Will porter taste ok if Bru'n Water says don't add anything?

[shetc]

Hey Guys,

Making a porter using RO water as follows:

If I don't add anything to the water, I hit a very nice 5.4 pH, as follows:

So if no minerals are added, will the beer still taste good?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[FunkedOut]

Your ph is predicted to be good.
Your flavor ions are all at 0.
Go back to the water adjustment tab and adjust your mineral content to match the suggested profile you selected (black balanced) as a starting point.

Will it taste good? Probably. Depends on your tastes, right? Might be a bit bland compared to a mineralized water profile.

 

[JimRausch]

Hmmm. My mantra has been "Trust Brunwater" which has never failed me. However, I've also never seen anything like your screen shots.
No calcium(just about)?? No sulfate OR chloride? I don't know, especially the no calcium.
Looking at your grain bill and it's results, it looks awful dark to me for a porter. And then there's the 18% crystal 60, which is quite a bit, most likely leading to an awfully sweet beer.
My suggestion is to take a look at Ray Daniel's 'Brewing Great Beers' if you can score a copy. Or take a look in this forum's recipe section for some examples. I think you may want to make a few changes.
Good luck!

 

[mabrungard]

It will make beer, but its likely to be blander than you might prefer. Having at least some mineral content in your brewing water should make the beer more interesting.

 

[shetc]

This is a kit I bought on sale from Great Fermentations - the grains are already mixed together so I'm pretty much stuck with the formulation. I guess I can add some minerals, which I suppose will make it drier but more flavorful. BTW, it also calls for a cup and half of plain cocoa towards the end of the boil.

 

[mabrungard]

Wes is a pretty talented brewer, so that kit probably makes a nice beer. With the addition of cocoa, that pushes the need for water mineralization lower. You're dealing with a flavored beer and you might want an unobtrusive beer palate on which to paint your masterpiece. I certainly wouldn't add much in that case. The color-based profiles in Bru'n Water are pretty unobtrusive.

 

[shetc]

Perfect Martin -- thanks!!

 

[shetc]

Pretty darn close

 

[shetc]

Pretty good beer!

 

[RustyHorn]

it looks awful dark to me for a porter.

Porter can be as dark as you want it. I know a recipe for a commercial Porter from 1917 that is 103 EBC. Those competition guidelines are to be ignored! There's little historical value in them. That Ray Daniels book is good, but it only focusses on how to make beer for competitions. English styles are much wider in terms of EBC, ABV and IBUs than the BJCP would have you believe. Part of that is to shoehorn beers that they can call American. I mean, I have a recipe for a mild from 1862 by an English brewer that you would have to enter as American Barley Wine in a competition. That doesn't make any sense. Basically, the English were brewing American Barley Wine 140 years before the Americans. That's just plagiarism!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I presume you are using the pay version. I duplicated this recipe and water in free version 1.23 and for 8.33 gallons of mash water (to achieve your 3.03 qts/lb. water to grist ratio) it requires ~4.3 grams of baking soda to hit 5.4 mash pH. Are there significant differences in output between the pay version and the free version? Or am I doing something incorrectly?

 

[shetc]

That is the paid version, just prior to the latest release. Porter tastes pretty damn good.