Oktoberfest Water Numbers

I'm brewing an Oktoberfest next week, and have fairly soft water so planning on using 100% distilled and adjusting the water up to the proper chemical levels per the EZ_water_calculator.

The recipe calls for:
5 lbs of Pils malt
5 lbs of Munich
1 lb of Munich Dark
0.5 lbs of Caramunich 46 SRM
and I am adding one ounce of Chocolate malt to up the color a little.

Mash and mash out calls for 6.61 gallons. Sparge is 2.53 gallons.

Right now my salt additions are:
Calcium Chloride 7 grams mash, 2.7 sparge
Epson Salt 4 and 1.5
Baking Soda 2 and 0

This gives me final numbers of:
PH 5.52
Effective Alkalinity 48
Residential Alkalinity -16
Calcium 76
Magnesium 15
Sodium 16
Chloride 135
Sulfate 62
Chloride to Sulfate Ratio: 2.17

Long story short, does that look like good numbers for brewing an Oktoberfest?

Listened to the Brewing Network show on the style and they recommended no gypsum, calcium level between 50-100 and low sulfate. They also said the water should be medium carbonate between 150-300, how do you determine that?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

jdauria said:

I'm brewing an Oktoberfest next week, and have fairly soft water

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Actually, very soft water makes a very nice O'fest. Just add enough CaCl2 to get the calcium to around 35 mg/L.

jdauria said:

...so planning on using 100% distilled and adjusting the water up to the proper chemical levels per the EZ_water_calculator.

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That works too. Again, add enough CaCl2 to get to about 35 mg/L. Don't add any CaSO4.

jdauria said:

The recipe calls for:
5 lbs of Pils malt
5 lbs of Munich
1 lb of Munich Dark
0.5 lbs of Caramunich 46 SRM
and I am adding one ounce of Chocolate malt to up the color a little.

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You should have plenty of color without the chocolate malt. If you want more I'd use a bit of Sinamar in preference to black malt.

jdauria said:

Right now my salt additions are:
Calcium Chloride 7 grams mash, 2.7 sparge
Epson Salt 4 and 1.5
Baking Soda 2 and 0

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Skip the baking soda. It will only add alkalinity which will pull the mash pH high. You will need to pull the pH low with some sauermalz. It is best to check mash pH where colored malts are used. It may also be wise to do a test mash prior to brew day to see how much acid malt you will need. Probably 2% of grist.

jdauria said:

Listened to the Brewing Network show on the style and they recommended no gypsum, calcium level between 50-100 and low sulfate.

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That's all spot on.

jdauria said:

They also said the water should be medium carbonate between 150-300, how do you determine that?

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John Palmer used to advocate alkalinity levels determined by the color of the beer. This level of alkalinity would not be beneficial to the beer at all. It would pull mash pH high and you will need (most probably) to pull it lower. You do not need that level of alkalinity for this grain bill in all probability but as malts vary in acid content and you are using Munich I and II there is a chance that you may need some. There is a greater chance that you will need sauermalz.

Your mash water seems too much, 4.25 gal for 11.5625# of grain gives 1.47 qt/lb.

I'd do 0.60 grams of CaCl2 for each gallon of water you prepare. End water profile with 100% distilled water:

Ca: 43 ppm
Mg: 0 ppm
Na: 0 ppm
Cl: 76 ppm
SO4: 0 ppm

You would need from 0 - 2 oz of acid malt added to your mash, probably would do 0 oz and check pH with an accurate and calibrated meter if possible.

Thanks for the info! I am still clueless on water chemistry! Use the EZ_water spreadsheet and just adjust everything until all numbers in the suggested range and ratio is right for style!

I do have a mash ratio of 1.5 qt. per gallon, which is around 4.75 gallons...then a mash out too. I usually start my boil at 7.5-8 gallons due to my boil off and cooling loss experience. Need a PH meter, that's my next buy.

Now if I can get some yeast! Using White Labs 833, German Bock...just got 2 vials at brew shop, got home and realized it's 3 months old and only has a 29% viability per Mr. Malty. So much for starter starting today, need 3 more vials (for 2L starter) per Jamil's site! Will have to go back tomorrow and see what they have left!

I'm brewing this style soon as well and planning things out. Just started reading the recent "Water" book (nice forward AJ!) but won't be finished with it before planned brew day so searching here for info on building my own water. I have terrible water in FL, and have an RO system and test report on it. I have seen comments about carbonate levels, but is my understanding that it only makes it more difficult to properly acidify the mash (more acidulated malt or straight acid additions needed), so why add any at all? My RO water is very low in Carbonates, as should be expected. Recent "style guideline" article in BYO also advocates adding chalk to the mash 1 tsp per 5 gallons if memory serves. For folks with RO water this seems like its going to be more a hindrance than help. Also, I note the value of 35mg/L Aj recommended for Ca level. I have thought to shoot for 50 minimum.

I think I'll fiddle a bit with my the water preparation tool I like best and see where that gets me, with just using CaCl2 to get me to 35 mg/L calcium. I know that it is going to warn me that 50 is a better place to be. The rest of the levels are all going to be pretty close to zero except the Cl of course. Just wondering why AJ recommends only 35? To keep the CL down and the SO near zero is my guess.

Anyways, thanks for any help offered. By the way to the OP, what did you end up doing and how did it turn out?

TD

The problem is that brewers look at the water profiles from those historic brewing cities like Munich and think that this is the profile needed to brew styles that originated in that location. They don't understand that the brewers actually did a number of things to the water and their process to correct or overcome the raw water. You can read about what Munich brewers did to their water in the article on Bavarian water in Zymurgy.

With that said, there is no reason to add alkalinity to a O'fest mash water. The take away message is that low mineralization and low alkalinity are what the treated Munich water actually was for most brewing. Starting with RO water or distilled water and adding a bit of calcium chloride and maybe a touch of gypsum is all you need. There is a chance that a bit of acid will also be needed in the mash. That will put your water in the right ballpark to allow your brewing to create a great beer!

TrickyDick said:

Just wondering why AJ recommends only 35? To keep the CL down and the SO near zero is my guess.

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Munich water is, after decarbonation, pretty much devoid of anything so my argument would be that you would want to brew a Munich beer with pretty soft water. I found by experimenting (with the experiments motivated by the desire to avoid any further experience with the biological forms of calcium oxalate) with higher levels of calcium chloride that what one would find in, for example, Plzen water, that the extra chloride benefited the beer and so began experimenting with CaCl2 additions that led to well less than 50 mg/L Ca++ but appreciably more than Plzen levels.

Roger the SO4 comment. We usually make these beers with noble hops and so want as low a sulfate level as we can get.

Wow. Two experts both in agreement! Appreciate the advice. AJ, you'll have to read about how you can acidify your own biological calcium oxalate solution to limit precipitation! No fun I'm sure!
That said, looks like I'm going to use just enough CaCl2 to get my Ca to 35 as advised. I'll make up any necessary pH with some acid malt and/or phosphoric acid guided by Martin's spreadsheet.


As an aside, I had been planning to make a concentrated wort boiled then diluted to working strength for two beers and brew to a lower IBU than desired for the Oktoberfest half, making up the IBUs with Isomerized Alpha Hop Extract after fermentation. Reason was that the other beer half was for a sour beer and IBUs too high. Ultimately, I decided against that, and going to brew same wort, but do separate boils instead - My HLT gets to grow up and do double duty that day.

So my question then as regards this plan, when adding water to the two beers at two points: one is after the mash, water added in the boil kettle, the other is in the fermenter (to adjust % ABV and avoid having boilovers), should I treat ALL this pre-fermentation water in the same manner as the mash water? I'm thinking the answer is of course yes.

Thanks! You guys are a great.

TD

I think doing all the water the same way is the easiest but you don't have to do that if you want to try to keep track of ion concentrations in the finished wort. I doubt this is worth doing as your response to flavor ions is probably, as is the case with most perceptions, governed by geometric rather than arithmetic relationships i.e. the JND (just noticeable difference) is probably based on percentages for example a doubling of sulfate content rather than an increase of, say, 50 mg/L.

ajdelange said:

I found by experimenting (with the experiments motivated by the desire to avoid any further experience with the biological forms of calcium oxalate) .

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AJ, I enjoyed the fact that you made this response to TrickyDick! That is a compounded message!

Biological forms of calcium oxalate = kidney stones.

Well tonight I plugged in my malts into Martin's spreadsheet.

Using a revised version of the grist for the popular "OktoberFast Ale" recipe on HBT but proportions changed, and added one additional malt - approximately 10% specialty malt which includes: Aromatic, C-20, C-40, Carapils, Melanoidin, CaraAroma. The last one was mostly to bump the color a tad. The rest is an even split of Munich, Pils, and Vienna.

What's a mystery to me is what to call all of these in the SS. I suppose they (the specialty malts) are all crystal type malts, perhaps except the carapils. I think the CaraAroma and Melanoidin malt might be roasted or somewhere between roasted and crystal. Regardless of which type I select, it still results in acceptable mash pH. Just wondering technically where those malts fall and if there is a rule of thumb for classification.

My treated water profile is: Ca-38, Na-2, Cl-64.8, HCO3-4. This is using my RO plus 0.5g/gallon CaCl2. remaining ions are close to zero. Martin's SS predicts 5.37 mash pH.

I'll be using a bit of yeast nutrient in the boil to possibly add Mg (which I believe is contains) for yeast health during fermentation.

I'm a bit unsure how to use Martin's sparge acidification part of the SS - the pH of the starting water would be affected by mineral additions I would think. The starting pH is really the only confusing part of that page. Regardless, looks as though my RO water is so low in carbonates, that its cell turns green indicating that no acidification is necessary, even though starting pH is 8.3.

So this is what I'm planning to go with unless I hear otherwise.

Thanks!
TD

TrickyDick said:

What's a mystery to me is what to call all of these in the SS. I suppose they (the specialty malts) are all crystal type malts, perhaps except the carapils. I think the CaraAroma and Melanoidin malt might be roasted or somewhere between roasted and crystal. Regardless of which type I select, it still results in acceptable mash pH. Just wondering technically where those malts fall and if there is a rule of thumb for classification.

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Therein lies the problem. In order for the program to accurately predict mash pH it must know the details of the titration curve for each malt. Your CaraAroma and your Melanoidin may bear but passing resemblance to whatever the implicit titration parameters assumed by the program are when you specify one of these malts. I've seen discussions in which people who get pH estimates that are way off are advised that this is because they entered malt 'A' as 'X' when the should have called it 'Y'. Change X to Y, they are told, and the program works fine. And that is a good approach. If you discover by actual measurement that your 'A' malt effectively has 'Y' malt parameters you can, clearly, enter the amount of 'A' as 'Y' in the future and get better results. All the spreadsheets except one (AFAIK) have this property and the one requires the actual malt parameters which you would have no way of getting unless the maltsters were to measure them for you and include it as part of their specs.

My treated water profile is: Ca-38, Na-2, Cl-64.8, HCO3-4. This is using my RO plus 0.5g/gallon CaCl2. remaining ions are close to zero. Martin's SS predicts 5.37 mash pH.

TrickyDick said:

I'll be using a bit of yeast nutrient in the boil to possibly add Mg (which I believe is contains) for yeast health during fermentation.

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You won't need any Mg as malt contains plenty but these nutrients usually contain nitrogen as DAP or urea (neither of which you would need if your wort contains proper levels of FAN) and some zinc of which a bit may be a help.

TrickyDick said:

I'm a bit unsure how to use Martin's sparge acidification part of the SS - the pH of the starting water would be affected by mineral additions I would think. The starting pH is really the only confusing part of that page. Regardless, looks as though my RO water is so low in carbonates, that its cell turns green indicating that no acidification is necessary, even though starting pH is 8.3.

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RO water is low in alkalinity. If it is really pure it will have alkalinity (to pH 4.4) of about 2 with pH 6 and bicarbonate of about 1 mg/L. pH 8.3 suggests that either your RO system has passed a lot of bicarbonate or that you have added some (or that your CaCl2 contains a fair amount of Ca(OH)2 which it sometimes does). If the high pH comes from bicarbonate it is inconsistent with bicarbonate at the 4 mg level.

Let's just assume that your alkalinity (that's what we care about for these calculations, not bicarbonate) is less that 2 ppm as CaCO3 (the alkalinity of pure water). Then the beginning pH does not matter as we need to add very little (effectively 0) acid to bring it to sparge pH.

TrickyDick said:

So this is what I'm planning to go with unless I hear otherwise.

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The only other thing you need to do is stop worrying about sparge acidification.

TrickyDick said:

Anyways, thanks for any help offered. By the way to the OP, what did you end up doing and how did it turn out?

TD

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I ended up using distilled and building up, will have to check my notebook when I am home and see what my addition numbers were finally...but the beer came out great, was spot on for style and won my old homebrew club's Oktoberfest competition.