My first attempt at a LODO brew, a pils (helles?), is ready to drink and it has a noticeable and objectionable salty/mineraly aftertaste. I am drinking it, but I wouldn’t serve it to guests and I’ll dump it when I have something better on tap.
My second LODO beer, a best bitters, also has a salty/mineraly aftertaste but less so and there’s some caramel favor/sweetness to hide it.
Focusing on the pils, here’s the recipe. 5.8 gallons packaged.
Water: 8.5 gallons (32 l), RO with TDS=12.
Additions: 3.6 gm CaCl2, 1.5 gm Epsom salt, 1 ml lactic,
2.4 gm SMB (75 mlgm/L), 0.8 gm Brewtan B (also 1.6 gm in boil)
Finished water profile (assuming all the SMB is oxidized):
ppm Ca 30, Mg 5, Na 24, SO4 91, Cl 62
9-1/2 lb. Best Malz pilsner (yes, the wonky stuff*)
1 lb. Best Malz Munich
*This was the 4th of 5 brews with that bag. The other 4 were non-LODO brews, one of this recipe, two saison and a kolsch. None were mineraly. But I’m going back to Weyermann in future and staying there.
This has got me stumped. Can someone please see something I’m missing?
It’s probably coming from your sulfate. I would definitely drop the mgso4. I brew many pilsners and I never add more than what SMB would add (and for me thats like 35ppm). I wouldn’t use the same mineral profiles you have in the past, everything is much more potent now. I don’t have the time to run your calcs right now, but thats what was glaring to me anyways.
Agreed, the sulfate is pretty high. Drop the epsom in future batches. And you could probably drop the SMB dosage down a notch too if there is minimal to zero splashing in your process.
The road to ‘minerally’ is paved with chloride AND sulfate. I agree that the OP’s water profile may have been too mineralized to accommodate the effect from SMB.
Ca does not have to be high in a lager. 40 ppm in the mash is a good goal. But your sparging water can have zero Ca and then you end up with a very light flavor that benefits light lagers.
Yes, those numbers are pretty close to what I get. I’m assuming that my RO water adds 8 ppm Cl. My RO maker is downstream from an ion exchange water softener and so the 12 TDS in the RO water is likely all salt. I also assume that all the smb scavenges oxygen and that dissolved gas becomes part of a dissolved solid (SO4) and adds 12-16 ppm to give 72 SO4 (absent the epsom).
To be honest, I’ve never tasted a Helles so I don’t really know if I’m brewing a Helles or a Pils. But the SO4 in this batch was about 91 ppm. I was targeting a “yellow balanced” profile.
I was only able to get to 30 Ca in the mash and I did BIAB no-sparge.
Without you testing malt, yeast, pH, acids, et all. I can’t say. All I know is that in my ~250 batches of low oxygen beer I have never got it. I also don’t push my SO4 up either.