After brewing a Helles and a Pilsner I noticed both are missing the flavor and good taste I usually get from those recipes. The two things I did different was I used RO water and added minerals and I used White Labs Clarity-Ferm. Thats an enzyme that prevent haze.
I know the water adjustment can change flavor but has anyone used the Clarity-Ferm and had this result?
Another factor related to your change might be the PH of your mash due to RO water. You made no mention of an acid addition. Light beers with RO water will likely need some acid for a proper PH in the mash.
I made some light beers without properly adjusting the PH and they tasted kind of flat.
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_pH_affects_brewing
What part of the flavor is missing? Malt, or hops? Could be your flavor ions aren’t as strong in your RO/salt recipe. Chloride for malt, sulfate for hops.
I do agree it could be a pH thing. My own efforts with RO and salts have been superior to my tap water.
Thanks for the replies. I have a PH meter and adjust my mash and sparge PH with phosphoric acid.
Over all the flavor is just weak in both malt and hop flavor. The hop mostly Sazz, Tettnang and Hallrttau do not have that nice Noble taste and the malt profile for that recipe has much less flavor then the past beers.
I know I have seen them in the past but can anyone post a salt or mineral additions they use for RO water.
I still suspect the Cllarity-Ferm might strip out some flavor but can’t prove it.
I just used it in a porter recipe I’ve brewed before. I’ll update once I know what, if any, effects there are.
It depends on the beer. For most lagers I’d go with 30-50 ppm Ca, 50ish ppm Cl and as much carbonate salt as it takes to get to ~0 RA. For a German Pils, more SO4 than Cl.
I might shoot for 50ppm chloride and 100ppm sulfate, in a pils. You might want some carbonate in there for a German pils.
Soft water.
I used DI water. For 10 gallons of my BoPils I used 3.2g of CaCl2 in the mash and 3.2g of CaSO4.