Trefoyl wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 1:20 am
Eric wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 11:04 am
Is it worth a read? Try it and see. Reading is always a more effective way of learning than writing without reading.
Thank you.
Of course it is necessary to read the right material, and that inevitably means also reading a vast amount of poor and imperfect offerings. That's not just limited to brewing or reading, just think of the vast volumes of rubbish music you've heard in your search for quality output.
Compare the experience recently offered in
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=83673 with that by Scott Janish in Chapter 4 on the subtopic Sulfate-to-chloride Ratio in The New IPA, also a current subject of interest in
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=83685 .
"If the water tastes good, you can brew with it." This was the advice I was given when I first started homebrewing. I thought it was great advice because I didn't have to think much about water as other than an ingredient, however, experience and research has told me otherwise. The biggest drawback from this line is that it fails to consider the removal of chlorine or chloramine, which is essential in preventing chlorophenol production (medicinal flavors) during fermentation. So if the water isn't a variable you want to worry about yet, at the very least, you should filter your water with a carbon filter to make sure you are removing the chlorine and chloramine, it's hard to make good beer otherwise. Only catalytic or surface-modified activated carbon can remove chloramine, standard activated carbon and carbon block do not.
So there you have it, so if that book was your go-to-guide, you would start brewing in fear of an ever present bogey-man unless you had the right filter. Not all of that book is as disadvantaging as the above example, but a page on the virtues of RO follows the above with a couple of dubious profiles for a Dry Irish Stout for comparison and then ....................
While using the ratio as a guide can be a good approach for formulating a recipe, the raw amounts of the minerals themselves are just as important. For example, a chloride to sulfate ratio of 30:10 and 300:100 are both 3:1 but would result in different different tasting beers.
So far, so good, but while the next sentence would be OK for Carling, is the "Coup de Grace" for beers like mine.
Generally, I like to stay under 200 ppm of each as to not impart a minerally taste to the beer.
Well, my beer in the earlier pictures was made with my tapwater adjusted to the following profile.....
Calcium 200 ppm, Magnesium 47.7 ppm, Sodium 33.1 ppm, Sulphate 417.6 ppm, Chloride 222.4 ppm, Alk. mash and sparge average, <20 ppm.
If Janish's claim was true, it would have a minerally taste. Did it?
Not all in the book goes against my understanding, it's like the curate's egg, good in parts. Also I can't dispute that outside my field of experience, just bear them in mind to compare with subsequent reading and findings. It must be said I didn't buy the book, it was a kind and unsolicited gift on publication by F00b4r and I will be forever grateful. I found it disappointing that newer generations could be confronted by fundamentals that were settled decades past and problems that never were despite all progress in British homebrewing since 1963.
Just while on the subject, my advice to new brewers would be to ignore water profiling until you are familiar with your kit and can brew a basic beer (not a hop monster or whipped cream strawberry and sardine stout) to a point where you remember when the taps should be open or closed together with how and when to sanitise all that needs to be. Meanwhile find out your water's profile and your starting point.
Without patience, life becomes difficult and the sooner it's finished, the better.