When does Phosphoric become noticeable?

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We have extremely alkaline water (280 ppm CaCO3) and I've been experimenting w/ different options for reducing the alkalinity. Playing around w/ Bru'n Water, I need to add 1 ml/gal of 80% Phosphoric to get down to ~40 ppm.

Will any flavor difference be noticeable at this level? If not, at what concentrations does it become a problem?

Cheers!
 
Phosphoric Acid is pretty flavor neutral, that's why the "Big Boys" use it. I think you should be fine. If you want take to test the flavor contribution you can take 2 glasses of water, treat one and don't treat the other, have a few sips of each. I have added it (I can't remember the quantities off-hand.) to glasses of water as I suggested above and cannot taste it.

I don't know at what concentration it might become an issue.
 
Are you trying to reach a certain pH in your mash or actually remove hardness?
 
Are you trying to reach a certain pH in your mash or actually remove hardness?

Maybe my understanding is wrong, but do you mean removing alkalinity? If so, yes that's the goal as we're trying to brew some very low SRM beers. I was under the impression hardness wasn't affected much when using acids, but again I could be wrong.

Fortunately, that amount of acid also brought the mash pH down to optimal levels, so it killed two birds with one stone. :)
 
Phosphoric Acid is pretty flavor neutral, that's why the "Big Boys" use it. I think you should be fine. If you want take to test the flavor contribution you can take 2 glasses of water, treat one and don't treat the other, have a few sips of each. I have added it (I can't remember the quantities off-hand.) to glasses of water as I suggested above and cannot taste it.

Seems like a great idea! Why didn't I think of that?
 
Seems like a great idea! Why didn't I think of that?

I did that with lactic acid! I asked a similar question, and someone responded back "Try it and see"- so I did. I was able to acidify my water with lactic acid, 5 ml for 5 gallons and have no taste so I knew it was ok.

One thing I'd suggest is something I've tried (and we have info on this forum) to reduce the alkalinity of your water. Lime softening.

Just use some pickling lime, and then rack the beer of the precipitate.

It worked really well, but I decided after a couple of times that I didn't like doing it. I had 30 gallons of water in different vessels in my laundry room, and found it inconvenient. If you don't mind doing it, and have some space (and even a big food safe trashcan would work), then here is some info: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Alkalinity_reduction_with_slaked_lime
 
Maybe my understanding is wrong, but do you mean removing alkalinity? If so, yes that's the goal as we're trying to brew some very low SRM beers. I was under the impression hardness wasn't affected much when using acids, but again I could be wrong.

Fortunately, that amount of acid also brought the mash pH down to optimal levels, so it killed two birds with one stone. :)

Hmmm...

If your hardness is due to due to high chloride or sulfate, you can't actually "remove" the alkalinity. You can't soften the water by adding acid, that is. All you can do is lower the pH, which is fine for the mash, but still leaves you with a hazy, "harsh" tasting pilsner.

If your water actually has a lot of lime (calcium/magnesium carbonate) in it, you can boil it to remove hardness.

Read this for a good explanation of hardness vs. alkalinity. It was a quick search, but this is pretty comprehensive.

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/hardwater.html
 
Hardness and alkalinity (temporary hardness) are two different things. Hardness typically refers to the levels of Calcium and Magnesium. Alkalinity refers to how much the water resists pH change, typically due to carbonates. Alkalinity can be reduced by a couple methods. Hardness is trickier to reduce (typical water softeners works great, but not for brewing purposes)

As Yopper said, pickling lime (Calcium hydroxide) works great at reducing alkalinity by forming Calcium carbonate which is not very soluble and will precipitate out (it takes a couple hour to settle out). It can also reduce the Calcium a little. If you have high magnesium water (too high), you can add even more of the lime and at higher pH levels you will get a gel-like Mg carbonate to form which is a bit more of a pain to remove ( I think this is what Yopper ran into). I add less. After the material settles, I pump the water over to my mash tun and lauter tun and then bring the pH down to the proper mash range with phosphoric acid. I use less than 5 ml of acid per 10 gal. with no effect on taste


I should also mention, that the problems with high Ca and Mg can lead to taste related problems, while issues with alkalinity can result in a mash pH that is not ideal and lead to reduced efficiency (less directly influence taste)
 
I prob should have included the disclaimer that these are pilot batches for a micro start-up I'm part of, so some options (like boiling specifically) eventually won't be realistic from an efficiency stand point. Lime softening is definitely something we have been looking into, however...so really appreciate the comments there.

Hardness and alkalinity (temporary hardness) are two different things. Hardness typically refers to the levels of Calcium and Magnesium. Alkalinity refers to how much the water resists pH change, typically due to carbonates. Alkalinity can be reduced by a couple methods. Hardness is trickier to reduce (typical water softeners works great, but not for brewing purposes)

Right, and from my understanding our water will almost surely be alkaline and not very hard (~50 ppm Ca and ~10 ppm Mg). From a water analysis that should be similar to ours, I've been estimating that we'll be around 200-250 ppm CaCO3. Given this, is lime softening likely going to be our best option? We'll have no issue adding back Ca since our water is also very low in chloride/sulfate.

If your hardness is due to due to high chloride or sulfate, you can't actually "remove" the alkalinity. You can't soften the water by adding acid, that is. All you can do is lower the pH, which is fine for the mash, but still leaves you with a hazy, "harsh" tasting pilsner.

Our chloride and sulfate will likely both be very low (~20-30 ppm) based off water reports I've seen near us.

As far as adding acid, I was under the impression that the acid reacted w/ the bicarbonate to reduce alkalinity, but also would leave behind sulfate, choride, lactate, etc depending on the particular acid being used. To me this seemed like a potential benefit since our chloride/sulfate levels are so low. Couldn't we just add hydrochloric/sulfuric acid and bump our low sulfate/chloride levels as well?
 
I prob should have included the disclaimer that these are pilot batches for a micro start-up I'm part of, so some options (like boiling specifically) eventually won't be realistic from an efficiency stand point. Lime softening is definitely something we have been looking into, however...so really appreciate the comments there.



Right, and from my understanding our water will almost surely be alkaline and not very hard (~50 ppm Ca and ~10 ppm Mg). From a water analysis that should be similar to ours, I've been estimating that we'll be around 200-250 ppm CaCO3. Given this, is lime softening likely going to be our best option? We'll have no issue adding back Ca since our water is also very low in chloride/sulfate.



Our chloride and sulfate will likely both be very low (~20-30 ppm) based off water reports I've seen near us.

As far as adding acid, I was under the impression that the acid reacted w/ the bicarbonate to reduce alkalinity, but also would leave behind sulfate, choride, lactate, etc depending on the particular acid being used. To me this seemed like a potential benefit since our chloride/sulfate levels are so low. Couldn't we just add hydrochloric/sulfuric acid and bump our low sulfate/chloride levels as well?

There are really two easy methods of removing alkalinity- boiling and then racking off the precipitate, or lime softening and racking off the precipitate. I can't think of many other cost-effective and easy ways but of course there are probably ways that breweries do this.
 
There are really two easy methods of removing alkalinity- boiling and then racking off the precipitate, or lime softening and racking off the precipitate. I can't think of many other cost-effective and easy ways but of course there are probably ways that breweries do this.

As I've started talking to more and more breweries, it's consistently amazed me how little thought goes into water chemistry. Of course some of these unnamed breweries are putting out very average beers, so I guess that's encouraging in a way. :)

We probably will end up using lime, but I got the acid idea from one of aj's posts a while back:

It's fine to use acid to knock out alkalinity but there is a downside. Every milliequivalent of alkalinity you remove (this water has 122/50 = 2.4) is replaced by 1 milliequivalent of the anion of the acid you used. So if you knocked out all the alkalinity you'd replace the 2.4 mEq/L alkalinity with 2.4 mEq Lactate (same deal for sulfuric or hydrochloric). This should be kept in mind. Obviously everything is fine as long as you don't taste the lactate or dislike the effects of lots of chloride or sulfate.

Since our water is somewhat chloride/sulfate deficient anyways, the downside seems like a positive to me. Or am I totally wrong here?

The lactic is somewhere in the range of 400-700 ppm.

Kai has done a lot of work in this area.
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Mash_pH_control
and
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lactate_Taste_Threshold_experiment

Awesome, thanks for the links!
 
I have no idea of cost for this process but I know a large scale brewery that flash sterilizes their incoming water supply and then builds it back up to exactly what they want.
 
Sounds like your water might be similar to mine. Here's a thread I started that has my pre and post lime treatment results.

pre and post lime results

I also added some sodium metabisulfite which accounts for the gain in Na and Sulfur.

I works great for all of the beers I brew from pale lagers to stouts. For the dark beers, I wait to add the roasted malts until the end of the mash (as I ramp to mash out temps) so they don't end up affecting the mash pH. For the dark beers, I've taken to adding the precipitate back to the mash when I add the roasted malts. I'm still deciding if that makes a difference or not.

The only beer I make that I dilute with distilled water is my Czech pils. I brewed a test batch recently with out adding any distilled and the bitterness was not as smooth - at least initially. I has smoothed out a bit now. I may try again, but back off on the bittering hops and see if I can make it work without having to buy distilled water
 
Since our water is somewhat chloride/sulfate deficient anyways, the downside seems like a positive to me. Or am I totally wrong here?

No, you are absolutely right. Should your alkalinity reduction acid requirement happen to balance your chloride/sulfate augmentation requirement you are indeed fortunate!

I don't usually recommend this approach to home brewers because I don't think they should be fooling with concentrated hydrochloric or sulfuric acids but given that this is a commercial setting with, presumably, all the safety equipment, MSDS.... in place then it can be a good way to go.
 
No, you are absolutely right. Should your alkalinity reduction acid requirement happen to balance your chloride/sulfate augmentation requirement you are indeed fortunate!

This is great, great news! My last question is even though the alkalinity is reduced, is there any negative effect on flavor vs just having low alkaline water to begin with? (assuming similar sulfate/chloride profiles)

I don't usually recommend this approach to home brewers because I don't think they should be fooling with concentrated hydrochloric or sulfuric acids but given that this is a commercial setting with, presumably, all the safety equipment, MSDS.... in place then it can be a good way to go

Yep, yep. I still don't look forward to using them, but w/ the right safety measures in place it's starting to sound like a viable option.
 
No, there shouldn't be. You have simply replaced the bicarbonate ions with sulfate and chloride ions. The calcium/magnesium/sodium are already there. Were you to start with RO/DI water you would have to add calcium/magnesium/sodium sulfate and chloride to get the anion profile you want. You would end up with the same water.
 
We'd likely have to add some calcium back when using lime as well, right? Makes me like the acid option more and more. Only issue is, like you mentioned, keeping it safe.
 
We'd likely have to add some calcium back when using lime as well, right? Makes me like the acid option more and more. Only issue is, like you mentioned, keeping it safe.

It is not to difficult to be safe. I would recommend making a diluted stock, say to around 10-20% and use that. That way you don't handle the concentrated stuff as much. I might also suggest a rubber "boot" to carry the bottle of concentrated stuff around in case the bottle brakes (droppage, hit something, etc).

And ALWAYS add acid to water, NOT water to acid. Quite a bit of heat is generated when the two are mixed and if you add it backwards it can cause a vigorous enough reaction to splash - even if gently poured. No problems if you add them in the right order.

I was taught, "do as you aughta', add acid to wata'"
 
"Acid to Base, to Save Your Face" is how I learned that one.

I'm learning lots in this thread, very interesting. On a homebrewer scale its much easier to just cut your water with RO and add some lactic to balance pH. But I suppose that would be a very expensive system if you are requiring large volumes of water.
 
Larger R.O systems are frequently used at the breweries around me. This is primarily for bicarbonate and sodium reduction. Phosphoric acid is commonly used as well (on almost every beer style that is lighter in color). And I have never detected the flavor of phosphoric acid.
 
I am having to start buying culligan water as the local water is not good. I do not know if it is "dirty" but it smells God awful. I am really hoping that the culligan water is good for brewing and topping off with out to much worry on sanitation or the other.
 
Phosphoric acid is commonly used as well (on almost every beer style that is lighter in color). And I have never detected the flavor of phosphoric acid.

I finally got to do some tests and at least my palate agrees. No problems w/ the finished beer so far either.

Larger R.O systems are frequently used at the breweries around me. This is primarily for bicarbonate and sodium reduction.

We looked into RO (well...actually nano-filtration but same idea), and other than the obvious initial capital cost we were concerned w/ the added waste water and more importantly the added time needed to run it through the filter. On top of that, we'd have to add salts back which isn't a huge deal, but still another step in the process.
 
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