Martin, any thoughts on the origin or the rumor?
IIRC per Martin, Guinness mashes pale malt at proper pH, then blends with the dark malt wort that is mashed/steeped with no attempt to raise pH. Resulting in the slight twang Guinness is known for. That, or it’s just a damn good homebrew recipe.
You mean people actually read zymurgy?
Every two months I have that moment of excitement when the new zymurgy arrives in my mailbox. I hurry into the bathroom itching to smell that virgin paper and ink. Every time I’m hoping for hot young coeds. But no, just a bunch of old bearded guys with bellies talking about beer. Someday… someday.
But seriously, be cool. There are many contributors that are active members on this forum, including Martin and his great water articles. Don’t like it, start your own Zine at the corner copy shop.
ETA - You could submit your own article as well. I know they pay.
I’ll put the [emoji12] in next time so there is no confusion.
FWIW. My YUP was to trying sauergut to use on a dark beer as I use it for all my pH needs
It was a reasonable assumption.
Guinness was long known to deliver their dark Guinness Flavor Extract to their other breweries, so everyone knew that this was an important component. The thing that I believe confused the typical homebrewer was that people thought that Dublin water was very hard and alkaline. While that is true in some parts of the city, its not true in the part that the St James Gate brewery is. Their water runs off the granitic Wicklow Mountains and it is almost devoid of mineralization and alkalinity.
Mixing roast barley with a highly alkaline water would not result in a very low pH wort. But mixing roast barley with what amounts to RO or distilled water, results in a wort pH that hovers around 4.5. If you assumed that the Guinness water source was alkaline, you would have to assume that there was some sort of souring action in order for that dark extract to have a low pH. But the reality is that their process and result is much simpler than that. Guinness’ recipe of barley malt, raw barley, and roast barley create a very complimentary flavor when the pH of the overall beer is depressed by that GFE addition. They do mash the pale components in a separate mash and combine the worts later.
The simple work-around for brewing an excellent dry stout is to use RO water and hold the roast barley out of the main mash. You then add the ground roast barley at the end of the mash where it adds the color and drives the wort pH down. It is a very effective technique and I and many others have found it to produce a very authentic result.
I gotta say that my dark beer strategy (mashing higher pH) would really work well with a kettle GS addition to emulate but honestly I prefer Murphy/Beamish sans twang. If I was chasing the holy grail of Guinness I would make SG except use roasted barley in place of acid to get pH down to 4.5, thus creating your own GFE.
Has the redox potential of SG been measured or studied yet? I am hoping to use it in place of the other redox strategies but suspect the process is much slower.
Bryan just did an experiment to get empirical values for redox. I’m not sure he’s formalized it yet.
It has. Sorry been busy with other things I have the data just no post yet. The short answer is there is a small amount. But not nearly enough to say get rid of any antioxidants in the mash. It could maybe drop you 10-20ppm on your SMB dose.
I don’t see how “Probiotics( digestibility and nutritional value)” is improved if the last SG addition is at knock out.
I like the idea of this…I make a SOMA Saison with a 1 lb overnight sourmash addition at the end of the mash. The last time I did it the mash was bad sour and kinda ruined the beer…I like the idea of doing a 2 L sour starter…if it tastes good…add it as described…if not…proceed without the SG…