I'm brewing from an Austin Homebrew extract kit, and it came with some gypsum. I thought gypsum was only for modifying water chemistry, but there seems to be some other schools of thought around. So: What does it affect? When/how should it be added? How much should be added?
I'm using gypsum for the first time in an IPA I will be brewing in a few days. Today I was making the starter and thought: Since it's a hopped starter, why not add a pinch of gypsum? In the end I used PDME and yeast nutrient along with 2g Columbus hops and a tiny pinch of gypsum. As I usually do with anything I brew, I drew a very small sample to smell and taste it. When I tried …
I have found resources that both advocate and highly advise against this practice. We recently brewed a IIPA (Bear Flavored's Heady Topper clone) that has 3lbs of hops, plus hop extract in 14 gallons. We didn't add any gypsum to our 4ppm sulfate water. I want to make this the best beer possible. I tried adding untreated gypsum to a prior IIPA (in the glass) and wasn't thrilled with the results. Questions: -Why does adding gypsum to the strike water/mash …
I have city water at my house which our Regional Water Authority states has a Hardness of 112.10 mg/l. I would like to get this down by 62 points, but not sure what the best way to do this without bittering the water and adding salts to give the beer an off flavor. I am newish all grain brewer and this is for a double IPA recipe. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Possible Duplicate: How can I put minerals back into distilled or reverse osmosis water? This weekend I'll be brewing a recipe from Mitch Steele's 'IPA' book. The recipe has a very exact water profile, so I decided to use RO water and build the water with salts. The question is, when do I add these salts? I can add them to the mash water. I can add them to the sparge water. I can add them to the boil kettle. …
I am about to brew a clone recipe of Dogfish Head's 60 minute IPA and I was wondering if I should do some water treatment on it. I've heard of people adding gypsum to their water to achieve a dryer flavor and I think I read something about it helping hop utilization. I haven't done any water treatment before, and I usually just use straight tapwater. Would it be a good idea to do some water treatment for this beer? …