Citric acid or phosphoric acid? - Page 2

mabrungard · 01-09-2012, 01:02 PM

Thanks to AJ, Bru'n Water includes the full ability to assess the protonation potential of the acid used. So the issue of the triuprotic Citric acid is moot when using Bru'n Water.

The consistency of Bloomington water is fairly high since it comes from a decent sized reservoir. I see that the OP has been talking with the City to get the water quality, but something is a little off and should be resolved before putting too much faith in the water profile.

Bloomington water is primarily surface runoff and doesn't get too mineralized. So, its possible that the alkalinity is modest like the hardness is. That would suggest that mash acidification might not be needed for all beers. I do recommend that sparge water be acidified to bring the alkalinity a little lower. It won't take much acid.

I agree that the inclusion of other acids like citric, malic, or tartaric can be used to add nuances to the beer flavor that could be welcome. This should not be an issue for Bloomington water since the acid additions are likely small. It might be overbearing for brewers with high alkalinity and that would require experimentation and verification.

Enjoy!

**ajdelange** · 01-09-2012, 01:28 PM

Sorry that I confused you. There are various practices used for reporting water chemistry. For example a water that contains 20 mg/L calcium ion may say A) "Ca 20 mg/L" or it may say B) "Ca 20 ppm" or it may say C) "Ca 50 ppm as CaCO3". All of those mean the same thing. Problems arise when a report assumes that you understand that C is meant and says "Ca 50 ppm" and you don't understand that it means 50 ppm as CaCO3. This is confusing and people posting their water values often throw us for a loop when they misinterpret the report. Another big one, given that Ward Labs does not report the amount of sulfate in a sample but rather the amount of sulfur in the sulfate in the sample. If your sulfate is indeed 32 mg/L SO4-- ion then that is one thing but if it is mg/L "as sulfur" that means the sulfate concentration is 3 x 32 = 96 mg/L.

If you put one molecule of calcium chloride (CaCl2) into water it will separate into calcium ion with an electrical charge of +2 and two chloride ions each with an electrical charge of -1 so the total charge from the added material is +2 + 2*(-1) = 0. This is the case for anything else added to the water by you or anyone else. So if you take a water analysis like the one you posted and add up all the positive charges and negative charges they must come to 0. In your report they don't and there are various reasons for this. An obvious one would be that I interpret Ca and Mg ppm as ppm as CaCO3 when those values are actually meant to convey mg/L. The other is that sulfate as sulfur and sulfate as sulfate could be confused. In the usual case bicarbonate content is approximately 61/50 times alkalinity but in your case the pH is 9 and alkalinity and pH are numerically close to one another at that pH. What I meant to say was that in applying all the various assumptions about what your numbers could mean I was not able to come up with any which gave me a net charge of 0. In real water reports there are always errors so one never comes up with exactly 0 but in yours I got imbalances of 0.5 - 0.6 mEq/L and that's a lot.

Error in interpretation could be responsible. Error is transcription is possible. Error in the laboratory is possible. Another strong possibility is that this report came from a water authority. Often they report seasonal (or other) averages and/or do tests at different times (e.g. measure calcium on Mondays and sulfate on Thursdays). This results in imbalance. Bottom line is that there are errors in this report and it can only be relied upon to give you an approximate picture of the water.

The approximate picture is of a fairly low mineral water. You shouldn't really need to add anything to this water though many would recommend some calcium chloride (and that wouldn't hurt). You would, for most beers, need to add some acid to the mash in order to get the mash pH into the correct range. Citric acid would do and, as I've noted before, used to be incorporated in many home brew recipies. Lactic is more commonly used today and I have to assume that's because of flavor though lactic certainly has a flavor of its own. Probably the biggest convenience with lactic is that is available sprayed onto (or grown on) malt (called "acidulated malt" or "sauermalz") and this is a very convenient form indeed as 1% of grist weight as sauermalz seems to pretty consistently lower mash pH by 0.1.

There is a Primer in the stickies at the top of this topic that may be of help.

**Komodo** · 01-09-2012, 01:46 PM

Fantastic. That clears up much, and I will pursue a better clarification on my profile.

One final question. You said add acid "to the mash". Would there not be a benefit to doing an overall Ph adjustment from say 9 to 7 on the total water volume? This would have me putting Ph 7 into the mash, and having Ph 7 for the dunk sparge or boil or however I end up doing the process?

Update: accurate water profile coming . . .on the phone the woman asked what I wanted to know, when I said I was home brewing she said OOOHHH YEAH, I've made up a sheet just for you guys! I'l send it to you! Also, the sulfate question kinda threw her for a loop. She's checking into it.

Here it is. She said Ca is reported as CaO3:

Ph averages 9-9.2

Parameter Results (mg/l) Maximum Allowed (mg/l)
Alkalinity/Bicarbonate 30 No limit
Chloride 8.7 250 (secondary)
Sodium 7.5 No limit
Sulfates 32.5 250 (secondary)
Calcium 28 No limit
Hardness 44 No limit
Magnesium 3.9 No limit

**ajdelange** · 01-09-2012, 01:57 PM

I said in the mash and even put it in italics to emphasize that it is mash pH which needs to be controlled and because a popular means of doing it is to add acidulated malt to the mash. Beyond that, Primer, spreadsheets, calculators and recipes aside, the best way to determine the amount of amount of acid required is to make a test mash in which a sample of the grist is doughed in with the water to be used, the pH checked and additions of acid made as required to bring the mash to the proper pH. If you used acid in any form other than sauermalz you could, of course, add the amount determined in the test mash (scaled to the size of the full mash) to the water when doing the main brew and that would take the water pH wherever it takes it. The key concept here is that you don't care what pH the water ends up at. You do care what pH the mash ends up at when exposed to that water.

**Homercidal** · 01-09-2012, 04:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajdelange

I said in the mash and even put it in italics to emphasize that it is mash pH which needs to be controlled and because a popular means of doing it is to add acidulated malt to the mash. Beyond that, Primer, spreadsheets, calculators and recipes aside, the best way to determine the amount of amount of acid required is to make a test mash in which a sample of the grist is doughed in with the water to be used, the pH checked and additions of acid made as required to bring the mash to the proper pH. If you used acid in any form other than sauermalz you could, of course, add the amount determined in the test mash (scaled to the size of the full mash) to the water when doing the main brew and that would take the water pH wherever it takes it. The key concept here is that you don't care what pH the water ends up at. You do care what pH the mash ends up at when exposed to that water.

Along those thoughts, I have understood that MASH pH is the critical factor, but also the sparge pH is important if your water is highly alkaline like mine is.

I treat them separately, because after the first lauter, the pH rises. Sparging with highly alkaline water would promote tannin extraction. Therefore I treat the sparge simply to prevent this. For people with less alkalinity, the sparge pH is probably not important.

**ajdelange** · 01-09-2012, 04:11 PM

I suppose by analogy we could say that it is not the pH of the sparge water that is important but the pH of the collected wort at terminal gravity. Practically speaking though, as it's clear that runoff pH will never go above 6 if the sparge water pH is below 6, it is much less bother to acidify the sparge water to pH just below 6 than to repeatedly check the pH during collection. There is an alternative to adding acid and that it to add non alkaline (RO/DI) water to the available water.

mabrungard · 01-09-2012, 04:48 PM

The Bloomington profile converted to straight mg/L units is as follows:

Ca: 11.2
Mg: 3.9
Na:7.5
HCO3: 30
SO4: 32.5
Cl: 8.7

I wouldn't put much faith in the decimal values and rounding is OK. The report balances within 0.2 meq/L which is OK. This is a soft water that is characteristic of limited groundwater inflow. Additional Ca would be a good idea for this brewing water.

**ajdelange** · 01-09-2012, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Komodo

Also, the sulfate question kinda threw her for a loop. She's checking into it.

Not surprised. It threw me for a loop for a long time. Ward Labs is, AFAIK, the only lab that reports sulfate that way. One of the things I really like about Ward Labs is that they give total anion and cation charge at the head of the report. One might wish those numbers were closer to one another than they usually are but what do you want for 25 bucks? But I could never get the numbers they reported for any of the many reports I looked at - all posted here and in other forums. Then they started sending out reports by e-mail and one guy cut and pasted his e-mail so that the telltale -S in SO4-S came across and the light came on. Someone subsequently called Ward Labs and verified that they are indeed reporting "as Sulfur". They do the same for Nitrate (i.e. "as Nitrogen") and I'm sure the reason for it is that they serve the agricultural industry primarily where the concern is how many pounds of nitrogen per acre, how many pounds of sulfur...

I'd tell that nice lady not to worry about it. A water authority will be following APHA/ AWWA protocols and would not report "as sulfur".

**Komodo** · 01-10-2012, 03:19 AM

Well, I did tell her not to worry...then she told me she had just received a homebrew kit as a gift! Let the worrying begin!! LOL