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Kolsch… water treatment?
Question:
Greetings, Gettin’ ready to do a Kolsch all grain (pale malt, vienna malt, wheat malt, Hallertauer, Tettnanger, Wyeast 1007), and all my research doesn’t point me to a particular water hardness/ph/etc. for this type of beer. My instinct says go with simulating Munich water like I do for an Alt or Bock.. soft, low in carbonates, etc.
Well, if you’re going to all the trouble to match the water, then my advice would be to match the ingredients also. Like pilsner malt as a base instead of pale ale, and a real Kolsch yeast. These things will make more difference than the water treatment.
Response:
Gettin’ ready to do a Kolsch all grain (pale malt, vienna malt, wheat malt, Hallertauer, Tettnanger, Wyeast 1007), and all my research doesn’t point me to a particular water hardness/ph/etc. for this type of beer. My instinct says go with simulating Munich water like I do for an Alt or Bock.. soft, low in carbonates, etc.
Was just poking around on the brewery site last night and came across a fairly extensive article in this months Brewing Techniques magazine devoted to the Kolsch style. I found it very informative. Go to the brewery index page and find lit or publications or whatever it is and then go to Brewing Techniques and it’s one of the two featured articles for this months issue. The other is for RIMS jobbers by our resident RIMS guru Dion Hollenbeck. JG — It’ll be a Kolsch day in hell….
Response:
I also have a triple beam balance and I will admit that using it to measure to a 100th of a gram is not very accurate. I wrote it to a 100th because thats what the water treatment program I use gave me. I am using BreWater which I got free from the internet. I can give you the URL when I get back to work on Monday if you like. When I first started using the program I spot checked some of its calculations manually and I was satasfied that it was accurate. I’ll do it again though, now you’ve got me interested. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – To treat 10 gallons of RO water I added: 5.00 g Epsom Salt 6.40 g Calcuim Carbonate (chalk) 4.50 g Sodium Chloride (salt) 2.05 g Calcium Chloride 1.75 g Gypsum Interesting….. The water treatment you describe is very close to what I use for my What kind of scale do you have that reads down to 100th’s of a gram? I want one! My triple beam only goes to 10th’s of a gram. Rounding your numbers up.. (i.e. 2.05 g Calcium chloride becomes 2.1 grams), and plugging your numbers into my own calculations yielded somewhat different results. In spite of the fact that I rounded UP a couple of ingredients, my results were consistently lower, (ppm) than yours. Here is what I came up with ION YOURS MINE Ca = 104 93 ppm SO4 = 86 78 ppm Mg = 15 13 ppm Na = 52 47 ppm Cl = 109 98 ppm CO3 = 152 101 ppm Did you use a calculator program such as the freeware "Water Treatment Calculator" or some brewing software’s built in calculator to arrive at your ppm count, or did you calculate these on paper? If the former is the case, which program did you use. I would like to take a look at as many of these calculators’ as I can for comparative analysis.
Bruce Wenzel Ventura, California
Response:
To treat 10 gallons of RO water I added: 5.00 g Epsom Salt 6.40 g Calcuim Carbonate (chalk) 4.50 g Sodium Chloride (salt) 2.05 g Calcium Chloride 1.75 g Gypsum
Interesting….. The water treatment you describe is very close to what I use for my What kind of scale do you have that reads down to 100th’s of a gram? I want one! My triple beam only goes to 10th’s of a gram. Rounding your numbers up.. (i.e. 2.05 g Calcium chloride becomes 2.1 grams), and plugging your numbers into my own calculations yielded somewhat different results. In spite of the fact that I rounded UP a couple of ingredients, my results were consistently lower, (ppm) than yours. Here is what I came up with ION YOURS MINE Ca = 104 93 ppm SO4 = 86 78 ppm Mg = 15 13 ppm Na = 52 47 ppm Cl = 109 98 ppm CO3 = 152 101 ppm Did you use a calculator program such as the freeware "Water Treatment Calculator" or some brewing software’s built in calculator to arrive at your ppm count, or did you calculate these on paper? If the former is the case, which program did you use. I would like to take a look at as many of these calculators’ as I can for comparative analysis. Robert A. 5 gallon "ball-lock" Kegs – NOW ONLY $15.00 (3 and 10 gallon also available) 12 gallon SS Boiling kettles – $55.00 (temp out of stock) See them at…. http://www.calweb.com/~robertac
Response:
Gettin’ ready to do a Kolsch all grain (pale malt, vienna malt, wheat malt, Hallertauer, Tettnanger, Wyeast 1007), and all my research doesn’t point me to a particular water hardness/ph/etc. for this type of beer. My instinct says go with simulating Munich water like I do for an Alt or Bock.. soft, low in carbonates, etc.
Brewing Techniques has published their K