Just a note on brewing city's water profiles. I think they should be taken with a grain of salt (no pun intended)... used as a resource to contribute information to create water profiles for specific styles, not to attempt to duplicate exactly. Most commercial breweries around the world treat their water in some way. One of the best examples of this is Dortmund. I believe it was Fix (Brewing Science and Practice) who stated that evidence suggests Dortmund brewers treat their water to be [practically] as soft as Pilsen.
merf642: Use one of the many tools here provided to come up with a water profile.
There are a few things you want to shoot for that will determine your overall profile
1: Residual Alkalainity for your beers SRM. This is an equation made by John Palmer that estimates the optimal pre-dough in RA for your beer based on your mash SRM. My spreadsheet and some others will show you your RA as well as optimal mash SRM based off your RA.
2: SO4:CL ratio. Depending upon the malty/bitter balance of your desired beer flavors you may want to have it more bitter focused (IIPAs) or towards malt focused (belgians, germans, etc). Again my spreadsheet helps calculate this automatically, as do many others.
3: A few minimums. You will want a minimum of 10 ppm magnesium for optimal yeast health (this could be post mash) and 50 ppm calcium for optimal floctuation (also post mash) and other than that you have no real "minimums" for your water profile. I shoot for these two minimums in my beer while accomplishing #1 and #2, and thats pretty much it.
Other things I keep in mind while developing my water profile are small things like how many salts I need to add to keep things similar, and to minimize chalk (calcium bicarbonate) additions to as low as possible due to its poor rate of dissolving. After that the optimal water profile for your beer is really based off YOUR beer, a "brown ale" water profile could be pretty dramatically different based off some of the fine details of what your "brown ale" consists of. Try one of the tools and put it together based on these key points and you'll be in good shape.
thanks for the info and pointers. I have looked at the Palmer spreedsheet and haven't quite nailed it. I do have ProMash and my water profile and I think that if I use the London profile it should work for a brown ale.
so for the ez spread sheet when I add lets say .5 grams to the mash it then adds .5 or so the the boil underneath. So am I correct in thinking that I need a total of 1 gram split between the two?
Quote:
Originally Posted by -TH-
The answer is YES you are absolutely correct!
Now as a side note, the latest version of the spreadsheet has a feature where you can uncheck a box if you don't want to add a given salt to the boil. For example, some people like to exclude Epsom salt from the boil because they only want it in the mash for pH reasons and they want to keep total sodium low. The spreadsheet also then shows you how your total water is affected by doing that.
Cheers!
I know these quotes answers my question but I want to make sure I have this straight.
So in EZ adjustment, if I enter 7 grams of gypsum for mash additions, it puts 7 grams in sparge additions. So similar to ThatGuyRyan, I add 7 grams to the mash and 7 grams to the boil for a total of 14 grams?
I do understand I can uncheck the box to keep it just mash additions but I wanted to make sure that when the box is checked, I add the mash and sparge addittion together to for my total amount when its all said and done.
You are correct but it's only if you have the same volumes entered in mash and sparge volumes. If you have 4 gallons in mash, and 8 gallons in sparge, a 7 gram mash addition would show a 14 gram boil addition.
People learn in different ways. Some can read a book and get it. Others need hand holding and a dialog for it to sink in. If we all shut down threads simply because it's been covered in Palmer's book, or on a podcast somewhere, might as well shut HBT down too.
THIS
I tinkered and futzed around with many spread sheets but the light shone on Marblehead when I used the one in ProMash.
thanks for clarifying things Bobby_M and great job on the videos. They really helped me start getting up to speed on salt additions.
Thanks to -TH- too for the EZ water calulator...BeerSmith wasn't as user friendly as I wanted when it came to salt additions.
I talked to a friend today who is brewing all grain using reverse osmosis water without any adjustments. I told him it is important to add minerals back to his water. My question is what would all-grain major styles (eg. RIS, pilsner, IPA, barleywine) taste like using reverse osmosis water without any adjustments?
wetherel,
You are correct, brewing All Grain beers with water that has 0 mineral content is not good. The lack of calcium and a proper pH means you get very poor enzymatic conversion in your mash and lots of other bad things like astringency and tannins. Additionally, the lack of chloride and sulfate additions will most likely leave the beer tasting flat and lifeless.
The optimal water profile depends on a great many things with the biggest ones being what your source water is and what your beers style and mash SRM is. Due to these variables and different ways to get there this wide collection of tools to help you figure out an optimal water profile exist because it does have a HUGE impact on the quality of your product. Like each style of beers recipe, each style of beer is also going to have its own unique optimal water profile, there is no one water profile that covers it all, nor is there one that comes even remotely close.
About a year or so ago I started making my spreadsheet to help me figure out what my mineral profile should be as I wasn't satisfied with what was available and I felt John Palmers spreadsheet, while technically very good, was very cumbersome to use. I feel the layout of my spreadsheet allows for easy tinkering of your water profile to get your mash Residual Alkalinity and the Chloride/Sulfate ratio optimized.
Linear Mode
