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Published: 1/3/12
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Beer Making
Would you please enlighten me on
brewing with softened water?
Question?
Would you please enlighten me on brewing with softened water? Also, how much salt does a softener add to 5 gallons of liquor? Should I still add some amount of salt when called for in a recipe? I have well water and brew all-grain. I have brewed with a variety of waters and am left unclear by any material I have ever read regarding use of water softeners.
Thanks,
********
Water is said to possess "hardness" when it contains ions of calcium and/or magnesium. I have never really understood the origins of this term, since hard water feels as soft as, well, soft water. Hardness is divided into two categories; permanent and temporary hardness. The latter type can be removed when water containing calcium or magnesium ions and carbonate ions is boiled. When heated the calcium and magnesium ions react with carbonate ions to form calcium or magnesium carbonate, also called scale. This scale is frequently seen on tea pots and water faucets in homes with hard water. Permanent hardness is the amount of calcium and magnesium that remains in water after boiling. It is possible for a water sample to contain both temporary and permanent hardness.
Water softeners work by replacing calcium and magnesium ions in water with sodium. Two atoms of sodium are added for every atom of calcium or magnesium removed from the water. This means that if your well water has 100 ppm (mg/L) of calcium and 20 ppm of magnesium that the softened water will contain a whopping 240 ppm of sodium. As far as brewing water is concerned, sodium adds palate fullness and sweetness up to about 100 ppm. At higher concentrations, sodium gives beer a salty flavor.
The real problem with using softened water for brewing is that most homes equipped with water softeners have harder than average water. Thus, the water produced by the softener is in turn very high in sodium. For this reason softened water is often only used for utility water (water for showers, toilets, washing machines and the like). Water piped to sink faucets bypasses the softener. The above example of 100 ppm calcium and 20 ppm magnesium would most likely not warrant a home water softener.
Let’s assume that you do not have abnormally hard water, but simply have a softener. As long as the sodium does not lend a salty flavor to your water or beer you can use it for brewing. The "salts" listed in most recipes are calcium sulfate and/or calcium chloride. You certainly would want to add these since calcium is required for pH adjustment in the mash, is a co-factor for alpha-amylase, aids in trub formation and also helps yeast cells flocculate at the end of fermentation.
If you actually did use softened water for brewing as described above this is what happens. 1) You remove calcium and magnesium and replace it with sodium. 2) You add calcium back to the water because calcium is important for brewing.
In my opinion, this seems like a round-about way to add sodium! Most breweries were historically located near good wells and it might be your signature touch to simply use your well water as is and not to worry much about water softeners.
The more likely case is that you have a water softener because you have hard water. I would not recommend using softened water from well water that is indeed hard. Homes with hard water are easy to spot because of white mineral deposits near water taps. Unfortunately, most hard waters in North America come from limestone aquifers and limestone is calcium carbonate. The only beer really well-suited to these waters are dark ales and lagers, for example porter, stout and dunkel. The preferred hard water type for brewing lighter colored beers, like pale ale, is hard water from a gypseous aquifer — gypsum is calcium sulfate.
Water may appear to be clear and pure but it contains a lot of confusing cloudy, details when examined at the atomic level. I am a strong advocate of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach when it comes to water. I either prefer using the local water supply as is, with chlorine removed with a charcoal filter when applicable. Alternately, you can use de-ionized water or distilled water from the supermaket and add various salts to mold the water into the type needed for the particular task. If it is possible, get an analysis of your well water and determine what type of water you have. Based on this information you can make a more calculated approach to water treatment. Steve Parkes and Don Million offer more detailed information on adjusting brewing water in the January-February 2002 issue of BYO.
It was suggested that adding sodium metabisulfite
to the water would clear the chloramine.
Question?
I recently moved to a city that uses chloramine in the water supply. Looking for suggestions in removing these chloramines from my brewing water, I posted a question to an online brewing board. It was suggested that adding sodium metabisulfite to the water would clear the beer of this compound. Is this true? How does it work and what would be an approximate amount to add per gallon?
*********
Portland, Oregon
This is an interesting question and I did some digging to come up with a good answer for you. Dechlorination is important to brewers for flavor reasons. Compounds called chlorophenols are formed when beer interacts with chlorine and these compounds have a fairy unpleasant aroma. Dechlori-nation is also important to municipal water authorities in the event that chlorinated water needs to be discharged into the environment.
Although many reducing agents can be used to dechlorinate water, the ones that are most accessible to homebrewers are sodium metabisulfite or its cousin, potassium metabisulfite (commonly found in the Campden tablets used by winemakers). These compounds will remove chlorine from both sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and chloramine treated waters. The reaction converts chlorine into chloride and the sulfite is converted to sulfate. Chloride has no affect on aroma, is found in most water and is added by many brewers in the form of calcium chloride. Likewise, sulfate is a normal constituent of water and is added in the form of calcium sulfate by brewers. When this reaction occurs with chloramines, there are also ammonium ions released into the water. Again, this is no big deal because ammonium ions are found in a brewers mash and come from the malt. Keep in mind, we are talking about very low concentrations of all of these reaction products due to the low concentrations of chlorine and metabisulfite involved in the reaction.
Although chlorinated water has a strong and easily identifiable aroma, the concentration of free chlorine is usually less than two parts per million. The dechlorination reaction requires 1.47 mg of sodium metabisulfite to reduce 1 mg of free chlorine. In practice, this ratio is increased two–three fold. In easy to use terms, a 1/2-ounce Campden tablet can be used to dechlorinate 20 gallons of water. This reaction occurs very rapidly and all you really need to do is dissolve the metabisulfite in your water, let it sit for a minute or two and you are finished with the dechlorination process.
Many brewers boil water prior to use to drive chlorine out of the water. The boiling method works very well with water chlorinated with hypochlorite, but is less effective at removing chloramine. The metabisulfite method is fast acting, easy to perform and very effective.
Wine Making
Second Runs to Get More from Your Grapes:
Techniques
As home winemakers, there’s nothing like adding a new trick to our repertoire. Anything that makes our wine a little better is definitely a good thing. For those reasons, you should explore the trick of making "second run" wines. This is the art of drawing as much color and flavor off the grape skins as possible, even after the press is over.
Don’t let the elusive name "second run," or any negative things you may have heard about it, scare you away. This is legitimate winemaking. Second runs have been used around the world throughout the history of winemaking.
There’s nothing mysterious about the second run. It starts with the initial press, during which you gather the best fermentable juice from your fruit. You get as much as you can, eventually calling it quits and (hopefully) congratulating yourself on a solid yield. But there’s plenty of juice, color and flavor still trapped in those skins. How do you get it?
A "second run" is the answer. You do this by making some additions to your must before a second press. Or, for the purist, there is another technique that makes a second press unnecessary.
Making "second runs" is something you can do every time you put together a batch. This works for red or white wines, with high success rates for almost any style. There is, however, enough downside potential to scare many winemakers away. Be aware that squeezing your must for every ounce of flavor and color means you will extract everything from your grapes. In other words, you will get both the good and the bad, including extra tannins. And the "second run" juice is guaranteed to be of poorer quality than the first. So why bother?
For some home winemakers, the answer involves economics. Grapes come at a premium; we all know that. Getting 100 pounds of grapes shipped directly to your door from California might cost $150 or more. Whether you pick them yourself or buy them from your favorite distributor, you’ll want to squeeze every drop out of that hard-sought fruit.
But mastering the second press will also make you a better winemaker. You’ll learn to increase production without sacrificing quality. It’ll also teach you more about managing different runs of juice, about blending and about fine-tuning the taste of your post-fermentation wine.
How to Make a "Second Run" Wine
We start with your regular collection of grapes, red or white, and the first press. Everything is done normally, though if you are planning on doing a "second run" now is the time to decide. This will help you determine when to stop the first press.
The best rule of thumb is to quit the first press when the juice starts to taste tannic (dry and slightly bitter). Test an occasional sample of the juice as you press, look for subtle changes in quality, and stop before you overwhelm your batch of "first run" juice with bitterness and other displeasing flavors. With this method your yield might seem somewhat low, but you will retain your juice’s integrity. You will also save the less desirable juice for the "second run."
To conduct the "second run" you will need sugar, water, yeast energizer (nutrient high in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous) and tartaric acid. These will be added to the freshly crushed grapes after the first run. As a general guideline, I add the following for every two gallons of juice I extracted during the first pressing:
1 gallon of cold water
2 pounds of regular table sugar (white)
2 teaspoons of yeast energizer
2 teaspoons of tartaric acid
The water aids in extracting extra flavor and color from the pomace (grape pulp), and the sugar gives the yeast some additional "food" to gobble up during fermentation. The yeast energizer will give the little critters the initial boost to get up and running. The tartaric acid improves flavor and crispness in the finished wine.
Once you add these ingredients, the "second run" follows the same procedure as a regular first run. Simply press the grapes, collecting your juice in any container suitable for fermentation.
Note, however, that the quality of this juice will differ greatly from the first run. You certainly can blend this with your first-run juice, but the best suggestion is to collect this juice separately and ferment it separately (following all the standard operating procedures). Once fermentation is completed, sample the wine. If the flavor is satisfactory, feel free to blend it with your main batch. And whether you blend or not, expect the "second run" batch to be very light bodied. If you age and bottle it separately, it should be ready to drink in a matter of weeks.
It’s important to note that you should not need to add yeast to your "second run." The pomace possesses enough yeast to spark fermentation, so letting this batch go "au naturel" is a good way to test the power — and flavor — of natural yeast.
The Grape Juice Option
Your options for "second run" winemaking don’t end there. While the above method may be the cheapest, it isn’t necessarily the easiest. Nor will it produce the best wine. Instead, consider purchasing fresh grape juice — something that you would consider fermenting for wine anyway — that fits the style you are making. A good Burgundy juice works well for red wine, for example. Use this juice in place of the above sugar-water mixture. Just add it to the pomace after the first press, and then proceed to press your grapes for the second time.
The juice will contain plenty of fermentable sugars, so there is no need to add more. It also possesses the necessary liquidity to extract more flavor and color from your grapes. A little tartaric acid and yeast would not hurt, of course, and should be added in the amount noted above.
While this method will give you a wine with more flavor and structure to withstand aging, you should note that grape juice will hike your price tag. For this reason I suggest starting with the sugar-water mixture to perfect the "second run" technique. After that, move up to grape juice.
If you insist on using grape juice, another (and likely the best) "second run" technique is to add the juice to your first run — prior to the initial pressing — and then proceed without worrying about a second press. Here’s how it works:
Estimate the amount of first run juice you will yield, figuring you will extract about 2 gallons per case (25 to 27 lbs.) of grapes. Then buy enough grape juice to equal half that total amount. For example, if you expect to yield eight gallons of juice, buy another four gallons of juice.
Then, just add the juice straight to your crush before you even start to press. Proceed with the first run as usual. You will find that using this method gives you first run quality juice without either the hassle of pressing twice or the disappointment of poor quality wine. Though undeniably more expensive than using sugar and water, you end up increasing the yield on your grapes and with more bottles of tasty wine.
The Concentrate Option
If you’re so inclined, you can even experiment with wine concentrates when doing "second runs." This method is the same as the water-sugar technique described above, except you substitute the concentrate for the sugar. First, reconstitute your concentrate in a large vessel. A stainless steel kettle or fermenter usually works. Using the previously mentioned ratio of one gallon of water for every two gallons of juice extracted, refer to the specific recommendations of your concentrate to determine exactly how much concentrate you should use. For example, if your concentrate requires two gallons of water, and you plan to use four gallons of water (because you will have 8 gallons of first-run juice), you will need two containers of concentrate.
Once reconstituted, just add this mixture to the must. The goal here is to get more grape juice, but also draw flavor and color into your concentrate wine. Press as described above, collecting this run separately from the first run juice. Ferment this second-run juice by itself and determine the quality before any blending.
Note: Do not add this reconstituted mixture to the grapes before the first press. The quality of this reconstituted liquid will be below good grape juice; using it to improve the yield of your grapes may result in low-quality wine and is probably not worth the risk.
How do I allow for suspended solids when
taking hydrometer readings?
I have been making wines for more than 20 years, but I have a problem with initial sugar determinations, added sugar requirements and subsequent alcohol content. Hydrometer readings on the initial crushed fruit may be way off, depending on how well the crush goes. Much could still be locked up in the uncrushed portion, especially on plums, cherries, and other hard to crush fruit. Would destoning, say one pound, and running the pulp through a blender and checking the specific gravity on the strained juice give a fairly accurate sugar content? Should I deduct a certain percentage for non-sugar solids?
********
Galena, IL
You’ve hit the nail on he head — a hydrometer reading does depend on the amount of suspended solids in the juice that you’re measuring. As sugar is more dense than water, the more sugar (the riper your fruit is) in the juice the higher up the hydrometer will float in your sample. It’s easy to see that if you’ve got lots of little bits of suspended pulp helping the hydrometer to float well above what would be its natural level you’re going to get an artificially high reading. This is why it is so important to measure juice that has as little suspended solids as possible. I don’t recommend you invest in a battery of strainers, settlers and centrifuges. That would be silly because if you follow the tips below you will have juice that is just fine to measure — the extra degree of precision that these tools of paranoia could buy you would be minimal indeed and certainly not worth your time or money.
I always always follows the same procedure when checking my sugars: soak, sample, strain and squeeze. When you receive a load of fresh grapes, cherries, plums or any other fruit that you’re going to ferment, go ahead and crush the fruit in prep for fermentation as you normally would. First you soak. Let the fruit and juice macerate for 12 to 24 hours — this step is key! Freshly-breached cell walls will not release all of their soluble carbohydrates just because you want them to! It takes time. After you’ve waited for the majority of the sugars to be released into the surrounding environment (that’s the juice to you and me), stir up your container (be it a 5-gallon bucket or a 50-gallon drum) and scoop yourself out a nice, sloppy sample, about 3 cups worth. Make sure you’ve stirred it up well beforehand and that you’ve got some of the chunky stuff in there too. Put the whole gloppy mess into a large strainer you’ve lined with 2 or 3 layers of cheesecloth. Strain the liquid out and give the solids in the cheesecloth a very gentle squeeze, just until the juice coming out stops being a steady stream and begins to come out in drops. Being gentle is the key. If you’re forceful, a lot of the solids will find their way out of the cheesecloth bundle into your sample — just what we’re trying to avoid! Similarly, you wouldn’t want to blend up the sample as this would just be mincing the solids up even further, incorporating them even more into the juice, making what for all intensive purposes would be a fruit smoothie — nice, thick and definitely not an accurate representation of the density due to sugar in the juice itself.
At this point you should have enough juice to give you a pretty representative sample which you could go ahead and measure. If you wanted to be particularly accurate (like if you’re going to have to add sugar and you want to know how much to ameliorate) you could then let the sample settle for another 12-24 hours in the refrigerator. We don’t want any spontaneous fermentations happening here! Siphon the clearest juice off of the top and then measure that. When you’re making a wine where you’re just going to be fermenting the juice and not the pulp, you’ll go through a settling stage post-press anyway, so your sample will be more precise. Always be sure to correct hydrometry readings for temperature. Warmer liquids are less dense than colder ones and will always give different density readings even if they’re of the exact same chemical composition.
Refractometers measure the amount of sugar by bending light through a prism in a way that correlates to the refractive properties of the juice. Again, a clear sample will yield the most accurate results. Refractometers are quick and easy, but are expensive.
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