Mashing/Milling Problems?

[bustdbrewing]

I need some help here... The last few batches I've brewed have resulted in very astringent wort and beer. I recently switched over to using RO water due to bad water in the town I just moved to. The first few batches I brewed I put some salts into the mash tun and the rest into the kettle. Those two beers turned out pretty well. The last few batches I put all the salts into the mash tun and just sparged with RO water. I also conditioned the malt with a little water to create better crushed husks.

As mentioned before though the beer and wort have come out undrinkable and had to be dumped. I have noticed the wort goes into the kettle kind of cloudy and is pretty bitter. Below is what I'm shooting for with my water. Any help help would be appreciated.

Sulfate 216
Chloride 80
Calcium 127
Sodium 17
Magnesium 17
Carbonate 53

[NervousDad]

If you put all of your salts into the mash you must have screwed up your mash pH? What was your grain bill and the resulting Mash pH?

what did you crush look like, was there a lot of flour?

[siwelwerd]

The last few batches I put all the salts into the mash tun and just sparged with RO water.

It sounds like you are extracting tannins, which likely means that your pH is too high in either the mash or the sparge. Do you batch sparge or fly sparge?

[dmtaylor]

Sounds like you are crushing too hard, and need to split your salts between mash and sparge. If your sparge pH is too high, this will lead to astringency.

Also, do you vorlauf? You need to recirculate the first quart or two of runnings to keep a lot of tiny chunks out of your sweet wort. Otherwise you will end up boiling a fair amount of grain husk material for a full hour and this will also lead to astringency.

[gwk453]

As far as the milling goes, I concentrate on what is in the hull. The cracking of the endosperm is the priority. My milling is a little coarse, my wort is sweet, and there are plenty of hulls to clean out of the mash tun. Hulls or shredded hulls you can still stick the mash! Run the lautering process to quickly and your "stuck".

You need to work on mash pH. Since you have gone to RO, you are a water builder. You need to think of your RA and the sulfate/chloride ratio too! Focus on the pH first, but you will need a good meter with cleaning and calibration solutions,

All the mineral additions effect the mash pH and chalk is the usual culprit for the cloudiness.
I avoid chalk unless you need it for taste.

To point out how much pH changes, I will give you my brewing example :
When I first started water treatment, I treated my total volume, 28 gallons of RO water( pH 6.3) with 3 ml of 10% Phosphoric Acid to lower the pH to 5.3
Then added the minerals.
The pH increased to ~7 and had to add acid to the mash.

Now I treat the total water volume by adding the minerals, and adjusting the pH to 5.3 for under 15 SRM beer.
My acid addition is about 22 ml. for my particular target IPA water profile.
Then I am ready to mash. My mash pH #'s have consistently been 5.2 -5.36.
I takes time to get the acid additions correct for the different water profiles I use, but overall treating the total water volume has made my beers better. Constraint is necessary when you add acid, add and measure with pH meter. A little goes a long way!
Mashing and sparging with the acidified water hasn't given me any problems.

I don't think there are any water acidification calculators out there to handle total water acidification.

[bustdbrewing]

The crush looked pretty good. Like normal actually. I didn't look at the mash pH. That might be the issue come to think of it. I didn't take into account the amount of salts/minerals I was adding would drop it low enough. I used 14lbs of pale malt of pale malt with a little bit of roast for color. I was going for a hop forward beer.

[bustdbrewing]

The last few batches I put all the salts into the mash tun and just sparged with RO water.

It sounds like you are extracting tannins, which likely means that your pH is too high in either the mash or the sparge. Do you batch sparge or fly sparge?

I have always batch sparged. Aren't tannin's extracted if the pH is low? More on the acid side?

[dmtaylor]

No, it's the other way. You don't want your pH more than about 5.6.