Help with my Oatmeal Stout

[Monkeybrew]

I've finally decided to brew an Oatmeal Stout for my next brew this coming Thursday, and thought that I would use Graham Wheelers stout water profile, but it seems to be suggesting quite a bit of CRS (0.4ml/L), which will surely bring my alkalinity down too low?

Here is my water



Any help at this late stage would be gratefully received.

Cheers

MB

[Eric]

I've finally decided to brew an Oatmeal Stout for my next brew this coming Thursday, and thought that I would use Graham Wheelers stout water profile, but it seems to be suggesting quite a bit of CRS (0.4ml/L), which will surely bring my alkalinity down too low?

Here is my water



Any help at this late stage would be gratefully received.

Cheers

MB

CRS is said to reduce alkalinity at the rate of 183mg CaCO3/ml, so first test your water's alkalinity to confirm it is the same as when the analysis was done.
0.4ml CRS per litre will reduce alkalinity by 73mg/l CaCO3 so if your water is unchanged since analysis it would reduced alkalinity to 85mg/l CaCO3.

I'd agree with that for such a beer as on March 31st I brewed a similar beer with alkalinity at 75mg/l CaCO3 which gave a mash pH of 5.4 after 30 minutes, first runnings at pH 5.07, at 12.5L runnings pH 5.17, 20L pH 5.27 and last runnings at pH 5.37, all within spec, maybe a bit on the low side, while at the same time it is likely I'd have more calcium present than you might be planning.

At the same time as reducing alkalinity, that amount of CRS will increase sulphate by about 35mg/l and chloride by 26mg/l which will still leave you liquor with a bias to sulphate. I assume Graham's calculator will advise calcium chloride flake be the major addition to correct that balance.

[Monkeybrew]

Hi Eric

Cheers for the reply.

Yeah as you can see the main addition that is called for is a fair bit of calcium chloride and a small amount of sodium chloride, but I've seen advice against chucking salt into a beer.

I am concious that CRS increases the sulphate level and that's the one thing that is out of balance in my water for GW'S stout profile.

What affect will this higher sulphate level have in the finished beer if any?

Here is what I've been looking at



Cheers

MB

[Eric]

I fear this ending in dispute, but here we go.
Your water is fine for making beer, don't let anyone (even if you are a supporter and send your hard earned cash) convince you otherwise. It has a level of alkalinity greater than is best for virtually every style of beer and so it is necessary to reduce that element. This can be done several ways but the easiest is with acid. You could boil and rack it off any sediment but it's trial and error as well as expensive and time taking and as it will reduce calcium content and not increase salts will allow a greater range of water styles than when using acids.
CRS is a mix of sulphuric and hydrochloric acids which reduces alkalinity while maintaining calcium, but it increases sulphate and chloride content without significant change of their ratio to one another. You could use a single acid for alkalinity reduction that at the same time would help provide the profile you require, hydrochloric in this particular case, but leave that for later as you are on the right tracks other than maybe being a little short of self confidence.

Different water profiles influence the finished beer from any given recipe. Get the alkalinity wrong and your beer will not be good when compared with another with it correct. Certain ions influence flavour perception, in pale beers sulphate will improve hopping while chloride will add to malt, body and sweetness, but a sulphate bias in dark beers not only reduces its maltiness but can cause harsher flavours to domiate.
Beer can be made with low levels of calcium, but too low and myriads of problems rear their ugly heads. If you are starting a beer that you want to clear quickly and taste good in a fortnight, then is not the time to find what the minimal calcium level is. 100 to 200 ppm is a safe range, it won't always suit the production of delicate beers or the taste of those raised on cold fizzy lager styles who have yet to come to terms with mindbending flavours, but it will help you avoid many problems and more quickly produce a better product and greater self satisfaction than obtainable by getting a specific figure on a pH meter.

The ball is in your court, it's your taste that counts, don't let anyone convince you differently. Good luck, you might be interested in the following..........
That beer I brewed at the end of March was done with my own tap water, hydrochloric acid and added salts to give..........
Calcium 176ppm, magnesium 26ppm, sodium 22ppm, sulphate 130ppm and chloride 312ppm.

[Monkeybrew]

Hi Eric

Many thanks for the comprehensive reply

I know I need to just give things a go sometimes, but my time is precious and I find it hard to fit in AG brewdays, so like to make sure that I do the best I can.

When I think about it, I brewed a London Porter last year and it came out pretty good, so I'll take confidence from that and hopefully my Oatmeal Stout will be even better.

Turns out my ingredients planning has been pretty bad, because my vial of WLP029 goes out of date sooner than I thought, so I'll now be brewing a Blonde Ale for SWMBO on Thursday now, but will still get the stout on at some point.

Thanks again.

MB

[DerbyshireNick]

I recently did an Oatmeal Stout (with black treacle) which has been a bit of a hit. It’s the first beer I have ever planned to rebrew near instantly…

I ended up doing it with an alkalinity of 90 mg/l.

One thing I say a lot is test, add CRS at 70-75% recommendation and re-test.

I have found that the 70-75% recommendation gets it bob on target. At least for me. Don’t do a 100% CRS recommendation in one hit, it's too blunter tool for that.

I have been working to alkalinity targets of 25 for pales, 70 for browns and 90 for blacks and that so far seems to be paying off.

[Eric]

I'm retired and time to brew still doesn't come easily.

Well good luck with that brew, you can't afford to waste such yeast, but just to add, that stout of mine was brewed from a White Labs vial that had been out of date for 7 months. 10 to 20% was used in a starter a week earlier. The wort was drained off on the brew day and a couple of litres of late runnings boiled down like fury for near and hour then quickly chilled to be poured off the break onto the yeast and shook. By the time it was pitched it was working nicely.

Don't get me wrong. Not long ago there was very little information available about water treatment for the likes of us. The internet changed that radically to a point where there is often too much and, as with other knowledge and opinion, it's now far from easy to known which to trust and therefore which way to turn.
The advice you mention against chucking salt into a beer is good, but I'm saddened to see it frequently used to denegrate beers made with high mineral content as many of the worlds great beers once were. Guinness is a particular example, made from either RO or very low mineral content water, which it is, today, has been since advertising became the most powerful sales tool for beer. Guinness didn't have a large tied estate like most big brewers did, so needed a quality product to break into that market, using moderately hard water from the fifth lock of the Grand Canal. When softer water was available in Dublin, Guinness would use it in their boilers, not for making their then world famous beer by reputation.
I suspect the profile for stout in Grahams calculator uses a profile not vastly different to that used by renowned stout brewers in their heydays and will say it won't just be chucking in salts, more a matter of chucking in the right amount of the right kind of salts.
Good luck when you do brew.