Has anyone played around with adding gypsum or cacl post fermentation to adjust a beers perception?
I have to one beer. Made it slightly more palatable, but wasn’t a magic bullet
I’ve done gypsum before in IPA to clean up a soapy aftertaste. It worked some.
Try it on a glass of beer. then you can decide. It is easy to overdo it, so try very small amounts at a time. You can also adjust pH if you want with acid (down) or baking soda or picking lime (up).
I was looking to crisp up the bitterness of a CAP just a touch. Did it cause any kind of haze for you guys?
Two articles about doing this at kegging/bottling.
http://beerandwinejournal.com/ipa-experiment-report/
http://itstimeforbeer.blogspot.com/2013/11/ipa-experiment-does-chloride-to-sulfate.html
I’ve been wanting to try this ‘in the glass’. The difficulty would be getting the gypsum to dissolve. I think the answer would be to dissolve gypsum in a few ounces of ‘sacrificial beer’ - in other words, this will have a high concentration and get stirred a lot to dissolve, so it will lose carbonation. Then use that to dose fresh samples of beer. CaCl would dissolve easily.
Like they did, it’s probably easier to do at bottling. Though I would only bottle two concentrations - the highest and lowest. Then I would blend the two at serving to get the in-between concentrations.
gypsum dissolves easily in beer. I’ve done CaCl and it was noticeable. As steve said, it was not a magic bullet. haven’t tried gypsum.
Good to know. I imagine it would cause foaming, so dissolving in a small portion would still be good?
The beer I screwed up had too much CaCl and not enough gypsum or epsom (way too low sulfates). Beer tasted single note and blah. I added gypsum and epsom to half pints. Lost a bit of carbonation, but both dissolved easily.
The beer was a 2-row Cascade SMaSH. I ended up blending it with a so-so all Citra IPA and it was actually awesome. If you don’t like Citra, try it with Cascade.
Tried it during my lunch break, added some gypsum to a small glass of cap. This definitely helped the balance, but left some haze and some mineral in the bottom of the glass.
I have had some luck adding the minerals to boiling or near boiling water.
Easy enough to put just over 1 liter into a kettle - boil it, and then add it to a beaker with 2 grams gypsum.
I find that the boiled solution dissolves much better - and reduces the CO2 release, so carbonation is a bit more stable for a finished beer. I seem to recall that Martin recommends 2 grams to a liter for gypsum as it reduces the dilution of the beer a bit more. A boiled solution should have at least some of the O2 removed by boiling as well - so more appropriate for finished beer.
Have only done this with CaCl2 and gypsum. Haven’t tried with Epsom.
Wise choice, otherwise you might end up with some “explosive” results
;D. I like my sulfate from gypsum.
Edit - I’ve heard ‘explosive’ horror stories to that effect about high Mg levels, but I know that within proper limits, that doesn’t happen. I’ve just always heard that malt brings enough Mg to the party as is, so I don’t add any extra.
Actually… I should qualify that - I have had to use Epsom for that explosive purpose - just not in beer… after breaking a leg in a motorcycle accident. It effectively counters the other problem from high doses of certain binding painkillers.
Epsom salt tastes horrible. I don’t use it anymore unless building my own water from distilled, and even then, only use a fairy-dust sprinkle amount (like 1/10 teaspoon) and no greater.
I’ve never added salts late, but as a chemical engineer and beer nerd in general, my advice would be… use less than you think you should. Like, calculate how much you think you should use, and then only add like 1/3 as much at a time until you achieve a perceptible difference in flavor, and then stop. Same goes for additions of all different kinds – spices, fruit extracts, bourbon, you name it. Go easy on the special additions.