So, close to a year since the last post. I’ve just been too lazy to post any recipes or sessions. The big news is I’ve upgraded to all electric and have moved to the basement, so I can finally brew year-round in comfort. The maiden voyage of the new system is tomorrow, and I’ll be conducting a water chemistry experiment by doing back-to-back sessions of the same beer. The first will be without any adjustment whatsoever aside from the usual 1ml/gal addition of lactic acid for mash and sparge. I’ve been doing that for ages, and ever since I started that my efficiency and flavor quality went way up. The problem with this method now is that I’m going to be doing full volume mashes. That totally throws off the pH, and it looks like it’s going to be way too high.
I bought the LaMotte water testing kit recently and discovered that the city’s water report is quite different from what I get out of the tap. I’m doing a bog-standard American Pale for this experiment, so I need to tweak a couple things to bring it in range for the second batch. A bit of gypsum and a pinch of canning salt, along with quite a bit of acid should bring it in range. I have to use a combination of lactic and phosphoric acids to avoid impacting the flavor. 10 ml of lactic acid and 61 ml of phosphoric acid will bring the pH to an estimated 5.32 according to Bru’un water. Fingers crossed…
I’ll post the recipe tomorrow along with the session notes.