Campden tablets

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lamby

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Hi all, I'm trying to reduce the bitter taste I seem to get for most of my home brews. Manly mangrove jacks ipa range, so I ready that using a Campden tablet and letting the water stand for 20mins may help. Does anyone have any advise? I've done a few home brews and most seem bitter for an ipa anyway.
Regards
 
Camden tablets as water treatment appears to be mainly to remove chlorine from tap water.
I think you may only need 1/2 of one for a 40 pint batch (I'm not smart enough to have multi tabs open on my phone to link the page, but someone will come along and do that soon).

I am more familiar with them being used in country wine making to kill off wild yeasts & prevent oxidation of the fruit 24 hours before adding wine yeast.

I'm not sure it will work, but often it's a case of trying things one at a time until you eliminate your problem.
 
Campden tablets will not reduce the bitterness in beers they help to reduce chlorine in the water.
The problem you may be having is that IPA's are generally quite bitter in there general makeup.
you may be drinking new style IPA's in cans that you are basing them on which can have lower IBU's by whirlpooling methods but the kit versions are generally done by standard methods which hop the extract as IPA have been done in the past.
You are also maybe susceptible to bitterness which some people are and this will make you taste the bitterness more that some other drinkers.
You do need to look at the IBU contribution on kits to give you a better chance of liking the beer.
Or you may need to start making beer from extract or grain to control the flavour and IBU contribution
 
Are you in Wigan? If so, your tap water will be very soft and will benefit from some mineral additions for an IPA. I usually add Gypsum if using United Utilities water. (Edit: don't add Gypsum alone without adding Chloride to balance the ratio as this will increase bitterness - see below from @The-Engineer-That-Brews)

Definitely add a Campden Tablet if you're using tap water, but that's a seperate issue to prevent off-flavours by removing chlorine and chloramine, as said above
 
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Thanks for all the advise here. Suspect that it's the ibu. I've done a few mangrove jack's ipa, mango pale alse.,etc but still not happy with the taste. Will give the gypsum a go too. Once again thanks for all your advice.
 
Thanks for all the advise here. Suspect that it's the ibu. I've done a few mangrove jack's ipa, mango pale alse.,etc but still not happy with the taste. Will give the gypsum a go too. Once again thanks for all your advice.
If you go on your water suppliers website and punch in your postcode, you should be able to download a water quality report. If you put the output on here, we'll be able to advise on water additions.
 
Are you using brewing software like Brewfather or Beer Smith? If not then even with beer kits it's a good idea to use them as they will calculate things like IBU's for you, at least then you'll be able to benchmark yourself against all these metrics.
 
Thanks for all the advise here. Suspect that it's the ibu. I've done a few mangrove jack's ipa, mango pale alse.,etc but still not happy with the taste. Will give the gypsum a go too. Once again thanks for all your advice.
I've done a few mangrove jack's kits including the American IPA!
I fancied something a little more gentle on the bitterness for a change so I've just Kegged a mangrove jack's New Zealand pale ale about a week ago. It's quite a bit lower on the ibu's
Very pleased with the results, it's a nice light summer beer with a soft gentle bitterness!
I do treat my water with half a campden tablet for the chlorine doesn't make any difference to bitterness.
I made it up with 1 kg of muntons light dme.
IMG_20220426_081449.jpg
 
Hi all, I'm trying to reduce the bitter taste I seem to get for most of my home brews.
I've been there too - I am quite sensitive to hop bitterness and need to scale it back a bit in some recipes.

With kits you can't directly control the hop bill, but that's OK: you can achieve what you want by tweaking your water.

The thing you will need to change is the sulfate to chloride ratio (SO4:Cl) as this effects the flavour perception of bitterness versus maltiness (e.g. see this article).
To make your beer taste more malty / less bitter, you should aim to reduce the amount of sulphate in your water and/or increase the amount of chloride.
This isn't difficult to do - and generally involves just adding a little bit of calcium chloride which you can easily get online, but make sure it's 'food grade'.

As @AJA says, get hold of your water report and we will be able to tell you how much to add (normally for a 5 gallon batch it will only be a fraction of a teaspoon).

Note you probably do NOT want to add gypsum, as this will have the opposite effect and increase sulphates that will make your beer seem more bitter/hoppy (!!)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Calcium-Chloride-2kg-Dihydrate-Flakes/dp/B00DRPKLIG
Screenshot 2022-04-26 at 08.24.10.png
 
Thanks for all the advise here. Suspect that it's the ibu. I've done a few mangrove jack's ipa, mango pale alse.,etc but still not happy with the taste. Will give the gypsum a go too. Once again thanks for all your advice.
I would strongly advise that you do not add gypsum (at least, not unless you are also adding a larger amount of calcium chloride) because it will make your beer taste more bitter (see above)
 
If you have concerns over water treatment and are brewing extract kits I would recommend Pure Brew. It improved my extract brewing no end.

However if this is just an issue with Bitterness in the beer style, loads of other kits available with lower IBU. Happy Brewing
 
Reading this with interest. In the past, when I have brewed IPAs, I have generally added a bit of gypsum and a pinch of calcium chloride. Perhaps next time I'll lose the gypsum. I am in Wigan too, and as noted, the water is fairly soft.
 
Reading this with interest. In the past, when I have brewed IPAs, I have generally added a bit of gypsum and a pinch of calcium chloride. Perhaps next time I'll lose the gypsum. I am in Wigan too, and as noted, the water is fairly soft.
Mate - nothing wrong with using gypsum: the reason I recommended the OP against it is because they are trying to reduce the bitterness of their kit brews athumb..
 
Well funnily enough, my son, who has been very complimentary about most of my beers, has not taken to any American IPAs I've brewed (although I thought they were OK), complaining that they were 'too bitter'. I don't see it, but clearly some people are more sensitive to this than others.
 

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