Calcium chloride vs NaCl for flavor contribution

Hey everyone,

Just wondering if calcium chloride can be used instead of salt for flavor contribution. I understand its main purpose is in the mash to increase hardness and reduce RA, while plain old salt is for rounding out flavors and has noting to do with mash chemistry. I just read that calcium chloride, if tasted, has a very strong saltiness to it. Question is, why bother with salt at all then? Will calcium chloride round out flavors just the same, while removing evil sodium from equation?

Thanks in advance.

Basically, yes. Calcium chloride also adds calcium instead of sodium. Win/win. AJ has talked about this quite a bit.

Both AJ and I advocate the inclusion of minor flavor ion content to make beer taste better. Ion-free water does not create the most pleasing beer flavor. AJ is a fan of chloride and foe of sulfate. I see benefit in both ions.

Using calcium chloride can make more sense in brewing since a small amount of calcium has some benefit in brewing. The sodium from sodium chloride doesn't provide much benefit, but can add flavor when used at low levels. I don't agree that sodium use in brewing is evil. In some styles, it is a great benefit. Don't be afraid of using salt...just don't raise the sodium level too high.

I would just like to add that I am a foe of sulfate as a matter of personal taste and that I recognize that many people like its effects. I do not try to discourage people from using sulfate. I do encourage them to be sure they like it before they start using it though. IOW I will often encourage them to brew a beer without it at first and then with it to see if the addition represents an improvement for them.

Now as for the CaCl2 vs NaCl question. In taste the result often depends on the synergism of different elements (I mean flavor elements here e.g. sulfate ion and isomerized hop acid for example though elements in the periodic table entry sense, in this case sodium and chloride, would certainly be flavor elements too). If calcium chloride tasted the same as sodium chloride we'd use calcium chloride on our food and the cardiologists could become dermatologists. Calcium seems to serve as a vector for sulfate or chloride, as you prefer, without contributing much flavor of its own. Calcium chloride solutions don't taste nearly as 'salty' as sodium chloride solutions nor do sodium sulfate solutions so clearly there is something going on (in our palates) between sodium and chloride. OTOH chloride, whether it comes from calcium chloride or sodium chloride does seem to add something positive to beer. If the source is sodium chloride the beer will start to taste salty at a lower chloride level than if calcium chloride is used. This is my opinion. I don't have any data to back it up. So I'd say use calcium chloride unless you want a bit of salty tang in which case some, or all of the chloride could come from calcium.

mabrungard said:

Both AJ and I advocate the inclusion of minor flavor ion content to make beer taste better. Ion-free water does not create the most pleasing beer flavor. AJ is a fan of chloride and foe of sulfate. I see benefit in both ions.

Using calcium chloride can make more sense in brewing since a small amount of calcium has some benefit in brewing. The sodium from sodium chloride doesn't provide much benefit, but can add flavor when used at low levels. I don't agree that sodium use in brewing is evil. In some styles, it is a great benefit. Don't be afraid of using salt...just don't raise the sodium level too high.

Click to expand...

Thanks everyone. Mabrungard - does sulphate provide a flavor contribution? If so, could you describe it? I know of the sulphate to chloride ratio debate (i.e.: the effects on maltiness vs hop character). Unsure if you are referencing this.

ajdelange said:

I would just like to add that I am a foe of sulfate as a matter of personal taste and that I recognize that many people like its effects. I do not try to discourage people from using sulfate. I do encourage them to be sure they like it before they start using it though. IOW I will often encourage them to brew a beer without it at first and then with it to see if the addition represents an improvement for them.

Now as for the CaCl2 vs NaCl question. In taste the result often depends on the synergism of different elements (I mean flavor elements here e.g. sulfate ion and isomerized hop acid for example though elements in the periodic table entry sense, in this case sodium and chloride, would certainly be flavor elements too). If calcium chloride tasted the same as sodium chloride we'd use calcium chloride on our food and the cardiologists could become dermatologists. Calcium seems to serve as a vector for sulfate or chloride, as you prefer, without contributing much flavor of its own. Calcium chloride solutions don't taste nearly as 'salty' as sodium chloride solutions nor do sodium sulfate solutions so clearly there is something going on (in our palates) between sodium and chloride. OTOH chloride, whether it comes from calcium chloride or sodium chloride does seem to add something positive to beer. If the source is sodium chloride the beer will start to taste salty at a lower chloride level than if calcium chloride is used. This is my opinion. I don't have any data to back it up. So I'd say use calcium chloride unless you want a bit of salty tang in which case some, or all of the chloride could come from calcium.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'll stick with calcium chloride as you suggest. I might make small solutions of CaCl2 and NaCl to compare saltiness and flavor. Sounds a bit nerdy I know. I read somewhere we can't substitute CaCl2 for salt in the same quantities (food levels) because it causes gut reactions. I won't be testing this out though! Haha

rhys333 said:

Thanks everyone. Mabrungard - does sulphate provide a flavor contribution? If so, could you describe it? I know of the sulphate to chloride ratio debate (i.e.: the effects on maltiness vs hop character). Unsure if you are referencing this.

Click to expand...

Taste? Hmm, not so much taste. However it does dry the palate and I feel that it tends to make the beer finish dryer. It's that dryness that enables the hopping and bittering to come through more strongly to the drinker.

AJ, maybe this dryness is stripping some of the finishing malt flavor and possibly that is a contributor to the aspects you dislike with sulfate? I take it that with a preference for the fullness produced by chloride, maybe the malt flavor is not so easily stripped off the hopping and that may be why it's more pleasing to your tastes? Do you feel there is a 'flavor' to sulfate in beers? I'm not sure that I've seen a brewing text mention a flavor to sulfate.

Clearly taste is a very complicated subject. Does sulfate have a flavor? Does chloride? Does sodium? I'm not really sure. Does sodium chloride? Yes it certainly does and we all know what it is. But what does sulfate taste like? We ought to be able to figure that out by tasting sodium sulfate and sodium bicarbonate, for example. We presumably are tasting sodium in both so the difference in flavor between the sulfate and the bicarbonate must be due to the difference in flavor between bicarbonate and sulfate. But they both taste pretty much the same and not very much like sodium chloride. Now conversely if we put any chloride salt, including sodium, into our beer the beer seems fuller bodied and sweeter. This we (or at least I) attribute to some sort of synergism in our sensory system (not in the kettle or the beer) between sugars, proteins, and melanoidins. Similarly if we add sulfate in any form (sulfuric acid, sodium sulfate or gypsum) then the hops are perceived as being more harshly bitter. Again I believe it to be a synergism. I don't pretend to understand it but consider short wavelength (blue) light which looks one way and long wavelength (red) light which has an entirely different appearance. Mix them and you see purple (there is no wavelength of visible light which looks purple) which doesn't look either red or blue. The new color is formed in our sensory system. I'd posit that it is something like that.


I don't like purple. That's a matter of personal taste. I don't like what sulfate does to hops bitterness. That's a matter of personal taste too. I don't necessarily dislike sulfate because I don't think it has much of a flavor other than a sort of mineral taste which is, even in highly gypseous water, rather faint compared to its effects on hops.

A final comment: the reason we might choose to use calcium chloride and calcium sulfate as opposed to the sodium salts is that, particularly with the chloride, it doesn't take that much sodium to get to the point where the direct synergism between sodium and chloride is noticeable to the point that it overwhelms the synergism between malt flavors and chloride - the beer tastes salty.