[narvin]

I will preface this by saying that I have not brewed a 1 gallon batch in a long time.  So there may be other people with more specific recommendations.

But, the problems I had seemed to be regular brewing issues exacerbated by small scale.  Too much heat transfer in the wrong pot.  Too much oxidation due to the reality of how volume/surface area scales.  Too much or too little yeast due to not measuring correctly.  Too much sediment because of issues transfering off of a small jug.

So, my suggestion is to take the things that matter in a larger batch and be sure to focus on them.  Purge your vessel with CO2 before transfer.  Check mash pH to make sure it isn't too high because you may boil harder than you intended.  Don't do a secondary in a separate vessel to avoid introducing more oxygen, and crash cool before transferring to try to maximize clear beer without adding trub. 

[Fire Rooster]

I realize my comment bucks conventional wisdom and so might be met with hesitation. But it's not opinion or belief, it's chemistry. All dissolved gasses volatilize more when heated.

I have seen this with Iodophors. The iodine turns back to gas faster when heated which is why the mfr suggests mixing it with cold water. It also passively dissipates over several days if left open at room temp.


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I found this to be true by accident.
After a case of empty 22 oz bottles are collected, the bottles are soaked with oxygen brewery wash using hot water.
The bottles are then rinsed with hot water.  A qt of iodophor is mixed (cold water) in a clear glass qt measuring cup.  The bottles
are then rinsed/shaken with iodophor and returned to glass container.  The iodophor was crystal clear when returning
to glass container, instead of being light root beer colored.  Bottles were too warm/hot.  When bottles are now rinsed with cold
water before using iodophor, the iodophor is returned to glass container the same color as when started.

For the sake of septic system, a day or two is waited until the used iodophor is crystal clear before dumping.

To the original poster, at such a small scale I would just use spring water.

[majorvices]

Chlorine may not be an issue but many if not most municipalities use chlroramine because chlorine is so volatile. If you don't know your water report you won't know which disinfectant they use. So it's best to filter your water regardless. But yeah, there is nothing on the internet that says different than RC - it should be gone in 15 minutes of boiling unless it binds to the malt during dough in some how. Martin would know for sure, I'll PM him

[BrewBama]

I think the recommendation to use RO or distilled is because its a known low/no mineral constant that you can build from. It’s just another point of control.

Municipal water can be inconsistent season to season, year to year.

Bottled water can be purified water, which is water from local sources (a.k.a. tap water) that has been filtered, and there's natural spring water, which is sourced from springs across the United States.

So the bottled water that costs you several dollars may be sourced from the earth in Florida or it's just from the local water supply in New York.  It probably contains minerals that need to be identified which can fluctuate.


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[Drewch]

To the original poster, at such a small scale I would just use spring water.

For best results, one needs to know a couple of things about the water source: mineral content, treated with chlorine / chlroramine (and maybe a couple of other things?). 

Spring water appears to be similar to like "If the tap tastes good, it should be good to brew with".  It (tap water, spring water) works works well for many, but fails for a few.  Over time, people have found that some spring water bottlers do provide annual mineral content reports.

I could see an approach that starts with distilled water (which I use), "dial it in" to get good results (which I have done), then try spring water or tap water to see if the results are consistent.  Local knowledge (tap water) or "brand label" knowledge (spring water) could also be helpful.

I just switched to building from RO so I could eliminate changing tap water as a variable. Helps me focus on dialing in and being consistent with my process & equipment.

Before the tap water was always a confounding variable.

[Fire Rooster]

fyi
https://www.consumerreports.org/water-quality/find-out-whats-in-your-bottled-water-water-quality-reports/

[majorvices]

Well, the OP never chimed back in but I'll put this out there: If you don't have good fermentation practices or you are picking up to much o2 during racking, etc then you are barking up the wrong tree with water chemistry. I agree water chemistry is important but it does not sound like the OP is describing mash or water chemistry issues.

Hot fermentation can ofter cause a "watery" character in the beer due to excessive yeast growth.

BIAB can cause "watery" character if you are following a recipe for a 755 efficiency beer and you are getting 55% efficiency from BIAB.

I think it would be best if we got some more info back from the OP before we started trying to fix his mash and water chemistry.

[Drewch]

While waiting for OP to return, I'd like to politely continue a side discussion.   

I just switched to building from RO so I could eliminate changing tap water as a variable. Helps me focus on dialing in and being consistent with my process & equipment.

Before the tap water was always a confounding variable.

What is your approach getting a "proper" mash environment (pH, salt additions, ...)?  Did you go down the water spreadsheet path or the "measuring spoons" path?

I'm just going with BrewFather's adjustment calculations rounded to the accuracy of my ability to measure.  It took me a little playing around to get a feel for how their algorithm works.

A lot of folks prefer the Bru'n Water spreadsheet.

[BrewBama]

Well, the OP never chimed back in but I'll put this out there: If you don't have good fermentation practices or you are picking up to much o2 during racking, etc then you are barking up the wrong tree with water chemistry. I agree water chemistry is important but it does not sound like the OP is describing mash or water chemistry issues.

Hot fermentation can ofter cause a "watery" character in the beer due to excessive yeast growth.

BIAB can cause "watery" character if you are following a recipe for a 755 efficiency beer and you are getting 55% efficiency from BIAB.

I think it would be best if we got some more info back from the OP before we started trying to fix his mash and water chemistry.

I agree good fermentation practices and picking up to much o2 during racking could be problematic.

My particular water chemistry comments were based on the general question of “How do I improve overall taste of my 1 gallon brews”.

My thoughts on the ‘thin’ or ‘watery’ comment was addressed here:

...

Do you get these watery beers when you use all malt in your BIAB? 

If so, it could be an attenuation issue. What mash temp are you using?  Is your thermometer accurate?  What pH was your mash?  Is your pH meter calibrated?   Maybe just mash at higher temp, a higher pH, or throw in some dextrins that leave some body will fix it.

If not, and this phenomenon is limited to your extract brews, the extract kit you may be using could contain sugar which once fermented gives kind of a ‘nothing’ taste to me — like water. Can you choose better ingredients?

...

One more thought: what temps are you mashing your BIAB?  Modern malts are very well modified and are designed for rapid saccharification. Lower temperature protein rests tend to do more harm than good with these malts (they can ruin head retention and thin the body).

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[mabrungard]

Another consideration when brewing very small batches like this, is that the boil-off percentage can be exceptionally high with these small batches.  You can easily still incur a 1 gallon boil-off with a teeny batch and when you're ending up with a gallon or so, the boil-off percentage can be super high.  To avoid over concentrating any ions that were originally in your water or were added as salts, I recommend keeping the boil-off percentage to under 15 percent.  I regularly target about 8 to 10 percent in my brewing and have no problem with DMS.  Keeping the boil-off percentage low does require keeping the kettle covered for much of the boil. 

There is an old wive's tale that says that you HAVE TO keep your kettle uncovered and boil the heck out of your wort.  It's patently false in almost all cases.  The only time you might need to have an uncovered boil is if you're brewing at high elevation or if your grist has very high pils malt content (by pils, I mean malt that has a color rating of about 2.2L or lower).  When you do have those conditions, then about 30 plus minutes or covered simmering and about 30 minutes of uncovered boiling is needed to get DMS out.  The boil vigor doesn't even have to be that vigorous either.  As long as the wort is visibly rolling over in your kettle, there is enough vigor. 

If your grist is composed predominantly of pale, vienna, or munich malts with color over about 3L, you pretty much don't need to worry about DMS since those malts have very low SMM content (that's the DMS precursor).  Then you only need to perform about 30 minutes of the visibly rolling open boil and your beer should not have DMS problems. 

If you think that it's imperative that you need to boil the heck out of your wort while uncovered, I will point out that virtually EVERY professional brewing system has a fully covered kettle with a door or hatch to control the draft up the exhaust vent.  Do rethink your boiling practices if you're abusing your wort like this.  It will make a difference in your beer.  Plenty of brewers have already found this out.

[mabrungard]

One thing is that is critical on a municipal water supply is a chlorine filter.

Not if the municipality uses chlorine as the disinfectant. The chlorine will rapidly gas off upon heating to strike/sparge temp, and even to quite a bit less than this. Of course, any water used on the cold side definitely needs to be chlorine-free.

Sorry, I didn't see this and several people requested my response.

Sure, chlorine does volatilize relatively quickly at room-temperature and more quickly at higher temp.  But the problem is that the chemical reaction between malt compounds and chlorine compounds is almost instantaneous.  If there are ANY chlorine compounds (aka: chlorine or chloramines), they will instantly react and create chlorophenols in your wort that will NEVER volatilize off. 

So if you're going to play this form of Russian roulette with your beer, there had better be only chlorine in your tap water and your heating duration had better be long enough to allow ALL the chlorine to volatilize out of the water before that water touches your grist.  Be aware that there's typically several ppm of chlorine in tap water to provide disinfection.  While wort doesn't produce a 1 to 1 ratio of chlorophenols per ppm of chlorine compounds, I can assure you that chlorophenols can be tasted in beer when they are present in the several ppb range.  So your water HAS TO be virtually free of chlorine compounds or you may end up with chlorophenol problems in your beer. 

If you want to assure better beer, please ignore the advice above. 

[RC]

One thing is that is critical on a municipal water supply is a chlorine filter.

Not if the municipality uses chlorine as the disinfectant. The chlorine will rapidly gas off upon heating to strike/sparge temp, and even to quite a bit less than this. Of course, any water used on the cold side definitely needs to be chlorine-free.

Sorry, I didn't see this and several people requested my response.

Sure, chlorine does volatilize relatively quickly at room-temperature and more quickly at higher temp.  But the problem is that the chemical reaction between malt compounds and chlorine compounds is almost instantaneous.  If there are ANY chlorine compounds (aka: chlorine or chloramines), they will instantly react and create chlorophenols in your wort that will NEVER volatilize off. 

So if you're going to play this form of Russian roulette with your beer, there had better be only chlorine in your tap water and your heating duration had better be long enough to allow ALL the chlorine to volatilize out of the water before that water touches your grist.  Be aware that there's typically several ppm of chlorine in tap water to provide disinfection.  While wort doesn't produce a 1 to 1 ratio of chlorophenols per ppm of chlorine compounds, I can assure you that chlorophenols can be tasted in beer when they are present in the several ppb range.  So your water HAS TO be virtually free of chlorine compounds or you may end up with chlorophenol problems in your beer. 

If you want to assure better beer, please ignore the advice above.

Far be it from me to disagree with the water master, whose posts I always appreciate and learn a great deal from, but I’m not suggesting that anyone play Russian roulette with their beer. Again, if your city uses chlorine gas, as mine does, year-round, then simply heating it to (in my testing) ~140 or higher will remove 100% of the chlorine gas (caveat: my water comes in at ~1ppm, so this is the max I've tested with). You don’t even have to maintain it at that temp for any length of time. All the chlorine is gone by the time you reach that temp. And if you heat to 165 for striking, even more so. No one seems to be arguing against this, including Martin. Sounds to me like the trepidation is because there is doubt that 100% of the chlorine gas gets removed? It does for me.

Take my advice or not, but ignoring it in no way assures better beer. All it assures is more equipment and more steps on brew day. If you can confirm that your city uses chlorine gas, I’m simply suggesting you try this, if you're inclined. It’s very easy to test for yourself whether or not I’m spewing nonsense, and you might find your brew day simplified. I dispense my water from a drinking-safe hose (drinking safe--that's important!) from the hose tap straight into the kettles. I’ve done this for years now. My beers have won quite a few awards, including my American lagers. There has never been even the slightest trace of chlorophenol in my beers.

I started down this road when the brewery I was brewing at had the water filter break, and no one realized it for a month. We had been brewing with unfiltered water all that time. The beers turned out fine. And then at home, I used to filter, but I didn't realize how slow the filtration rate needed to be to remove all the chlorine. On a whim I tested the post-filter water with strips and realized that the water in the kettles that still had a lot of chlorine in it...and yet the beers were turning out great. Why weren't they loaded with chlorophenol? Because all the chlorine gas was disappearing upon heating. It dawned on me that I could save some time and hassle on brew day by no longer filtering. Oh--I have a water filter for sale, best offer takes it!

[majorvices]

One thing about commercial covered brew kettles is that usually they have a bevel catch on the inside that returns the condensation to the wet floor, so not all of it is dripping back in. we had problems at my brewery with DMS and it turned out that little channel was plugged. after hosing it out the DMS went away.

DEFINITELY agree with a gentle boil though. no need to boil the hell out of it.

[BrewBama]

I boil at the same kw every brew because of a known boil off rate resulting in a certain wort concentration for predictable OG. I hesitate changing it because it will throw off all that. I am lazy and don’t want to figure all that out again. It’s not volcanic activity but it is more than a simmer. A good asymmetric churning, rolling boil.

[CaptainWalt]

I was in the same place as you with kit beers.  All were drinkable, none were bad, but nothing was outstanding either.  They began to have a lot of "sameness" to the taste.  Sure I suppose you can get into water chemistry, which seems to be an ongoing theme in your responses, but I found it was the kit approach that caused my beer to be plain.  I think many are designed to be basic beers that introduce you to the craft and demonstrate that brewing can be relatively simple.  "You too can brew beer"!  The simplicity and successful outcome is a confidence builder at the expense of taste. 

My solution was to begin slowly experimenting with my own ingredients.  As an example I'd start with a basic beer kit but include additives or substitute hops and malts for the ones called for in the recipe.  Maybe change the boil times or try dry hopping.  Change the steeping grain.  I didn't go overboard, at least initially.  LOL  For example I would brew a Blonde Ale following the recipe exactly but make one change such as adding Habaneros to the fermenter.   The first time I did that I found that it definitely changed the taste but I wanted more heat so I repeated with additional Habaneros.  Suddenly I had a unique tasting spicy pepper beer that didn't taste like it came from a kit. 

I then began to purchase my own ingredients and create my own recipes.  My beer quality and taste has really improved as I have progressed with experience.  I also have each of my creations tasted by a Craft Brewery Brewmaster to receive an impartial opinion about the taste.  Right now I am carbonating a habanero/honey pale ale and everything about it including the base pale ale is entirely my own recipe. My first IPA was a huge success.
 By the way I only brew in small quantities, 3 gallons, and have no desire to go beyond that.  If one of my experiments is a flop I haven't wasted too much of my investment.  Perhaps staying small will ultimately limit what I can achieve but I really don't have the desire to get too complicated or expensive.  I like brewing indoors on my stovetop and keeping everything inside the house.  I end up with a case of beer each time which is enough for myself and to share with others.