated by oak-burning furnaces. Instead of using the furnaces to heat air which is then used to dry the wheat, the hot smoke from the kilns is forced directly through the grain bed. The smoke dries the grain, and imparts a light color and an intense, pleasant, smoky flavor.[2][4][11] This process would not be possible in kilns that burn coal or coke as fuel because the soot in the smoke would cause the grain to become discolored and contribute undesirable harsh flavors.[11] The smoke from the malting process also adds chemical components that help preserve the beverage, giving it a long shelf life despite its low alcohol content.[12] There is a legend that in the 1950s, a box of Grodziskie was discovered buried in the sands of North Africa, left behind by German soldiers in World War II. The beer was opened and found to be as fresh as the day it was made.[13] The exact degree of smokiness that resulted from the oak kilning in historical times is not known.[9] In addition to wheat, there were periods when the beer also included malted barley in various proportions, but for most of its history, it was made entirely from wheat.[4]

Many of the distinctive features of Grodziskie result from the characteristics of the water that the breweries used to produce the beer. The water from one of the wells on Poznańska Street in Grodzisk was tested, and showed a sulfate ion concentration of 183 parts per million (ppm) and a chloride ion concentration of 81 ppm.[9] In addition, alkalinity (as calcium bicarbonate) was 350 ppm and the magnesium ion concentration was 34 ppm.[9] A beer brewed with this type of water would have had a higher than expected hoppiness due to the high alkalinity as well as the ratio of sulfate ions to chloride ions.[14] It would have resulted in a higher pH during the early stages of production, which would inhibit the efficiency of the natural enzymes that convert the starch in the grain to fermentable sugars during mashing, leading to a beer with higher residual sugars and lower average alcohol content.[14] Finally, water would have produced a beverage that tasted slightly sour or bitter, due to the high concentration of magnesium ions.[14]

Two unique strains of yeast were traditionally used; one highly flocculent strain that was responsible for most of the fermentation in the first few days, and the other, a powdery and less flocculant strain, that was slower and finished off the beer in the fermentation vats and in the bottles.[2][10] Until the end of the 19th century, the breweries that produced Grodziskie used a single strain of yeast that was characterized by low attenuation and early flocculation.[8] However, that strain was lost in the early 20th century. After World War II, yeast was imported from the Groterjan Brewery in Berlin.[9][15] That yeast was not well suited for producing Grodziskie and was frequently contaminated with spoilage organisms including Lactobacillus.[8] In the 1960s, the state-owned brewery was able to isolate and maintain its own varieties of yeast and yeast bank,[8] but only the highly-flocculant strain has been preserved to this day.[2] Without access to the actual yeast used historically, most modern recreations of Grodziskie typically use ale yeasts that do not contribute a significant amount of yeast character to the beer.[3]

Brewers typically used locally produced varieties of Polish hops such as Nowotomyski, but would occasionally substitute similar noble hops.[4] Historical sources indicate that around the end of the 19th century, breweries used 3 kilograms (6.6 lb) of hops for every 100 kilograms (220 lb) of wheat malt, but by the 1960s the hopping rate had decreased to 2.4 kilograms (5.3 lb) of hops per 100 kilograms (220 lb) of wheat malt.[9]

[AdamR]

@asd, interesting.
I thought I was overhopping, mine works out as 2.25kg hops per 100kg grain.