So, I scored this free 25lb bag of Desiccated Coconut and would like to use it to make a coconut bomb imperial stout. I've brewed with lots of coconut, but always fresh. If I was to use some of this in the mash, would it make an impact on the yeast? I know camden tablets are used for brew water are are basically potassium metabisulfite right? So I assume this wouldn't be an issue? I'll be using more of the coconut in secondary well after fermentation is complete, just curious if it will cause any fermentation issues if I use it in the mash, or even at flame out? (which would be awesome but I'm guessing this would cause issues)
I should think that the issue would be in the quantity of sodium metabisulfite, and that seems to be an unknown. Much of it will boil-off, however.
Sorta what I was thinking, but hate to screw up a batch. Though I am really curious to see how mashing Coconut would turn out...
why do you think it will boil off? Meta reacts with free chlorine and ends up as sulfate, which stays in the water. If its un-reacted why would it boil off?
Couldn't you contact the producers of it and ask? I'd have thought they'd be obliged to tell you how much sulfite is in it
Any excess metabite winds up as potassium or sodium plus sulfur dioxide in the beer. The L.D. Carlson tablets are potassium metabisulfite, which is about 35% potassium and about 55% sulfur dioxide (the rest is oxygen). Because these tablets weigh 695 mg, this means an extra tablet (that is, one that has no chlorine or chloramine to react with) would leave 243 mg (3.2 mg/L in 20 gallons) of extra potassium and 382 mg (5 mg/L in 20 gallons) of sulfur dioxide. The sulfur dioxide will either reduce something in the mash to a reductone (a reduced-state organic substance thought to prevent staling reactions in beer) and become sulfate in the process, or be driven off as a gas during the boil. If it all converted to sulfate, 1 tablet in 20 gallons would increase sulfate by about 9 mg/L. As metabite, in either form, is a basic salt, excess metabite will increase the alkalinity of the water slightly. http://morebeer.com/articles/removing_chloramines_from_water I suppose it would depend on how much became sulfate...but I haven't been able to discover a way of predicting what the sulfur dioxide will do. As in, I haven't found a correlation to grist and how it will react.
