Building water profiles from distilled water, dummy questions

Hello I'm ready to take baby steps into the world of water. With not even the slightest knowledge of chemistry I really need to start small here and not overwhelm myself. I was thinking of trying to get away with just using 2 or 3 different additives, when playing with all the water calculators it seems gypsum and calcium chloride have some of the biggest impacts. Would it be possible for me to build decent water using just distilled water, gypsum, calcium chloride, and 5.2 buffer?

Um, I don't think you add the 5.2 with other mineral additions. IIRC, 5.2 is a pH stabilizer, which probably contains the other minerals. 5.2, I believe, is designed to be used solo.

thanks, that shows how much i know about water profiling, lol

I would do some more research before you start screwing with water. You can easily do more harm than good.

guess I'll just stick with store bought spring water for now

There's tons of great information here on water modification. Don't give up, just be careful.

It might be over my head all together, I was hoping that adjusting the sulfate/chloride ratio using gypsum and calcium chloride would be enough, but if there is a million other things that I have to worry about adjusting at the same time then it may be a bit much for myself.

Have you played around with the EZ Water spreadsheet? That gives a good sense of how the different additives will play together and might give a hint as to whether you could get away with just using the two. Bobby_M has a good tutorial on his youtube channel about playing with/interpreting the numbers.

thanks redglass, im going to check that out right now

SC_Ryan said:

I would do some more research before you start screwing with water. You can easily do more harm than good.

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Wow, I totally disagree. Building a profile is very easy if you start with RO water. Way easier than all-grain brewing in general. Just measure out the amounts and add to the crushed grain. You already have salt (NaCL) and baking soda (NaHCO3) probably. Maybe even Epsom salts (MgSO4). Some things to consider...

- Use a water profile calculator
http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/

- Get a cheap-ass digital scale ($5 from Harbor Freight) to measure with.

- What really matters is the mash water volume. I don't include sparge water in the calculation.

- The salts won't dissolve in the RO water. Just add the salts to your crushed grain before mashing.

I wouldn't worry about adding 5.2 buffer unless you have harsh tasting pale ale. With RO water I would be shocked if this ever was an issue. If you really want to be sure, get some pH test strips and check the acidity. If the pH is over 6, then use the 5.2 stabilizer. Otherwise forget it.

well it doesn't sound that complicated. What about using distilled water and 5.2 buffer for the mash, and then adding minerals to the boil pot to ensure they don't get left behind in the mash tun?

Nope. The water profile affects the mash. No point in adding them to the boil.

JBrady said:

well it doesn't sound that complicated. What about using distilled water and 5.2 buffer for the mash, and then adding minerals to the boil pot to ensure they don't get left behind in the mash tun?

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I gotcha, thanks

it's really not that hard. Find out what you want to brew and search to see if you can find some profiles for that style of beer. I don't go by cities (Burton, London, etc). Get the EZ calculator.

You can enter your target profile into a Custom field in one of the tabs on the bottom of the spread sheet. Just punch it in, then play around with your numbers till you get it pretty close to the target. It's easy.

The single biggest improvement to my beer has been water adjustments.

What are you brewing up?

Can anyone post an example of salt additions that you make when using RO or distilled water? I've been playing with a water chemistry tool a little it, but I would be interested in seeing what salts people are using in their distilled water. Thanks!

dantheman13 said:

Can anyone post an example of salt additions that you make when using RO or distilled water? I've been playing with a water chemistry tool a little it, but I would be interested in seeing what salts people are using in their distilled water. Thanks!

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I use calcium chloride, gypsum, epsom salt, calcium carbonate, and baking soda. With those 5 items I can put my profile numbers wherever I need them.

Forget about chalk. You can't rely on it to dissolve and provide a consistent amount of alkalinity. A better choice is to use pickling lime.

mabrungard said:

Forget about chalk. You can't rely on it to dissolve and provide a consistent amount of alkalinity. A better choice is to use pickling lime.

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Really I didnt know that. Why won't it dissolve in the mash? So its not a good source for raising carbonates for darker beers? Thanks for the info.

Both AJ and Kai have done trials on alkalinity contribution from chalk addition. Both found that it generally adds about half the alkalinity that it is supposed to based on the chemistry. Chalk has to be dissolved into water with an acid. Mineral acid or carbonic acid (from dissolved CO2) are capable of fully dissolving the chalk. We don't really know why the acids produced in a mash don't seem to be capable of fully dissolving the chalk.

mabrungard said:

Both AJ and Kai have done trials on alkalinity contribution from chalk addition. Both found that it generally adds about half the alkalinity that it is supposed to based on the chemistry. Chalk has to be dissolved into water with an acid. Mineral acid or carbonic acid (from dissolved CO2) are capable of fully dissolving the chalk. We don't really know why the acids produced in a mash don't seem to be capable of fully dissolving the chalk.

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In addition, from what I have read on his wiki, Kai's experiments show that undissolved chalk won't change the pH more than 0.2 points.

"In experiments I found that dissolved chalk is not only twice as effective in raising the water’s residual alkalinity, undissolved chalk is also not able to raise the mash pH by more than 0.2 pH units. In other words the addition of more than 500 mg/l undissolved calcium carbonate, which is equivalent to a residual alkalinity of about 200 ppm as CaCO3, had little or no effect on mash pH"

(From: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Mash_pH_control)

I don't bother with RO or distilled for most beers, just the really delicate ones. Depending on the makeup of your tap water, you might want to cut it to reduce Mg, Na, or HCO3. Add CaCl2 and CaSO4 to up the calcium and slightly reduce mash pH. Get some good pH strips or a meter and forget the 5.2 buffer. Always eliminate chlorine and chloramines as much as you can.

Water chemistry is crazy voodoo for a while when you're learning. I've gotten to a point where I can simplify all that crap and kinda intuit what a particular beer should have -- and the only stuff I add is CaCl2 and CaSO4.

Hello,fairly new here and wanted feed back on using distilled water for partial mash and building water profiles from scratch.Question is,i have heard that distilled water will be somewhat acidic do to absorption of atmospheric co2.Would i need to even treat my sparge water at all due to a ph of around 5.8? If it helps I found this.The pH of pure, distilled water in a vacuum is 7; it is neither acidic nor alkaline. Immediately after distillation, however, water begins absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and it forms carbonic acid -- a weak acid. This absorption continues until the carbon dioxide concentration in the water is the same as it is in the atmosphere. At this point, the pH of the distilled water is around 5.8.

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/about_4623914_ph-distilled-water.html

No, you would not have to treat sparging water prior to use. Alkalinity is what matters (not pH) and that is about zero for distilled water, so you don't have to add any acid to that water for sparging use. However, you might need to add acid to the mashing water to help the overall buffer system of the mash get down to a desirable range. An all pale malt mash would probably end up around 5.7 to 5.8 and that is a bit too high. A little acid will bring that mash pH to a more desirable 5.4. Another way to get the mash pH down is to add Ca and Mg to the mash. Either way is acceptable.

Ok,I have Brunwater, so I have a good handle on mash ph with all my recipes.All I need to do then,is use my sparge additions in the bk and just sparge with strait dtstilled water. correct?