Water too fail for stouts...

My stouts suck. My pales/IPA's are awesome. I've tried messing around with grist bills (lowering roast barley etc) and they still suck.

So... had a look at water and used the EZ water calc.

My chloride:sulphate ratio is a miserable 0.57

Calcium is 14.3mg/l (should be 30)
Sodium is 10.6mg/l (should be 12)
Magnesium is 2.9mg/l (should be 10)
Chloride is 18.5? (should be 200? Although Palmer states 0-250)
Sulphate is 32.2 (should be 120)

The 'should be' figures are from a guide I've got, I appreciate Palmer may have slightly different numbers, but you get the idea!

Also I'm not sure on the chloride figure, I think it's right (http://www.ywonline.co.uk/web/WQZ.nsf/0/9876117D69753E4B802574FD003A0CBC/$file/Loxley%202004%20WSZ.pdf) in the 'mean' column on there, although the 'std' column says 250. duh.

Any comments? My main problem with my stouts is a complete lack of roasty flavour and a strange, maybe slightly sour 'twang'. The EZ calc is also showing my mash pH may be a little on the high side.

Forget about the chloride/sulphate ratio you need to look at alkalinity.

That's like the only thing the report doesn't have.

Unless you're talking pH? Then it's just over 8 I think.

ChillWill said:

Unless you're talking pH? Then it's just over 8 I think.

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I don`t know a heck of a lot about water adjustment, but the pH of the water don`t matter much. It`s the pH of the mash that matters and the minerals that buffer the mash so the pH changes to suit your needs.

If the ionic concentrations are accurate and the remaining component needed to balance the ions is alkalinity, then the indication is that the alkalinity is around 13 ppm and the Residual Alkalinity is around zero. Its no wonder the PA and IPA are good and the stouts are not. Alkalinity is absolutely required (even if AJ says its not) to produce good dark beers. Your results and every other brewer in those historic dark beer brewing centers attest to that requirement. You will need to add alkalinity when brewing those darker beers. Just be careful when adding alkalinity. There are calculators that will cause you to overdose with alkalinity. That is detrimental to beer flavor. Please check out Bru'n Water for better guidance on when and how to increase alkalinity in your brewing water.

As Big Ed mentions, forget the chloride sulfate ratio. It is almost meaningless. In addition, forget the range that Palmer gives for chloride. Chloride should always be kept below 100 ppm and if your water has elevated sulfate the chloride level should be even lower. Again, read Bru'n Water to learn more about the proper dosage and use of chloride and sulfate in brewing water.

By the way, that raw water profile listed above is a pretty good starting point. You should plan on bringing up the calcium level to 40 or 50 ppm under most conditions. That is very helpful for yeast performance and beer clarification.

Ok. Well I looked at the EZ spread sheet and it looked like adjusting the minerals could both put them into spec and sort the ph, even though that's only slightly out.

Just wondered if there was anything obviously wrong with the water, or if any of you have had similar issues.

Thanks mabrungard!

I watched an experiment where yeast was in ro water and it didn't floc until calcium was added, then it dropped like a stone!

I'd just add some baking soda and chalk with your water. Just dont over do it. If you feel that is lacking in some area, then tweak it next time.

My water is close to yours (have thread below yours with numbers) and my stouts are about the same. Have the same crappy flavor lack of roastiness and twang. I am really glad i found this thread.

mabrungard said:

Alkalinity is absolutely required (even if AJ says its not) to produce good dark beers.

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One should absolutely never say absolutely in brewing but I can make an exception here. Martin's assertion is absolutely incorrect. Rather than just state that I will present the evidence and let the reader decide.

First - personal brewing experience: I brew Ashton Lewis's Irish Stout recipe from Michael Lewis's monograph in the AHA series. With water of RA of about 55 the mash pH usually comes in at 5.55. I'd like it a little lower so the last time I brewed it (it's still in the fermenter) I cut well water with RO water to bring the RA down to about 33 (enough to raise pH 0.06 relative to DI water i.e. if I'd used straight RO the mash pH would be 0.06 lower). The pH was actually at 5.6 this time and so I had to add acid to get it down to the more usual 5.5 (and I'd like to go lower still). The SRM for this beer is 67.5 - about what it usually measures.

Second - Laboratory experiments: The Lewis recipe uses pale ale malt, roast barley and flaked barley. In distilled water test mashes using varying percentages of roast barley it took 30% to get the pH down to 5.2 (all pH measurements at room temperature. The Lewis recipe uses 10%.

Third - reported brewing experience of others: I have seen multiple reports here and on other forums of brewers having experiences similar to mine.

Thus if OP cut back on the roast barley in his stout it is entirely possible that the beer was insipid because the pH was too high. Dull flavors are symptomatic of high pH. Of course cutting back on the roast barley both reduces the source of the roasty flavors and increases mash pH.

Notice that I say "possible". It is no more valid for me to declare that my experiences and lab work cover OP's situation than it is for Martin to say that his do. The information given suggests a high pH problem but the only way to know what is really going on is to measure. In this last stout I reduced alkalinity to decrease mash pH but it increased relative to previous batches of this recipe. Obviously that is because this particular lot of roast barley had less titratable acidity than it usually does (even though from the same supplier). Or the base malt might have had a higher DI water mash pH. Or both. You absolutely (OK - there's another exception) cannot predict what the effects of all these variabilities will be. The pH meter really is essential here.

Another thing that might help OP is adding a bit less than half a tsp of calcium chloride (1.9 grams) to each 5 gallons treated. The would get the calcium up (which is desirable in most beers) but it is really the chloride that would be of benefit here.

Thanks for clearing that up! I see that you are absolutely correct that alkalinity is required for brewing a dark beer. As noted above, the RA of 55 indicates a modest alkalinity in that brewing water and the modest mash pH is in line with what I would expect. Contrast that result with the almost absent alkalinity in the OP's water and its clear that in that case, the poor results could be expected.

Again AJ is correct that I shouldn't have used 'absolutely' in my original post. He is correct that you can brew a dark beer with low alkalinity water. But to brew a good dark beer, you absolutely have to have sufficent alkalinity in the brewing water to produce proper mashing conditions (as AJ pointed out).

Thank you again for correcting me!

I think the key word here is "sufficient". One must have sufficient alkalinity to balance the acid. Of course one also must have sufficient acid to balance the alkalinity. "Balance" here does not mean neutralize (pH 7) but rather means sufficient extra acid to hold the pH in the desired range (5.4-ish).

Dark malts obviously supply some of that acid - that's why they were used originally. In their original use they were, of course, used to balance the alkalinity of the available water. Today we use them for flavor, color and style matching and it is possible that we will use them with water less alkaline than the water that caused the original brewers to use them. An imbalance towards the acid side is then possible and alkali would be required. But this is not always by any means the case. This is all a roundabout push for pH measurements (it always is from me). Especially if you are doing dark beers. You could probably get away without doing them if brewing only light beers but, as I hope this discussion has pointed out, you really need them for the dark styles.

I'll note again that if I had used pure RO water in this last Lewis stout my pH would probably have come in at 5.54 rather than 5.6 and I probably would not have added acid (I guess that would have to be a Lewis acid - bad chemist joke). That's what I was hoping for. If I had goosed the calcium I might have gotten it lower still but it would take a lot of calcium to move me down to say 5.45.

Question:
There are RA values stated throughout this thread, do they include the acid/acidulated malt added to any of these mashes?,or just water & mash salt additions?

In my posts they are just for the water.

Thanks for your responses everyone!

mabrungard - I've seen on another forum someone who lives in the area stating Alkalinity to be around 13-14 as you said it would probably be.

I work in a brewery 17 miles from where I live (so I assume the water is pretty much the same), so today went and had a look at what salts were being added to the water there and if they did anything for the mash pH. for a couple of different beers. The brewers weren't sure if it was the problem, but I'd guess they've never made beer without adding salts, and I'm pretty sure it's not my grain bill, it's the same problem on a 13% dark/roasted malt/barley and a 7%, hardly OTT dark grains! I believe it was worse on the higher % btw.

For a 56IBU IPA they were adding Calcium Sulphate (Gypsum) and Calcium Chloride (about 2.5 times more CaSO4 than CaCl2)

For an oatmeal stout they were adding Calcium Chloride and Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda) at a ratio of about 5:1 CaCl2:NaHCO3

So yeah, it's looking like they're adding calcium! I think the Caclium sulphate is to bring out the hops (hence featuring in the IPA), and I guess they add Baking soda to increase alkalinity without sticking in too much calcium in there by using just CaCl2

They have some acidulated malt they said I could have as they don't actually use it.

I looked at the mash pH they were measuring, think it was a fairly standard 5.2-5.6 although I can't actually remember (would have remembered if it was outside this range).

Edit: Just seen CaS04 and CaCl2 lower mash pH. So maybe that's why it features in there (I believe many other local breweries use these salts as well).

Interesting stuff! Can you post back your own findings?

Your stout RA of 55 is water, no salt additions?

I'm just curious becuase I've run a number of darker beers through this the EZ calculator and have been zeroing fields now to see what the RA values are for just the water used. RA's of 40-60 seem to be pretty common for my spreadsheets, excluding salt and acid additions.

I'll make sure I do, although it may be a couple of weeks until I brew again (and then obviously it'll be a while until it's ready to compare).

Also, I seem to recall munich making an appearance in our darker beers which is quite acidic (not sure what % they use). So... it's a case of drop the mash pH AND increase residual alkalinity?

ChillWill said:

So... it's a case of drop the mash pH AND increase residual alkalinity?

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No, it's a case of getting the pH right. This may require adding acid (which would lower RA if added to the water) or alkali (which would raise the RA if added to the water). Which of these you need to do depends on the relative titratable acidity of the grist (which you will not know unless you measure it and there is little point in doing that as it is easier to measure the pH of the mash) and the titratable basicity (I made up that word) of the water which is the alkalinity.

DSmith said:

Your stout RA of 55 is water, no salt additions?

I'm just curious becuase I've run a number of darker beers through this the EZ calculator and have been zeroing fields now to see what the RA values are for just the water used. RA's of 40-60 seem to be pretty common for my spreadsheets, excluding salt and acid additions.

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My water runs calcium hardness of about 60 and magnesium hardness of about 50 for an effective hardness of (60 + 50/2) = 85 ppm as CaCO3. The alkalinity is about 80 so the RA is 80 - 85/3.5 = 55. As my hardness and alkalinity numbers are pretty typical of water available along the eastern seaboard and elsewhere in the US my RA is pretty typical too.

As you can see from the example numbers increasing alkalinity by 1 ppm as CaCO3 increases RA by 1 ppm as CaCO3 whereas it takes 3.5 ppm as CaCO3 calcium or 7 ppm as CaCO3 magnesium to lower it by 1 ppm as CaCO3.

AJ - what would you consider an ideal mash pH for darker beers, and what would be too high? And also, could I take a mash sample to work and stick it in the pH meter the day after brewing or does it need to be straight out the mash? I'll have another look at work at what pH levels they were reporting some point this week and report back.

Also you suggested Calcium chloride addition as a starting point, is it the 'chloride' part that adds acidity?

So Martin is saying RA is important, AJ is saying pH is important? Can you have a RA of say 30 with a pH of 5.6 or lower? (or could I with my water?)

I don't usually follow Palmer by the way, but according to this chart:
http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f82.gif

ph 5.8-6 is ideal for really dark beers, although this seems very high to me?

ChillWill said:

AJ - what would you consider an ideal mash pH for darker beers, and what would be too high?

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Often when people ask that question I tell them about a conference I attended in Belgium a few years back titled "The pH Paradox" with the paradox being that low pH is good for some things and high for others such that there is no ideal. But I'll throw out some numbers anyway. I think perhaps 4-5 for ales and maybe 4.5 - 5.5 for lagers. But these are my personal impressions based on my brewing experience, my reading etc. They are not hard and fast numbers by any means. IOW if you brew a beer with a mash pH of 5.6 it could very well be good beer. If you do one with a pH of 5.8 or 6 it might not be.

In the last analysis mash pH is a parameter like any other and you can tune it as you can any other to get what suits you best. I think, for example, that Martin prefers a beer made with a higher mash pH than I do.

ChillWill said:

And also, could I take a mash sample to work and stick it in the pH meter the day after brewing or does it need to be straight out the mash?

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I suppose so but I'm not too comfortable with that idea. pH changes over time as the slow reactions complete (or go as far as they are going to go) and there is always the danger that wild yeast will take hold and have enough time (over night) to drop the pH or that lactic acid bacteria (on the malt husks) might do the same thing. If you are going to try this I'd put the sample in the freezer to try to hold wild yeasts and lactos at bay.

ChillWill said:

Also you suggested Calcium chloride addition as a starting point, is it the 'chloride' part that adds acidity?

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The chloride adds body, roundess, a certain sense of sweetness and generally just makes beer taste better. Up, obviously, to the point where it makes it taste salty. The calcium reacts with phosphate from the malt precipitating hyrdoxyl appatite and in the process, producing some hydrogen ions (acid).

ChillWill said:

So Martin is saying RA is important, AJ is saying pH is important?

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It is the pH that is important. RA is a tool invented to help brewers assess the potential effects of their water on pH. Home brewers attach a lot more significance to RA than was ever intended. It is for comparing waters.

ChillWill said:

Can you have a RA of say 30 with a pH of 5.6 or lower? (or could I with my water?)

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Yes. If you add 216 mg sodium bicarbonate, 205 mg of hydrochloric acid (i.e. the amount of 28 Be' acid required to get 205 mg of HCl -8.6 ml) 39 mg slaked lime and 158 mg sodium carbonate to a liter of DI water you would get pH 5.6 and RA of 30 but CO2 would escape over time and the pH would rise. The point being that alkalinity and thus RA and pH are not independent of one another, but one can choose within some limits independent values for these and synthesize the water. Don't see the point in doing that here though.

ChillWill said:

I don't usually follow Palmer by the way, but according to this chart:
http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f82.gif

ph 5.8-6 is ideal for really dark beers, although this seems very high to me?

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I don't think that's what the nomograph is trying to tell you. I think it is saying that if you have high RA you will have high mash pH. The thing to do about that, it implies, is to brew a dark beer.

Wow, thanks for the replies! It's certainly a lot to consider.

I'll check what pH the brewery is hitting with it's fairly basic salt additions (how much would extract efficiency effect pH?) I'm hitting 65-70%, the brewery something in the region of 95% iirc.

Maybe I should start off with replicating the additions made by the brewery and your suggestion of adding CaCl2, and maybe a small amount of baking soda. Should I also treat sparge water? At least that'll get me a starting point and I can go from there.

ChillWill said:

(how much would extract efficiency effect pH?) I'm hitting 65-70%, the brewery something in the region of 95% iirc.

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It's the other way around. pH effects efficiency. The whole reason for worrying pH is that each of the multiple enzymes involved in mashing has an optimum temperature and pH - these are the conditions under which the enzyme converts whatever it is good at converting most efficiently.

ChillWill said:

Maybe I should start off with replicating the additions made by the brewery and your suggestion of adding CaCl2, and maybe a small amount of baking soda. Should I also treat sparge water? At least that'll get me a starting point and I can go from there.

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As you have noted there is a lot to consider here. Were I you I would probably just add a couple of grams of calcium chloride to each 5 gallons treated and go from there. I always advise against adding alkali (bicarbonate) unless the pH meter reading says you should. Is there any chance you could borrow the brewery's meter for an afternoon?

Can't borrow the ph meter, it's quite big and has loads of buffer solutions.

At work, the oatmeal stout had around 8% dark malt (choc and black) and a mash ph of 5.45

8% chocolate and black shouldn't drop pH too low in a low mineral water but if you put a lot of calcium chloride (say 500 mg/L) then the pH could drop by 0.1. This could be undone with 100 mg/L bicarbonate so perhaps that's what your people are doing. But you didn't say how much they were adding - only that the ratio is 5:1 CaCl2:NaHCO3.

All in all I'd say emulate what they are doing. It must work for them and the fact that they actually measure pH is indicative of a head brewer who knows what he's about. Could you talk to this guy and see if he'll tell you why he is doing what he is doing? If you could get it from the horse's mouth that's got to be better than getting it from the other end of a horse - especially one across the pond.

Yeah, we've got our own lab and much more equipment than any other UK brewery our size, it's pretty awesome to work with.

I had a chat with a few of the brewers, one (production manager from Australia) said he didn't realise water could be so soft in the UK.

I'm going to take my water profile in so they know what I'm talking about when I say I don't think it's right.

The cacl2 was 1.5kg in a 52(ish) hectolitre brew, I believe mash thickness is 3 (3 litres per kilo). 2.5 is more common but our mash tun constantly stirs the mash and we do two rests.

That it enough calcium (assuming the dihydrate) to push the pH down almost 0.1 and 0.12 if it is the anhydride. So my hypothesis may be what they are up to but I shouldn't be second guessing them.

You're probably not far off.

Is a starting pH of a little over 8 fairly high? Or is that fairly common for untreated water?

My water runs around 7.4 from the tap, but that will vary from region to region.

Also, just a suggestion. You could consider steeping your darker grains instead of mashing them. I've found that my stouts come out much better this way and you don't have to worry about adjusting the mash pH to accomadate them. I steep everything 120L or higher. YRMV.

ChillWill said:

Is a starting pH of a little over 8 fairly high? Or is that fairly common for untreated water?

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Believe it or not what sets that is the amount of CO2 to which the water is exposed. If the water is surface water i.e. from a lake, reservoir or river its pH will likely be close to 8.3. If it is bore water subject to the high partial pressure of CO2 from respiring soil bacteria it can be appreciably lower - in the 6's or 5's.

Brewing today, added calcium chloride and baking soda at a 5:1 ratio, then a small amount of gypsum (to bring the calcium up without overdoing the chloride).

Will this have much of an effect on mash efficiency? I've got 9% oats on this and it has been a real pain to get the mash and sparge out the tun.... I've done a 9% oat grain bill before, and a 40% wheat malt grain bill and have never had any issues with sparges but this is proving real troublesome. I doubt I'll get overall good efficiency as I've had to add a lot of sparge water to the mash as the 1st runnings just wouldn't budge.

You don't say what you are brewing but I'd guess, since you are using oats, that it is an oatmeal stout. Whether you can get away with the bicarbonate addition or not depends on the amount added per gallon of water and the grist composition. Generally you should not add bicarbonate or carbonate to brewing water but sometimes it is required. Whether it is or not can only reliably be determined by the use of a pH meter. So it might or might not have an effect on efficiency depending on whether it was needed or not. If it was, then efficiency will be increased. If not it will be decreased.

In any case it will not have much of an effect on runoff. The solution to runoff problems with viscous worts is rice hulls.

Update time!

The founders clone has been in bottles for 3 weeks and seems pretty good so far, hasn't got that weird 'twang', even with 13% roasted malts, although the coffee is quite strong at the moment so not sure if that's hiding anything.

Also, I've made a few changes to the way I mash and minerals I add and now I'm up from 65% efficiency to nearer 75% and the beer is better; better head, head retention, body and good attention.

I'm also now brewing at work which is nice

Also, I've been letting the mash sit for 5 mins for the bed to settle to stop the stuck sparges... seems to be working so far as I think I was rushing it before.

Well, further update time: Having brewed at the test plant (10bbl system), they mash at 2.5:1 Water:Malt (pretty standard). Looks like Bi-carb is needed for darker beers otherwise the pH goes really low. Infact, with some basic CaCl2 and CaSO4 additions the pH goes pretty low on pale beers as well (a few times, down to 5.20 which has meant I've had to make a few changes; moving some salts to the boil etc). This can only lead me to believe an overly acidic mash is where the weird 'twang' was coming from.... or something else haha. I'm pretty sure my water is the same as at the brewery; or very close at least and the pH numbers we're getting there aren't anywhere near as high as the easy water calc is suggesting.

Suppose the only way to know for sure would be to test my homebrew mash... but I've not done it for a while... maybe if I get a sample of my water, take it to the brewery, measure a small sample and mash it and test it there would be a good option.