Now What?

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

I’ve always loved wheat beers and more specifically Belgian Whites. Hoegaarden and Franziskaner are top of the list. Give me a beer that goes down like steak and potatoes. Yes, please.

Now that I have a few brew days under my belt, I thought I’d give it a try. I ordered a Franziskaner clone recipe kit from Austin Homebrew Supply. Since my hydrometer has been questionable up to this point, I also threw in a new hydrometer (this one has a thermometer in it as well – a thermohydrometer)

When it arrived, it turns out it was shipped by Adventures in Homebrewing in Ann Arbor, MI. Huh. So that’s why their websites look exactly the same. I thought it was just a homebrew store WordPress template or something.

I have had medicinal/iodine/band-aids off-flavors in all of my beers up to this point. After much research and pulling my hair out, I found this is common when brewing with city water.

I have a Brita Filter pitcher and use only filtered water in my brews. I have always been meticulous about using filtered water throughout the whole process. It isn’t quick to filter over five gallons of water with a single pitcher, so I was less than pleased to find the chlorine/chloramine from the city water was making it through the filter.

There are three ways to remove chlorine/chloramine from water before brewing:

Boil the water (only works for chlorine)
Let the water sit overnight (only works for chlorine)
Put a campden tablet in the water (works for both)

So, campden tablets it is. I ordered a 100 tablet pack from Amazon in preparation for my next brew day.