Using CaCO3

[wiredgourmet]

Seconded

[Sulfur]

baking soda

While the talk is mostly about adding chalk or CaCo3, has anyone ever experimented with baking soda? One would have to keep an eye on the [Na], but it should have the same effect by mopping up H+ ions right? I mention this b/c I would think it'd be easier to get a "food grade" baking soda than CaCO3.

[Moonlight]

As for the "lifeless" character, I perceive carbonate as "watery." One step beyond the critical chloride/sulfate ratio is the flavor contribution of the carbonate. As was mentioned before, much of the smooth maltiness some beers have is best described as the lack of bite from the sulfate. For chocolate we think of smooth and non-assaultive. (Sulfate bite being critical for bitter hoppiness, the lack of which many would certainly call lifeless!.) The lifeless is a lack of sulfate backbone, coupled with high carbonate. For this my standard is Kronenbourg or the Alsace beers in general. Most people find them watery or lifeless, but there is a delightful soft, maltiness that can only come from that water.
I would think that for a sour beer it would be best to throw out the concerns of the perfect mash pH. Granted, the extracts and characters will be out of normal range, but aren't you trying not to make a normal range beer?

The historical basis for sour mashes was more likely to fix the water that wasn't acidic enough, especially for brewers following the Reinheitsgebot.
Then again, doesn't it seem we craft brewers sometimes take things to extremes?
Ooh, be cautions of extra sodium in beer, it can be coarse, rough and nasty right quick.

[wiredgourmet]

Re, Baking Soda

I experimented with baking soda for pH correction once. Once. In small amounts it is probably fine, but using enough to affect the mash pH left the beer tasting flat, lifeless, almost stale. This flavour was quite detectable in the mash, so it came as no surprise that the beer turned out crap. If you wanted just a little extra sodium in your water to match one of the published water profiles, I imagine soda would be ok. But based on my (admittedly very limited) experience, I wouldn't think about using it for pH correction.

I am going to try the chalk for pH correction in stout next week, and will report on it a few weeks later. I believe I'll need to increase sulphate with it, to maintain the acrid, "stout-like" flavour balance that I like. Since my water has virtually no (1.5 ppm) Mg, I think I will use epsom salt instead of calcium sulphate for that, or at least for part of it. It's good for the yeast, and I doubt I'll be needing any extra calcium.

[Sulfur]

stout and stouts

@WG. Well, you must certainly have a critical audience - the benchmark being Guinness. I have some Irish regulars who come to our bar. I'm always quizzing them on my stout. The "problem" is that what your everyday Irishman/gal drinks at home (as far as I understand) is @ about 4.1%ABV. My stout is @ 6.0%. So right there I run into differences. Then there's the whole N2 thing. Are your Stouts with N2? My stout is 100%Co2. As such, it's more a stout of old (except for the ABV.) I am proud though that even at 6%ABV, our stout still comes out as the top layer in the black&tan the barmaids make i.e. it's got a high attenuation. I guess it depends on what one is used to and what one is after....it always does....

[wiredgourmet]

Sulfur, the fact that I'm still dissatisfied with my stout should tell you something. I've been developing it solidly for a year, and it's still not ready for sale. I believe I'm close to something that: 1. Irish drinkers will really enjoy, and 2. I can actually be proud of. But it has not been easy.

No Country for Craft Brewers
Talk about a tough audience. Irish drinkers are extremely conservative, and their tastes are fixed. When Guinness decided to remove virtually all of the malt from their beer and substitute N2 in its place (ca. 1960), everyone went along quietly. N2 delivery soon became universal, even for bright ales and lagers. Today, you can't sell anything except a nitrogen milkshake, so long as it's taste-numbingly cold, watery as heck underneath all the mousse, insipidly one-dimensional in flavour, and quite bitter.

You can get plenty of body and a creamy head in a carbonated stout if you use plenty of malt. But in Ireland, you have to suppress its complex, multi-dimensional flavours with sulfate so that only acrid notes and harsh bitterness come through. Well, bitterness is what we're about as a race, after all

I've got the dominant "Guinness flavour" down, but I am still struggling to flesh it out with more interesting notes. Since it comes sort of at the expense of malt character, I'm looking to subtle hop aromas, sour flavours from lacto wort (pH has been a problem for me, as you know from the above), and subtle esters. I have been working with brett too, but it is clearly too fruity/estery for the Irish palate.

The balance is the thing that's got me smacking my head against the pipes. If that dominant "Guinness flavour" is absent, Irish drinkers just won't recognise the stout as stout. We've been brainwashed by Diageo and Heineken with admirable skill and at tremendous expense, and there is no going back. Fifty years of an exclusive diet of megaswill and relentless mass marketing, and the fact is, you've got to be careful not to make your beer too much better than the run of the mill, or it will likely be rejected.

So, slightly more interesting is the key here. But immensely better quality, too. My goal is to sell a carbonated stout that's plenty rich and creamy, similar to Guinness in basic flavour but a little more interesting, and a whole lot better in quality.

Sounds easy, doesn't it?

[wiredgourmet]

Sulfur, some Guinness stats for you:

Guinness Foreign Export Stout (FES) is 7.5% ABV; Guinness Extra Stout and Draught Guinness are 5% ABV in bottles/cans, but the kegged version of DG in pubs is (reportedly) closer to 4% because sneaking the alc level down a bit is good for publicans (sell more beer primarily, and fewer drunks stumbling about secondarily), and the publican lobby here is crushingly powerful. So if they find it convenient to withhold alcohol from you, alcohol will darn-well be withheld

It is normal to draw 90 "pints" from a 50-L keg in Ireland. You will note that our glasses are not marked as they are in the UK. There's a reason for that.

Guinness IG:
1840: 1.082
1940: 1.054
Today: 1.038; FG: 1.007

Budweiser today:
IG: 1.044; FG: 1.010
Ah, the miracles of N2 and aggressive refrigeration

Pre-WW2 Guinness Draught was matured in vats naturally infected with brett and lacto.

FES was bottle-conditioned with brett until the 1930's. Lacto was later substituted until the '70's, when Guinness went all extract.

The Diageo web site claims that the "key" ingredients in Guinness stout are water, hops, yeast, and malted barley, and claims that the colour comes from roasted malt. Everyone and his brother claims that they use flaked barley and unmalted roast barley, but their own marketing propaganda contradicts this. I have found that neither ingredient is necessary to clone Draught Guinness, so I am inclined to believe Diageo on this.

One ingredient that Diageo marketing does not mention (apparently it's not quite "key" enough for some) is Guinness Flavour Extract (GFE), a new-ish blend of the older Roast Malt Extract (RMX) and Mature High Gravity extract (MHG).

Earlier, the sour, vinous hints came from MHG extract (a blond extract with lactic acid), and the colour and "roastiness" came from GFX. The two have lately been combined as GFE.

GFE is used in doses of 2% on a base of blond ale or light lager (depending on the market), which suggests that it is a spray-dried powder. We've got a Diageo factory in Waterford devoted to producing nothing but GFE. (Next time I pop round to my grandfather's house there, I must make a note of the sort of containers leaving the factory, which should indicate its form.)

GFE certainly is "key" to some Diageo people, however. It is always de-emphasised, but the company never actually lies about it. A recent investor presentation by Diageo Supply Director Gerry O’Hagan illustrates the hair-splitting: "Guinness flavour extract [GFE] … is the critical ingredient for Guinness brewed in fifty countries across the globe".

Because he did not add, "including Ireland", one tends to recall it as, "fifty foreign countries across the globe", but that is not what he said. Elsewhere in the presentation he states, "Guinness is our key brand with 5.6m hL brewed [domestically], and, through GFE, supporting another 5.0m hL brewed internationally".

Again, O’Hagan does not claim that GFE is reserved solely for overseas brewing, but his sentence structure implies it strongly. We are invited to assume that the Guinness manufactured at St. James’s Gate and sold in Ireland is brewed normally, without flavour extracts. But here is the reality, stated plainly by a retired Guinness employee:

"Today at St. James’s Gate, RMX and MHG are used in the brewing of Foreign Export Stout, draught Guinness, and Guinness Export Stout ... What is common to all Guinness stout brewed in any location is the inclusion of dark RMX … and MHG".

Yes, Guinness has become a kit beer. It’s no accident that brewery tours ceased in 1972.

Sources:

http://www.diageo.com/NR/rdonlyres/5BF37FF4-931D-49D2-98E5-AAB96955F319/0/GuinnessSupplyGerryOHagan.pdf

David Hughes: A Bottle of Guinness Please: Phimboy (U.K., 2006) This is an obscure book, presumably self-published, that offers far too much information if you happen to be a brewer.

[Sulfur]

guiness

"The Diageo web site claims that the "key" ingredients in Guinness stout are water, hops, yeast, and malted barley, and claims that the colour comes from roasted malt. Everyone and his brother claims that they use flaked barley and unmalted roast barley, but their own marketing propaganda contradicts this. I have found that neither ingredient is necessary to clone Draught Guinness, so I am inclined to believe Diageo on this."

I'd be willing to bet that they do use RB. Depends on how one interprets the word "key".

Your data on the Guinness of today must be the reason my Irish friend S. regales me with stories back in the day of drinking 20-30 pints when out on the lash. That's the kind of beer publicans love, more cash register ringing going on. I believe a Guinness clone will have to have the same drinkability. Too malty, and the numbers will go down.

[wiredgourmet]

I'd be willing to bet that they do use RB. Depends on how one interprets the word "key".

I sort of would too, but they do claim that the colour comes from "roasted, malted barley". So that's either 1. a true statement, or 2. the mistaken assumption of some poorly-informed PR bunny; or 3. a lie.

An interesting fact: Ireland used to have a malt excise, and in those days, no unmalted grains were permitted in a brewery because it would enable tax avoidance. Of course, malting is a labour- and energy-intensive process that adds substantially to the cost of brewers' cereals, so brewers complained about not being able to use cheap adjuncts.

In 1880, the malt excise was replaced with an alcohol tax. Flaked barley and roasted barley suddenly became immensely popular in porters and stouts, along with the myth that they are indespensible for the right flavour.

Today breweries pay €19.87 per hL per cent alcohol. So this is a huge incentive to use adjuncts and also to keep alcohol levels low as well. I find it hard to believe that Diageo would not avail itself of the cost savings of using unmalted cereals. And Hughes claims that Guinness uses unmalted barley flakes and RB (or used it when he was working there). He also claims that Park Royal used even more (proportionally) than St. James's Gate. So you might well have hit the point, that the word "key" is indeed "key".

Still, there is some evidence that they continued using patent instead of RB until the 1920's at least. Here is a related blog post (caveat lector): http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2007...rley-question/

According to Jackson: "No other brewery uses as much roasted barley as Guinness, which prepares its own." (MJBC, p 181).

I can say from experience that RB is not necessary for the classic "Irish flavour". It is chiefly (but not exclusively) a function of mineral content.

The mystery continues.

I will say this: there is no beer on Earth surrounded by more confusion, myth, unsubstantiated opinion, and pure BS than Guinness stout

[Edit]: From the corporate web site: "Some malted barley is roasted, in a similar way to coffee beans, which is what gives GUINNESS® its distinctive colour," and " Our key ingredients - other than inspiration - are roasted, malted barley, hops, yeast and water." C&P from http://www2.guinness.com/en-IE/Pages/faqs.aspx

[Sulfur]

Michael Lewis

Great link WG. According to Dr. Michael Lewis "Roasted Barley comprises around 9% of the grist for making Guinness, and this is probably quite typical of British stouts. At the St James's Gate brewery roasted barley is extracted separately from the mash and the extract is added to the pale wort at the kettle. However, at Park Royal finely milled roasted material is included in the mash." I've been experimenting similarly with my stout and have yet settled on a final method, suffice it to say that I'm also in search of the perfect Stout! Guinness is the benchmark to compare to for better or worse- at least around here, there being no other stouts available (an importer for a while did offer Old Rasputin Imperial Stout, but that's another animal altogether). To summarize our thoughts so far then, we're looking for a maltier, drinkable, chocolaty, and somewhat acrid guinness relative....

[wiredgourmet]

According to Dr. Michael Lewis "Roasted Barley comprises around 9% of the grist for making Guinness, and this is probably quite typical of British stouts.

Keep in mind, during your quest, that this percentage is reliable only if your beer is as watery as Guinness. Think in terms of percentage of beer, not percentage of grist, if you are going to make it significantly higher in gravity. Otherwise, you'll taste little else.

At the St James's Gate brewery roasted barley is extracted separately from the mash and the extract is added to the pale wort at the kettle.

I believe this is a bit out of date (or it is a clever way of talking about GFE), but they must use exogenous enzymes for this extraction. Have you ever tasted stout made with RB or patent extracted with hot water alone? Hideous. That's another thing I tried. Once

To summarize our thoughts so far then, we're looking for a maltier, drinkable, chocolaty, and somewhat acrid guinness relative....

Yes, a real-ale cousin. A rich relative. May Dionysus smile on our efforts!

[meister]

While the talk is mostly about adding chalk or CaCo3, has anyone ever experimented with baking soda? One would have to keep an eye on the [Na], but it should have the same effect by mopping up H+ ions right? I mention this b/c I would think it'd be easier to get a "food grade" baking soda than CaCO3.

Try CaO. When disolved in water you get Ca(OH)2. It is very water solubile and doesn't have the drawbacks of Na.

[liammckenna]

In a 10 hL batch, I wuse about 300 g CaCO3 in the mash for our stout (with other salts as well)

CaCO3 does not dissolve readily. It must be added with the incoming grist to keep it available during mashing.

I have found it is critical for stout with it's large volume of Roast material. Otherwise your stout will be acrid. (even if your water is naturally soft. Water is pretty soft in Dublin but even there we used a fair whack of CaCO3).

The use of flaked barley in Guinness, I cannot confirm. I can confirm the GFE is used in all Guinness stout including those of Park Royal and St. James' Gate. Very few people know what goes on in the GFE plant. Not even the Head Brewer when I was there for an actual plant tour with him in 2000.

Something you may want to discuss is their use of wet milling.


Pax.

Liam

[jwalts]

Using CaO or Ca(OH)2 is an interesting idea. At first glance, I didn't think it would work because lime is normally used to remove CaCO3 from water:

Ca + Ca(OH)2 + 2HCO3 -> 2CaCO3 + 2H2O

However, you may be able to see a net increase in CaCO3 if your source water has no temporary hardness (i.e. alkalinity exceeds hardness) and you're able dissolve the precipitated chalk from the above reaction. Meister, have you verified that adding CaO increases the mash pH for your water? I'd use the hydrated version (Ca(OH)2, aka "slaked lime" or "pickling lime") instead of CaO ("quick lime") because it's more stable in storage.

Even if it works, I can't think of any benefits over adding CaCO3 directly.

Joe

[meister]

CaO will certainly raise the mash pH. I have not added it in powder form. We disolve it in our ion exchange softened water and only dose the liquid into our sofened water to raise the pH. When CaO is disolved in water it forms Calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2 a base. It isn't as strong a base as NaOH or KOH, but will still raise the pH very effectively. It, however, will first react with any acids(including carbonic acid--CO2) and with Ca(HCO3)2 and Mg(HCO3)2 in your water before you see any increase in pH. I would recommend adding it to your brewing water and not to your mash.

The advantage over CaCO3 is that CaO is far more solubile making it possible to easily dose it into your brewing water.

Cheers!