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You are here: Home --> Forum Home --> Brewing Forum --> Brewing Discussion --> Bru'n Water 3.0 Release?

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mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


Using calcium bearing minerals to move mash pH during the mash period is risky. We know fairly well where it should go when the mash is stabilized, but the effects are not linear, varying speeds of reaction and adsorbtion. You would be better served using a liquid acid to adjust mash pH down if the mineral additions aren't adequate. BWS models evenly splitting the mineral additions between the Mash and Sparge to allow only the necessary minerals (and perhaps a little acid or alkali) to tweak the pH to a good position. The addition to the sparge naturally lowers the pH and helps to prevent the rise of the mash pH during the period of sparging where the buffer capacity of the mash bed is exhausted. Acidifying sparge water with acid has the same, but more profound and reliable effect. If your sparge water alkalinity is < 20 ppm (DI or RO), you can simply add the minerals to the boil. Both the mash and sparge volumes are also convenient to ensure that the minerals are completely saturated and dissolved, rather than precipitate out.

Without the minerals, using DI or RO water, mash pH will most often be elevated in pale beers, which can lead to astringency. Liquid acid can be utilized, but you will use more lactic or phosphoric than you will if the mash water is mineralized. A soft BoPils (very low mineralization) will require more lactic or aciduated malt to reach 5.3/5.4 than a Dortmunder with high levels of mineralization. The delta can be 0.4 units or higher.

By moving residual minerals to the sparge or kettle (and not all of it in the mash), you are using only those minerals beneficial to strike your mash pH, utilizing the minimal amounts of acid or alkali. This is the same principle that dictates that you should not use both acid and alkali in the mash - as it is counterproductive to pH and creates excess residual ions that follow into the finished beer. In addition, you are providing some co-factors that support enzyme stability and activity, although the malt will usually provide the sufficient mineral levels.

Minerals added to the kettle, of course, only affect kettle/boil pH and thus affect protein break formation and hop utilization during boil - both are functions of temperature and pH and calcium levels. How this translates into the fermenter is less well understood - most of the papers on the topic are scaled to macro breweries. Yeast will expend energy preparing their environment by producing acid, allegedly the further from their preferred pH, the more flavor compounds can be created - but more nutrient reserves used to prepare. Both can have an effect on the fermentation process, but I haven't seen clear data that gives a reasonable expectation of results - and clearly this would be yeast strain dependent - and dependent on other factors such as available O2 and FAN.

If you want an example of pH influence on the production of hot break, at about 30 minutes into a boil, start to add drops of lactic acid into the kettle. Wait a few seconds before each drop. At some point you will push your wort to 5.1 which seems to be a magical value to create dramatically large fluffy break in just a few seconds. Overshoot or undershoot by more than 0.05 units and the break will be small (but plentiful). Remember that higher boil pH increases hop utilization (isomerization of AA) where lower pH will reduce it but considerably reduce protein and phytin levels into the fermenter. How this translates into the finish beer at homebrewing levels is debatable - but a fun science experiment.




Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by mchrispen

homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


So, riddle me this... does it actually matter if you get a big, fluffy break?  I'm a kettle dumper, it all goes into the fermentor. 



Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


I think Marshall started to answer that with his test. I don't believe it makes all that much difference on our scale. It mattered a lot when I was chilling with my plate chiller - that stuff also helps to floc out hop material and trap it, but blocked up the plate chiller immediately if it got into the racking - not an issue for me any more.

I only expect big fluffy break when I am brewing a saison or possibly a light pilsner or brewing with unusually high protein in my malt... and usually just let the mash pH ride the usual drop in the kettle. That test does illustrate the strong influence pH in brewing can have in the process...

There is a lot of research that points to higher levels of stability and potential of a wider biological path for souring bacteria in wort with break material (particularly hot break which takes other unwanted substances like tannins along). Certainly would be very important in giga-barrel manufacturing - and true whirlpooling in a brewery would remove the large percent of that, along with the spent hops. Whirlpooling combined with an early trub pull in a very tall cylindro-conical tank would minimize those particular proteins. Very little is needed for yeast nutrient. I should add, most of the articles I have read are for German lager brewing - haven't seen much referencing ale production.

Again, I cannot really tell any harm or benefit of break materials - other than the cool factor of egg-drop soup looking wort. It drops out of suspension pretty quickly during fermentation.




Posted 34 days ago.

chino_brews
Charter Member
Eden Prairie, MN
301 Posts


"does it actually matter if you get a big, fluffy break?  I'm a kettle dumper, it all goes into the fermentor."

A couple hypotheses:

(1) In the mid-1990s, the hypothesis was that hot break was bad for fermentation, while cold break had potential benefits for fermentation -- there is no research refuting this to my knowledge, and if you ascribe to this hypothesis than you would want to maximize hot break, somehow separate the hot break (or all of the trub) and only run the clean wort (and perhaps some or all of the cold break) into the fermentor.

(2) The idea behind getting a good hot break is to cause proteins to fall out of solution. If you don't get these proteins out of solution during the to break, they may stay in solution until packaging, and you may end up with chill haze or an unstable beer.




Posted 34 days ago.

homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


I'm familiar with both of those hypothesis.  And for what it's worth, I often get a nice hot break... but I've never made an issue to strain it out of the wort.  As for dropping hot break, but keeping the cold?  Gee, that sounds like a lot of work...

I usually have very clear beer, and now that I've become a gelatin convert, fussing over break material seems utterly moot. 

Unless I'm missing something...





Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


Yeah Olan,

The books and papers typically cite and chart in hectoliters PPM of 3-4 specific protein chains... all which are in solution and precipitating as break. Without the gravity (weight) and pressure in our little fermenters - I just don't think it is an issue at all. Interesting purely from my perspective - I am dumb enough to try to mirror pro breweries for personal reasons. It is difficult for me to put that stuff into the fermenter, but I have been much less worried about it of late.

I also suspect that some of the suspended break, krausen and yeast flocs help clear the beer - more negatively charged particles, clumped by gelatin should help to clear the beer more completely - and possibly faster.

If you are using an immersion chiller - then the cold break forms in the kettle anyway - some of mine will filter out with the false bottom in my kettle - or it collects with the hops in a whirlpool. With an external counterflow chiller, break forms immediately when the temperature drops dramatically and hopefully flows on out to the fermenter. I dump trub after 1 week fermentation usually - it is generally right there with the thick layer of dead yeast... again - just because I can - and like to harvest clean yeast after cold crashing.




Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by mchrispen

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts


| Again, I cannot really tell any harm or benefit of break materials -
other than the cool factor of egg-drop soup looking wort. It drops out
of suspension pretty quickly during fermentation.

Trub helps the fermentation. It contains the Zinc and long tail fatty acids that fall out during mashing and boiling. All kind of matter in the fermenting young beer helps releasing the CO2 from it by better bubble formation. CO2 hinders yeast. All the trub has no negative influence on the resulting beer. Extreme clear worts can have a negative influence on yeast performance.


mediatum.ub.tum.de/doc/619244/619244.pdf Chaper 6 has the English Conclusion, for who doesn't read German. Chapter 9 has several full text English scientific publications.




Posted 34 days ago.

uberg33k
Charter Member
The Internet
314 Posts


So many unusual sources.  Do you happen to have any studies on the use of invert sugars in brewing?



Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


Yeah interesting read... counters a good deal of Narsiss and DeClerk, which are aging quite a bit. I really wish I took German, didn't think I would ever need it. Some of the English translations of those books have significant errors.

So it sounds like I need to add Weihenstaphan to my reference material. I wonder how much of this material is covered in the Siebel courses.




Posted 34 days ago.

homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


The more I converse with you guys, the less intelligent I feel.  :D



Posted 34 days ago.

blur_yo_face
Houston, Tx
161 Posts


haha, I can sympathize with that..



Posted 34 days ago.

mchrispen
Bastrop, TX
485 Posts


Bah... I am out of my water with most of this - but like the references, and try to distill the conclusion in a practical application way. Finding new research (Thank you Ingoogni) is helpful when many of the books date back to the 50's and 60's and are either explicitly about German brewing or old Coors/Miller or ABV research.

I am planning to take the Siebol Master Brewing classes as soon as I can secure the time and justify the costs, and will likely have to take some JuCo classes for pre-requisit as my degree was in Fine Arts. You can interpret where this heads at some point :)




Posted 34 days ago.

uberg33k
Charter Member
The Internet
314 Posts


>You can interpret where this heads at some point :)

To a course on spelling?  S-i-e-b-e-l

Ribbing aside, don't waste your money.  The couple of dudes I've met that went through it don't impress me at all.  Figure out who is making beer the way you want to make it and go work for them for a while.




Posted 34 days ago.

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts


On most of the German research material "some German" won't help, this is the hardcore three pages per sentence academic German. There are several very interesting papers I didn't finish because of this. The dissertations are very detailed and somtimes cover such narrow fields that I don't even understand the titles. I doubt much of this is taught at Siebel even though they work together with the Doemens Institute in Muenchen.

@Uberg33k
Now sugars, that's something. The fifth and very underrated element of brewing. Very little to be found on that, I only have an old Dutch book on paistry(?) making that tells a bit more on the making and qualities of different inverts and caramels, nothing in depth though and certainly nothing on how yeast deals with it. The Journal of the Institute of Brewing has mainly older and ancient articles on brewing sugars.






Posted 34 days ago.

uberg33k
Charter Member
The Internet
314 Posts


Hey, I wouldn't cry if you posted some of the old Dutch invert and caramel recipes!

I started digging around in that Journal and I've already found some good stuff...




Posted 34 days ago.

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