Next step in the evolution of my brewing

Water chemistry is intimidating at first, but so unbelievably easy to do. Just get Bru'n Water and learn how to use it, it's a cake walk and only adds maybe 5mins to your brew day measuring out your mineral additions and acid.

It also makes a huge difference in the final beer. You probably see/heard that a lot, but it is true. Quite a big change in my final beers once I start working with the water. Also, if not already, make sure you use campden tablets or other means of chlorine/chloramine removal for your water. Hugely important!

As far as yeast starters, every single liquid yeast beer I do gets a starter... Many times, a step starter to get to the proper pitch rates. I also do a lot of lagers, so I need a lot more yeast. But it's very easy to do! I also made my own yeast starter with a variable speed control CPU fan (USB) that I plug into a USB/wall outlet adapter and superglued a hard drive magnet on the hub of the fan. My 2L and 4L flasks have no issue at all getting a strong whirlpool for starters. Cost me all of maybe $15-20 or so total to make.

As far as efficiency, as long as you have been in the target mash pH range, you won't gain much of anything tweaking your water for high gravity beers. It's just the nature of the beast, the higher OG the lower efficiency as water can only hold so much sugar unless you want to boil for a few hours.

Good luck!

 

Yeah, like @invertalon said, the chemistry part is really simple once you get the hang of it. You can download Bru'n, use software or build your own. I made a spreadsheet that automatically calculates out my additions based on my target profile. Lots of sources for how much ppm you get for each gram of mineral (e.g. Table 17 in the Water book). I start with distilled water now so I don't have to worry about other stuff in my water.

You can definitely build a stirrer for cheap if you are handy.

I bought this one from amazon. It's got plenty of power. I think it came with a 1" bar. I purchased a bigger one (2" or 2.5")
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F0CTBA/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=

Water chemistry and yeast starters will both step up your homebrew game. Outside of fermentation temp management, they are probably the things that made the biggest difference for me.

 

Maybe outline your procedure you utilize for brewing here and others can help you evolve. It's often the places where we have become complacent that require the attention.

 

BrewCipher, @VikeMan's all inclusive brewing spreadsheet, includes water-chemistry calculations. You might want to check it out. Cheers!

 

Not sure I'm following you here . . . the only way I've ever seen two going at once is when there are two stir plates. About jugs; could be a problem here. Your stir bar must have an absolute flat surface, many jugs & bottles are rounded on the bottom which'll toss a stir bar. Suggest you spring for an Erlenmeyer flask (Amazon) . . . not expensive and your non-brewing friends will be in awe.

Unmentioned, but related to yeast health: keep a lookout for an oxygen tank. Good chance of finding a medical tank at flea market/garage sales. A type E can be had for under 40 bucks (often filled) and will last a typical brewer for years.

 

I would go with water chemistry. Why? Because that's my next step as well.

 

Starters lead to more healthy yeast, a pretty big deal for high gravity beers.

Lower than ideal efficiency can be addressed with finer crushes and or more grain.

I'd go with the stir plate and the starter if it was truly one or the other.

 

Still trying to get this down. Kind of overwhelming.

 

I'm always trying to convince people that it's not nearly as overwhelming as it seems. It's deceptively complicated, I guess. It really can be broken down into a handful of steps, each of which is almost trivially easy. I tried to do that here (please don't be put off by the length of the post, and you can find further advice from other forum members below).

If you are a driver, I would use this analogy: it's like interstate driving. It's scary at first because there is a lot going on and the cars are moving fast. But once you learn the basics of on-ramps, off-ramps, switching lanes, etc., it actually turns out to be one of the easiest kinds of driving. No stop signs, no turning lanes, no oncoming traffic. Everything you need to do on the interstate comes pretty automatically, and small adjustments (like bumping up your cruise control speed) can be made almost effortlessly. I can relax and enjoy driving on an interstate far more than I can on city streets.

I find water adjustments to be like that. Once you learn a few key concepts, the spreadsheet will do all the hard work for you (just as the car engineers and highway engineers have made interstate driving a piece of cake). Your input is limited to deciding how much chloride and sulfate you want and then making a few choices about how to achieve the right pH. That's about it. Relax and enjoy the scenery.

 

Nicely put.

 

Which improves your beer more depends on your starting point. If the trade off is yeast vs gravity (you suggested efficiency is what you hope to get from chemistry), yeast costs more than grain and yeast deficiency can mess up a batch. Hence I suggested going with the stir plate. However, if your water is too hard or otherwise unfit for brewing, you need to go there. Have you obtained a water report? If so, post it. Lots of folks here can advise you. If

 

Using camden tablets is the best thing you can do. My town switched from chlorine to chloramine, and my carbon filtering was rendered ineffective. Of course I had brewed four batches of beer before I tasted the first batch after bottling. I have quite a few bottles of band aid beer right now...

 

I don't disagree with this approach, but I'll just note that measuring pH is on the rigorous end of the spectrum when it comes to water chemistry, in my view. A brewer who knows the ions in his tap water and who uses one of the high-quality spreadsheets that are readily available will be able to make water adjustments that are very much within the ballpark, even though he won't know for sure that his mash pH is where the model says it will be. A brewer who additionally measures his mash pH may do even better, but my guess is that the incremental improvement is far less than the incremental improvement from the first step (using a spreadsheet). I would be curious how often the brewers on this forum feel it necessary or advisable to measure mash pH. Certainly I think a pH meter is not high on the list of equipment that a new brewer should acquire.

Bigger picture, I think the choice you've presented depends very much on (A) the type of beer you want to brew and (B) your tap (or well) water. A brewer who just wants to brew clean, straightforward beers can use US-05 or Nottingham or whatever with very little difficulty or expense. The incremental improvement from stir-plate starters of 1056 or whatever may be relatively small. For other styles of beer, there may not be good options among the dry yeasts that are available, and yeast management may be crucial to getting good results.

Water is the same way. I'm lucky to live in New York City, which has excellent, relatively soft water with no chloramines. If I didn't adjust my water at all, I could probably still make tasty beer. (Or to be more accurate: My beer would probably be unpalatable, but for reasons unrelated to water chemistry.) There are places where the tap water (or well water) is so bad for brewing that it would be quite difficult to make good beer without significant adjustments to the water (e.g. removing chlorine/chloramine, cutting with distilled or RO water, and so forth).

So it's all contextual. I agree with @SFACRKnight that chlorine/chloramine management is so easy and so important that every brewer should be brewing with water that is free of chlorine/chloramine. It's as easy as adding a campden tablet or (my preferred approach) a very small amount of vitamin C, which can be bought in powdered form in health food or nutritional stores. That's low-hanging fruit. But as I've tried to emphasize, mash pH, appropriate calcium for the yeast, and flavor ions are not that much further up the tree.