Oatmeal Stout water profile

I'm brewing an oatmeal stout soon and have some water profile questions.

I use 100% distilled water for all my brewing.

Here is what I have for the water profile:

Mash PH: 5.5
Ca: 82
Mg: 0
Na: 0
Cl: 98
SO4: 65

My alkalinity is 0. Do I need to add alkalinity? I have never done this before using distilled water. I'm curious if this matters?

Thanks,
Zach

I just worked through the water additions for an oatmeal stout I'm making next weekend, and my figures are pretty similar. Are you using software like Bru'n Water?

My recipe required me to add some pickling lime because the dark roasted grains add a lot of acidity, which brought my predicted pH way too low. (Unfortunately, I'm away from my home computer, so I can't access the Bru'n Water profile I put together.) But if you're at 5.5, that's just about right. I'm going with 5.5 too because I saw a recent comment from Martin B. saying that's a good target for stouts.

If my PH is right do I need to add alkalinity?

zach1288 said:

If my PH is right do I need to add alkalinity?

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No, alkalinity is only for ph.





I just made an oatmeal stout with distilled water. I added the dark grains at sparge. Came out good.

zach1288 said:

If my PH is right do I need to add alkalinity?

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Nope - if you add alkalinity, it will raise the pH beyond the acceptable range. Looks like your predicted numbers are good where they are.

If you check the mash pH during the mash and it's too low, you might need to add alkalinity at that point.

Do I need to worry about adding Na or Mg?

Nope. Na and Mg aren't needed.

JonM said:

Nope. Na and Mg aren't needed.

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But may be desirable for flavor.

I just finished mashing in. I realized that I did not add any of the brewing minerals to the mash. My estimated PH was 5.5 without adding anything, so I was planning on adding my minerals in the boil just for flavor. I believe I read somewhere that mashing with 100% distilled you need to add calcium, is this true?

zach1288 said:

I just finished mashing in. I realized that I did not add any of the brewing minerals to the mash. My estimated PH was 5.5 without adding anything, so I was planning on adding my minerals in the boil just for flavor. I believe I read somewhere that mashing with 100% distilled you need to add calcium, is this true?

Click to expand...

You don't have to, but it is a good idea. Yeast will do just fine without calcium in the water since the malt provides calcium too.