Easy upgrades to improve beer.

John Palmer can.... www.howtobrew.com

 

Wort chiller- cool quickly, reduce chill haze
Full volume boils- consistent hop utilization
Gelatin finings during cold crashing- clarity
Ferm temp control- obviously a decent $ investment for a fridge/freezer w/temp control, a swamp cooler worked for me before I got my freezer.
Yeast pitching rates- healthy pitch= better beer
Campden- get that chlorine out of your water!

 

Hard to know exactly what you meant here, but the pH of your water isn't directly relevant... the pH of your mash is. And that will depend on your water's alkalinity (related to the water's pH, but different), on the grains used, how much calcium/magnesium is in (or added to) the water, etc. (Calcium and Magnesium reduce the pH by reacting with phosphates from the malt and releasing protons.)

Point being...there's no pH target for the water itself that would be meaningful.

 

I agree with VikeMan above. I'll piggyback and and my two cents. Rather than using gypsum to lower your mash pH, which alters the overall mineral content (to a potentially undesirable rate depending on beer style), I personally use acidulated malt. I use this easy online calculator (http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/) to determine how much acid malt based on water/grist info to dial in my target pH.

 

I think you have a lot of the right ideas but there are two points to make

Irish Moss is great in theory. if it makes you feel better using it, go ahead. cheap and easy. but you don't need it as it is not very effective and you won't miss it. in fact clarifiers are over rated. gelatin when you keg if you like.

don't screw with your water. not yet anyway. the only thing you want to do is remove chlorine or chloramine. read up on campden tabs, or use a filter or buy chlorine free water at a store. attempting to adjust your water profile is going to cause more problems than it solves right now.

I personally believe the single biggest improvement that can be made, once the technique is fairly sorted, is to complete full wort boils. it will make your beer go from tasting like homebrew to tasting like good beer you bought. that's 3 points...
Cheers.

 

Do you have the book Homebrewing by Al Korzonas? If so, you might want to re-read pages 104-105. Al Korzonas conducted experiments on using Irish Moss to provide clearer beers and what are the optimum amounts to use.

Cheers!

 

Irish moss is very effective in more than just theory, not sure what you are basing your opinion on, but after brewing for around 20 years and seeing the clarity of my brews before I used Irish Moss compared to after using Irish Moss, it is OBVIOUS how effective it is!!! You have to cold crash the fermenter to see the effects, but it is like night and day the clarity difference. It is not a placebo nor a theory...there are tons of Irish Moss users that will agree on its clarity effect!!!

 

I don't disagree that irish moss can clear beer, only that it is not needed.

it is also not particularly effective, not compared to other clarifiers. it is my opinion that it is not needed - but most homebrewers seem to enjoy their beer just fine even with a little haze. beer drops bright when kept cold. irish moss has zero necessity in a home brewery. zip. ok, perhaps if you plan to enter your beer in a competition. in which case you would be better served using a different clarifying agent. so perhaps, zero necessity. I used irish moss for a long while starting in the early 90s.

my advice is simply that when thinking of things that can be done to make good beer or better beer as is our topic here, irish moss is way down on the list and my personal advise is it should not even be a consideration. (I add that irish moss does not improve the taste of beer either, which is what the op is looking to do. but that is really just one more reason to forget irish moss.)
Cheers.

 

Jeff, if you find a rating for each of your malts PPG(potential sugar points per gallon) you should be able to find out how you're doing with your efficiency. It's points earned divided by total points possible.

Batch sparging is usually a little less efficient than fly sparging, but both are very acceptable on a homebrew scale. More important than getting 90% efficiency is trying to get consistent efficiency so that you can predict how to make a recipe. If you get 70%, that's fine, so long as you know that you're going to get 70%. Most recipes are cauculated for about 75% efficiency, and you can add or subtract according to your setup.

Efficiency usually drops a little with big beers, but you're usually using half a sack+ grain for those anyway.

 

In general, I've found that pre-boil practices and equipment made the process of brewing easier, while post-boil practices and equipment made the beer better. The exception of course is water treatment.

 

Start a new thread when you're ready and we'll probably give you five or six responses within an hour.

 

Temperature control would be my focus if I were you. Mash temp, rapid chilling, and most important fermentation control. Ice/water really isn't an effective way unless you have all day every day to just sit and monitor the ice bath temp.

 

I feel as though this illustrates a point I've made before: if you try to be 100% rigorous about water chemistry, it becomes too intimidating for beginners. But it is truly not that difficult to make reasonable adjustments to your water. Here is the summary I wrote. It really is as simple as downloading a free spreadsheet (there are a ton out there), inputting your water report, inputting your grain bill, and then making a few simple adjustments to get your pH, calcium, and flavor ions into the appropriate ranges. I know it sounds difficult, but except in somewhat rare circumstances, it is actually quite straightforward. I use NYC tapwater, and I find that it's as simple as adding a small amount of vitamin C, a small amount of calcium chloride, and a small amount of calcium sulfate (depending on the style). I realize NYC water is unusually good, but unless your water is terrible you should be able to do okay. (And if your water is terrible, just use distilled water with salts added.)

All of that said, if you are brewing with extract, then just use soft or distilled water.

And I agree with what @rocdoc1 said, temperature control during fermentation is a huge key. (But note that it really only matters for the first several days, once active fermentation is mostly over, a much wider temperature range is tolerable.)

 

My opinion if you are an extract, all grain, partial boiler, etc. the most important things to focus on regardless of what type of brewer you are is using pure oxygen, yeast starters, and fermentation control.

 

Turkey pan for open fermentations and rat infested shed with apples for brewing pseudo lambics, can't go wrong with either.

In all seriousness, a way of controlling your fermentation temps (keezer/fridge; also allows you to cold crash), a stir plate and flask for starters, and oxygenation are hugely important, plus a pH meter for measuring mash and beer pH are also very helpful.

For clearing, Biofine works incredibly well and is my clarification method of choice.

If you're an extract brewer, go to full boils. Huge difference in quality in full vs. partial boils.

 

Temp control. I noticed a huge increase in quality even after going back to extract due to time constraints at home once I bought a temp controller. Best $50 I ever spent homebrew wise.

 

I see a lot of good ideas. Personally I go by the "relax, don't worry, etc"
From my experiences, and advice from a lot of other brewers, if your water tastes good out of the faucet, it's probably good to brew with. If you taste or smell chlorine, minerals, etc, then you will need to treat it.
ALmost all towns have and send out a water quality report a couple times a year, giving general amounts of minerals and so forth in the water.
You can also have your taps analyzed, I know Home Depot and Lowes offer it, and I'm sure plenty of other organizaztions.
For me, the two things that made my beer far beer very quickly are yeast pitching rates and temp control.
I generally will do a 1-qt starter a few days ahead of time, and this works very well in my beers, generally SG is under 1.070 or so. If I was making a bigger beer, pushing 1.090 or 1.100, I would do a bigger starter.
Keeping track of fermemtation, and keeping ambient to low - mid 60s will keep most beers (ales) in optimal range for fermentation. Also, not pushing the beer to be done - it's ready when the yeast say so, and they can't read calendars. I don't check my gravities for 2 and a half weeks after brewday, and plan to bottle after 3 weeks. Again, if it's not ready, I push that back.
Cooling is a nice thing - first by saving time by having a chiller, and also to get it down to ferment temps quickly will reduce the opportunity for infection, and also aid in clarity later.
Full boil obviously will also help things out.

 

KISS it.