Next brew - soft water and yeast from bottles

[Chrissyr63]

hi all,

was my birthday recently and got the Graham Wheeler book as a pressies.
Having looked through I fancy the Fullers Porter recipe to do this weekend (have most of the ingredients).
Have done a few AG brews (starting with BIAB but have now got together a cooler box masher
and a Lidl jam maker to do the boiling) some good and some bad - this will be AG#10 so still learning.

I would like to try out some water treatment and maybe make a yeast starter from some Fullers
bottled beer (Tesco are doing 4 bottle of 1845 for £5 at the moment). Plan b is buy a Wyeast 1968 just in case.

Brewing this Sunday - is this enough time to get the yeast starter going? I was looking at dumping the dregs of
3 bottles into a mixture of 1lt water boiled with 100g dme (and cooled) with a bit of yeast nutrient in and then
into brew fridge set to 20c for a day or two - pitch all into the wort.

Then do I need any water treatment - I have the report from Southwest Water but can't seem to work out
what goes into the various caculators.
Is there a basic addition I can use that will add to the soft water there?
When I did the Seymour Citra Gold recipe I added some gypsum and this turned out a great tasting beer (thanks S).
Just do the same or do I need more for a porter?

Plan is set my fridge to 18c and leave for 2 weeks then chill to 5c and bottle and minikeg.

thanks for any advice in advance,
C

[mozza]

Get a Murphy's analysis, then download brew n water. Then after some taring your hair out you'll finally make it work! But in the mean time carry on with the gypsum additions should help at least

[killer]

As a general rule of thumb, the addition of Calcium Chloride is better than Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) for a stout. You could add a half teaspoon gypsum and a teaspoon of Calcium chloride. If you want to get into specifics for water treatment head over to that forum - though it's a minefield ! You could just try the basic suggestion I made and see how it goes.

As for your cultured dregs, it might be worth doing 2 steps, one at 300mL and then step up to a litre.

[Chrissyr63]

thanks for the replies

will get some calcium chloride then and try that - assume this goes into the boil as I did with the gypsum?

I did try and put the figures from the report into the calculator on here but the report seems to give different chemicals than what is needed ie report gives hardness from Ca but calc wants from CaCO3 (plus some others)? That is when I got confused - last chemistry I did was about 30 odd years ago!!!
Does the Murphy report give the figure that the beer calcs need?

I had the same problem from the report from Thames water that I tried to use - just seems to give details in different chemicals than the beer calcs seem to need! (Water there is very hard)

Re the yeast starter - when you say 300ml and up to 1lt is that just top up the 300ml with more wort after it has started (ie 'feed' it over a couple of days)? There are a few methods I read (some very complicated!) and just was trying to keep it as simple as possible.

C

[Matt12398]

As said upping the CaCl vs the CaSO4 will help to get the chloride to sulphate ratio balance right for a maltier style. With soft water though if you start chucking in loads of Calcium salts you're going to be lowering pH when you're going to be using dark malts which will lower it even further. You are going to need to counteract that with something that will push the pH back up like bicarbonate of soda (household variety from the supermarket works fine). In doing that though you need to be careful you're not pushing the sodium levels too high to impact on flavour. It's a careful balance which you want to get right as if you push the pH too low you'll have a horrible, tart beer that is only fit for the drain.

Be careful what advice you listen to because it's an area of a lot of confusion and it's hard enough to get your head around without being pushed in the wrong direction.

The people I've learned most from on this forum are Eric, Aleman, MABrungard, Mysterio, Orlando, DaveS and a few others I've forgotten about. Listen to their advice. They don't always agree with each other though.

Bottom line though is try not to add more than you have to.

[Rick_UK]

I have made that recipe a few times and also have very soft water. You need to add the salts to the mash not the boil to get the right mash ph. I find about half a teaspoon of gypsum plus equal amount of calcium chloride gets me to the magic ph of 5.2. TBH with a porter or stout you could probably leave the water treatment if your water is soft and it will be fine.

Re the yeast I have found a 300ml starter with 100g of dme is usually fine if cultured for at least 48hrs though stepping up to 1l would be better if you have time.

Rick