Gypsum?

[Uncle Joshua]

Do you put a teaspoon of Gypsum in the mash and the boil? sorry I'm being a pain today.

[jimp2003]

I do, along with treating the water with CRS (I have very hard water).

[Jim]

The short (and unhelpful) answer is that it depends on your water.

A longer and better answer can be found here.

EDIT: The simplest way imo is just to treat all your brewing liquor.

[Invalid Stout]

I don't bother any more. I have very soft water.

[Wolfy]

I don't bother any more. I have very soft water.

That makes it even more important to add (the correct quantity of) brewing salts for the beer you are brewing.

[RichardG]

I do 25Ltr brew lengths and treat 40Ltrs of liquor. 1 camden tablet, CRS as necessary, and 1 teaspoon of gypsum in the mash and boil. I test the water with a Salifert kit to ascertain the amount of CRS required. Seems to work for me, though I'm sure it could be more sophisticated if I wanted to be (I don't!).

[weiht]

I don't bother any more. I have very soft water.

That makes it even more important to add (the correct quantity of) brewing salts for the beer you are brewing.

Seems like a lot of newer breweries around do not adjust their water much, even those with soft water said they add just a little gypsum thats all. The trend of hardening water to burton's specs is dying down... Whats are your thoughts? I do add 1-2 teaspooon of gypsum into the boil for a 6 gallon batch and i find it firms up the bitterness.

[Wolfy]

Seems like a lot of newer breweries around do not adjust their water much, even those with soft water said they add just a little gypsum thats all. The trend of hardening water to burton's specs is dying down... Whats are your thoughts? I do add 1-2 teaspooon of gypsum into the boil for a 6 gallon batch and i find it firms up the bitterness.

I was not suggesting one 'burtonize' their water without consideration of the type of beer being made.
Rather, that if your water is actually very soft (like here in Melbourne: 7.6Ca, 1.5Mg, 4.7Na, 1.3SO4, 7.6Cl, 11.5HCO3) without the addition of brewing salts (in appropriate quantity/balance for the beer being brewed) there can be a deficiency of important ions in the mash, kettle and fermentation which can lead to problems in the resulting beer. So that for very soft water it is more important to add salts than if your water already contains them.

Personally for most beers I add Calcium Chloride, how that is balanced with Calcium Sulfate (Gypsum) and other salts, depends on the type of beer being brewed.

[Aleman]

When brewing with soft water, while you can 'get away with' not doing any water treatment, you do run into problems occasionally with persistent hazes, muddled flavours, poor yeast fermentation, and sedimentation, etc. Generally this can be traced back to a lack of calcium in the liquor. 15 or 20 years ago I was dead keen on treating my water as per Grahams instructions in HTCG Or Dave Line in TBBOB, and produced good/great beers . . . . and then I stopped water treatment as I wasn't convinced of the benefits . . . . and my beers just stopped being as nice with lots of hazes, and 'poor' fermentations. About 5 years ago, I started treating my liquor again using 3 simple principles

1) Adjust the alkalinity to take into account the grist I was using (Dark Grist More alkalinity, Pale Grist Less Alkalinity)
2) Supplement the calcium to at least 100mg/l if not 150mg/l
3) Use gypsum for hoppy beers and calcium chloride for malty beers (or the mix of the two depending on how I wanted to bias the flavour profile)

Result . . . Beers are of the quality they should be and were before I stopped treating the water

[gregorach]

I'm very much with Wolfy and Aleman here... Soft water is great, because you can easily modify it suit whatever you're brewing, but having adequate calcium especially is very important. I use calcium sulphate, calcium chloride, and magnesium sulphate in more-or-less every brew, in varying proportions according to the style. Very dark beers will also get some calcium carbonate in the grist... I don't usually aim for a Burton profile unless I'm brewing a Pale Ale.

[RajBoab]

Dunc,

Fellow SCB here!
I made a stout recently with masses of dark/roasted grains. The PH of the mash was below 5. I'm assuming that the amount of dark grains brought the PH down so low because my water is so soft.

Do you use the Calcium carbonate to counteract this and raise the PH?

Stuart

[Aleman]

That's the idea behind Dunc's addition of calcium carbonate.

I actually don't use calcium carbonate for this purpose as it doesn't do that good a job (I suspect that while it's fine it acts as a deposition point for calcium phosphate, which is insoluble and prevents further dissolving of the calcium carbonate.

I prefer to use sodium bicarbonate (although I hate adding additional sodium) as it dissolves really easily so can be added to the mash liquor, I can get it in the supermarket (and transfer it to the household budget ), and I can measure (using a salifert kit) how much it has increased the alkalinity before mashing in (for stouts I try and go up to an alkalinity of 100-125mg/l)

[weiht]

I add gypsum to mash only when brewing portersnor stouts, but I'm thinking of trying to keep the roasted grains out of the mash for the 60mins and allow it to convert, and add the roasted grains and do a mash out at the same time, possibly rest a further 15 mins and recirculate before running off n sparge. Reason being I don't have to pay additional attention to mash ph, and after 60mins most conversion shld have alr taken place, n besides we aren't extracting any sugars from the roasted malts... I think it's gg to be less astringent as well

[gregorach]

Dunc,

Fellow SCB here!
I made a stout recently with masses of dark/roasted grains. The PH of the mash was below 5. I'm assuming that the amount of dark grains brought the PH down so low because my water is so soft.

Do you use the Calcium carbonate to counteract this and raise the PH?

Stuart

Yeah, for beers comprising large amounts of dark malts, I use calcium carbonate ("precipitated chalk") added to the grist. In spite of the difficulties Tony has mentioned, it seems to work OK. For example, the last stout I did (which won first in its class at the Dundee show the other week ) comprised 4 kg pale, 0.5 kg flaked barley, 0.25 kg roast barley, and 0.25kg chocolate malt. The water treatment for that was 14g CaCl, 3g CaSO4, 2.3g MgSO4, and 5.7g NaCl (not interested in arguing about this Tony! ) for 30L of liquor, and 1.6g CaCO3 mixed into the grist - all of which resulted in a mash pH of 5.20 and a mash / lauter efficiency of 71% (this was batch sparging in my old MT). Probably could have achieved a better efficiency if I wasn't limited by the size of my boiler...

For those following along at home, typical analysis for my water here is 0.39 meq alkalinity (19.5pp as CaCO3), 8ppm calcium, 6ppm magnesium, 3.6ppm sodium, 6ppm chloride, 8.25 ppm sulphate.

[critch]

right i use dwb....

on a comercial scale it makes loads of scense.149g per barrel...............

beleive me without the salts hops dont utilise as well............




well for my very soft water anyway...........