Water chemistry noob

I'm starting to learn a little about water chemistry. Well, trying to start to learn. Here's my water report:

ph 8.2
sodium 9
potassium 2
calcium 57
Magnes. 26
Total hardness 251
(CaCO3)
Sulfate 15
Chloride 14
Carbonate CO3 12
Bicarb HCO3 228
Total alkalinity
CaCO3 207

Ok, so what does that all mean? It confirms I have hard water, high ph, and high total alkalinity. I suspected that, and have been mixing RO water 1/2 and 1/2 for the last 7 or 8 brews.

I'd like to delve deeper, but still be able to understand. When I heard John Palmer speak about residual alkalinity, it was way over my head (I was hungover, though!). Is there a water chemistry geek that can help me start to understand what those figures mean, and what I can do about it?

YooperBrew said:

help me start to understand what those figures mean, and what I can do about it?

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What do you want to do about it? You said you diluted the water with 50% RO for the last several beers. Why did you do that? What kind of beers were they? Your water's main alkalinity is from temporary hardness or bicarbonates. The carbonate number of permanent hardness is fairly low as is your Ca+ all things considered. Your water is roughly similar to traditional London brewing water which implies you are good-to-go for porters and other dark ales. For lighter beers you want to reduce the alkalinity. This can be done by dilution as you have already done but bicarbonate/temporary hardness can also be reduced by boiling which will precipitate much of the bicarbonate especially with a small addition of calcium hydroxide, AKA slaked lime or pickling lime. Because your original Ca+ is only 57ppm I would consider adding additional calcium after diluting or de-carbonating. Below is the link I suggest as a quick overview of brewing water. For specific suggestions of water modification you would need to say what particular styles/recipes you want to brew.

Water And Homebrewing

BigEd said:

What do you want to do about it? You said you diluted the water with 50% RO for the last several beers. Why did you do that? What kind of beers were they? Your water's main alkalinity is from temporary hardness or bicarbonates. The carbonate number of permanent hardness is fairly low as is your Ca+ all things considered. Your water is roughly similar to traditional London brewing water which implies you are good-to-go for porters and other dark ales. For lighter beers you want to reduce the alkalinity. This can be done by dilution as you have already done but bicarbonate/temporary hardness can also be reduced by boiling which will precipitate much of the bicarbonate especially with a small addition of calcium hydroxide, AKA slaked lime or pickling lime. Because your original Ca+ is only 57ppm I would consider adding additional calcium after diluting or de-carbonating. Below is the link I suggest as a quick overview of brewing water. For specific suggestions of water modification you would need to say what particular styles/recipes you want to brew.

Water And Homebrewing

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Thank you! I was doing some dilution, because some of my beers have a harsh astringency. The rye IPA, for example, is good, but harsh. I guessed it was possibly because of high residual alkalinity. The blonde, diluted 50% with RO water is excellent, but I really want to know WHY.

Adding Ca+ is doable- but I wondered the best way to do it. Cacl?

When boiling to reduce the alkalinity, I assume that when the bicarb precipitates out, the remants are at the bottle of the kettle?

I've made great darker beers, but my ESB did have a very faint metallic aftertaste. I believe that was dark grains in combination with my water. American Ambers come out very good, and some APAs come out well. Sometimes the bitterness is a bit harsh, though, and I'd like to fix that.

YooperBrew said:

Thank you! I was doing some dilution, because some of my beers have a harsh astringency. The rye IPA, for example, is good, but harsh. I guessed it was possibly because of high residual alkalinity. The blonde, diluted 50% with RO water is excellent, but I really want to know WHY.

Adding Ca+ is doable- but I wondered the best way to do it. Cacl?

Click to expand...

Depends on the beer. Calcium chloride is a good choice for many lagers and some ales that don't have a robust hop presence. Calcium sulphate (gypsum) is the "universal homebrewing salt" and is fine for pale ales, bitters, IPA and the like but there are many published recipes that recommended it incorrectly IMO. Calcium carbonate is used for dark beers.

YooperBrew said:

When boiling to reduce the alkalinity, I assume that when the bicarb precipitates out, the remants are at the bottle of the kettle?

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Yes. Some of the calcium will also precipitate which is why you will want to add some back in.

YooperBrew said:

I've made great darker beers, but my ESB did have a very faint metallic aftertaste. I believe that was dark grains in combination with my water. American Ambers come out very good, and some APAs come out well. Sometimes the bitterness is a bit harsh, though, and I'd like to fix that.

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OK, there you have it. Dark beers work better with your water, which makes perfect sense based on the water profile. Because your water is not extremely hard you can also get away with brewing medium dark beers without too much fussing. Bitter and hoppy beers typically benefit from a good amount of sulphates in the water and your sulphate is very low. Adding calcium sulphate (gypsum) to pale ales after diluting your water will solve both the Ca+ and the sulphate/hop problem.

BigEd said:

OK, there you have it. Dark beers work better with your water, which makes perfect sense based on the water profile. Because your water is not extremely hard you can also get away with brewing medium dark beers without too much fussing. Bitter and hoppy beers typically benefit from a good amount of sulphates in the water and your sulphate is very low. Adding calcium sulphate (gypsum) to pale ales after diluting your water will solve both the Ca+ and the sulphate/hop problem.

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Yes, I had assumed that. The problem? I rarely drink porters, and never stouts. I like IPAs and APAs as a rule, and that's about 85% of my brewing!

So, adding some gypsum and using the RO/tap mix seems to be an easy fix. Thanks so much for your help! I'll read up some more on water chemistry, and I know there is a link to Palmer's spreadsheet around here somewhere.

Hey Yooper. I have been delving into water chemistry myself for the last couple weeks and am getting ready to do my first major manipulation this weekend. I have the opposite probelm you have as Seattle water is extremely soft and lacking in mineral content. Even for basic pale ales the Seattle water would benefit from a calcium addition.

Anyway I am no expert, but I will give you some links I found helpful.
First is the brew strong archives. They have a 4 part archive with Jamil and Palmer on water chemistry. You have to scroll down the list to find them, but I think they are about 20% of the way down the page.
Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine - BrewCast

Also here is a neat on line residual alkalinity calculator that I think is based on Palmers.
Residual Alkalinity Calculator

Lastly here is Palmers spreadsheet link
http://howtobrew.com/section3/Palmers_Mash_RA_ver2d.xls

Now all you need is a chemistry degree.

Cheers

Yooper,

Here is a link to a presentation I made to our homebrew club about water and brewing. I don't claim to be an expert, because water chemistry and brewing is a bit complex. I hope it is useful, as a starting point. St Croix Valley Homebrewers Association [Brew Page]

Don't dispair. I have very similar water and eventually began diluting it 50/50 with RO water and adding gypsum and calcium chloride to up the Ca, SO4 and Cl content.

The other thing I have done is use the buffer salts that Five Star (starsan makers) sell. Think it's called 5.2. This works to get your mash pH in the right zone, like the other salt additions do. What this doesn't do is give you the right minerals for the finished beer.

I have recently started treating my well water with calcium hydroxide, got it at the grocery store as pickling lime. This precipitates the bicarbonate as calcium carbonate, and you can siphon the softened water off it. Saves me the time of fetching the RO water.

Good luck.

Thanks! Getting the RO water isn't a problem- Bob gets it at the store for me when he does the weekly grocery shopping.

I think the easiest approach for me is to continue mixing RO and tap water, and using salts as needed. I'm still struggling with what my goals should be for each brew, but I'm sure Palmer's spreadsheets will help with that. I picked up some gypsum yesterday, and I have some 30% liquid CaCl that I use for cheesemaking, so hopefully I can use that.

I'm definitely no chemist, so this feels like quite a hurdle for me. I'm definitely overwhelmed.

Also, does anybody have a link to a "desired water profile per style" link? I have several already in Beersmith, but I guess I'm not looking to match a location as much as getting my water to accentuate hops flavor without harshness and astringency in pale ales, for example.

First: I think it's time to put all these water tools and spreadsheets in a sticky in this sub-forum so they don't have to be continually posted.

I will start it today if someone could make it a sticky.

Telling you things won't match what playing with some of the tools will do for you, as far as being able to see and understand the effects of each of the minerals and how to manipulate them. It never made any sense to me until I played with the tools a bit, and I have a fair, if old, understanding of chemistry from a college level course I took in HS. There really are only about 7 things to consider.

My understanding has increased slowly; here is my initial thread in this topic.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/adjustment-without-salts-126076/

I suggest playing with the brew water spreadsheets and looking and toying with the interactive nomograph. saq made a nice spreadsheet (6.0) similar to Palmer's and the best teaching tool is at:

Brewing Water Chemistry Calculator | Brewer's Friend

Using your numbers and then diluting, you have a starting point, then adding small amounts of things give results. Play with these to get green stars for the color of beer you are aiming for.

This will be your best teacher, but you will find that one or another of the spreadsheets does more for you after you know what you want to do, and how to do it.

Interactive nomograph:
Mash pH Nomograph
This shows the direct relationship with hardness and pH compared to beer color desired, so you can see the reason why you can't always get to where you want to be from where you start.

saq's spreadsheet is here, but it doesn't open for me today.
http://www.thesaq.net/beer/waterprofile/


I have a similar water profile and found that I should add some acid to lower my water pH, and dilute with at least 50% distilled/RO. I could also benefit by adding back a pinch of gypsum. Your pH is far higher (more alkaline) and you probably will need to acidify by using aciduous malt or acid directly.

Ok, another "dumb" question. I am making an IPA this week, and with a mix of RO and tap water the only thing I need is some gypsum. But, how do I decide how much? I guess I'm asking how many ppm does "1 teaspoon" translate to in the spread sheet?

YooperBrew said:

Ok, another "dumb" question. I am making an IPA this week, and with a mix of RO and tap water the only thing I need is some gypsum. But, how do I decide how much? I guess I'm asking how many ppm does "1 teaspoon" translate to in the spread sheet?

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In a perfect world mixing 50/50 RO water with your 250 ppm would give you 125, I would actually go a bit softer than that for an IPA, maybe somewhere in the 50-75ppm range for your CaCO3 so you may have to do 75/25 ro/tap water.

I use either palmers spreadsheet or the water part in beersmith which works good for me. I just try to come up with the numbers desired for each of the main salts and add accordingly.

As far as the gypsum, it depends on how you wanter your ratio, but if you just add gypsum you are going to have a huge ration if your cloride doesn't move. For example if you have 15/14 SO4/Cl ratio right now and add 100 ppm of SO4 that is quite the ratio 7/1 or so which you may like for your IPA as it will certainly accentuate those hops. If this is not what you want, you can add a little CaCL to balance a little more. Between the 2 calcium additions that should be up high enough to make the yeast happy too.

P.S. I am a water noob too, I have finally tasted a final product of my first water adjust, a pale ale that I have brewed before and man is it way better this time.

Ok, I think I figured out how many grams in a teaspoon- but another question! I want to add a little calcium chloride. (your post confirms this!). I have it in a 30% solution for cheese making- how does that translate to the CaCl listed in the spreadsheets?

I really agree with using the brewers friend calculator. It is based on the information in How to Brew and it really gives you a no brainer approach to finding the right water profile for the color and flavor of beer you want to brew.

YooperBrew said:

Ok, another "dumb" question. I am making an IPA this week, and with a mix of RO and tap water the only thing I need is some gypsum. But, how do I decide how much? I guess I'm asking how many ppm does "1 teaspoon" translate to in the spread sheet?

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Yooper. Several of the spreadsheets take the ppm and break that down to a grams per gallon addition. You can probably ballpark it with 1/4 tsp, 1/2 tsp etc, but the problem is the tsp is mostly volume of liquid measuring standard. You can not direct convert dry weights because different dry items have different densities so they 1/4 tsp of a denser material will actually be heavier in grams than 1/4 tsp of a less dense material.

The only way around this is to get a gram scale. I picked a one up off an ebay seller that has been fairly accurate for under $10 shipped. I have only had it about 6 weeks but it has worked so far. I don't know how it will hold up over time, but I checked it against calibrated weights and it was within better than +/-0.05gm all the way down to 1 gm as received from the seller. If nothing else it is worth the $10 just to get used to measuring the salts out. Here is the ebay link. No affiliation.

50 .01 GRAM DIGITAL SCALE MEDICAL LAB PHARMACY SCALES F - eBay (item 220397000056 end time Sep-12-09 20:03:45 PDT)

Now I can't help you once your neighbors start asking why you have a gram scale and little baggies of white powder sitting around on brew day.

Zen_Brew said:

Now I can't help you once your neighbors start asking why you have a gram scale and little baggies of white powder sitting around on brew day.

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haha- that's ok. They already think I'm making meth and distilling in the side yard when they see the keggle and the ghetto sculpture. They wouldn't be shocked at all to see little baggies of white powder, I'm sure.

Ok, can't get a gram scale before Wednesday, but I will do that for next time.

Any guesses on how to take my liquid 30% solution of CaCl2 to make it 1 gram of CaCl2?

I would think you multiply the liquid volume corrected to grams by .3 (30%) to find the disolved calcium chloride in a given sample of the solution. You will again run into a slight error converting liquid volume to dry mass, but you should be able to ballpark it. I tried looking it up and all I found was this.

CALCIUM CHLORIDE SOLUTION 1 oz.$1.95 1 pt.$7.95
Improves curd size and texture when using store bought milk. One teaspoon will treat 2 gallons of milk. 30% solution. To compensate for the processing of store bought milk, add calcium chloride prior to adding rennet to the cheese mixture. The addition of calcium chloride will help restore the altered milk protein and aid in the development of a quality curd. Specific instructions for using calcium chloride are given with recipes.

It doesn't really list what solution the calcium chloride is disolved in though. One would assume something inert like distilled water, but they may have chosen a liquid that more readily holds disolved calcium chloride in it. I'm not really a chemistry guy though so I would purely be guessing. My concern would be it could be a solution that would be realtively benign tasting in cheese, but maybe could lend a flavor component in beer. Probably not, but I don't know if you can say for certain without knowing what the liquid solution is.

Zen_Brew said:

I would think you multiply the liquid volume corrected to grams by .3 (30%) to find the disolved calcium chloride in a given sample of the solution. You will again run into a slight error converting liquid volume to dry mass, but you should be able to ballpark it.

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Or to do it in the order you requested. If you are looking for 1gm of calcium chloride from a 30% solution and you have found a ballpark method of converting your tsp volume to gm weight, you divide the desired volume (1 gram) by the percentage disolved in the solution (.3)
So 1 divided by .3 = 3.33 So 3.33 grams of your liquid solution should contain roughly 1 gram of calcium chloride.

I can never remember how much so I end up Googling 'grams of CaCl2 per teaspoond' or somesuch every brew day. Maybe I should just enter that info in the spreadsheet and hit 'save'....

Zen_Brew said:

Or to do it in the order you requested. If you are looking for 1gm of calcium chloride from a 30% solution and you have found a ballpark method of converting your tsp volume to gm weight, you divide the desired volume (1 gram) by the percentage disolved in the solution (.3)
So 1 divided by .3 = 3.33 So 3.33 grams of your liquid solution should contain roughly 1 gram of calcium chloride.

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Thanks for doing the math for me- now that you've literally spelled it out for me I want to say "Duh- shoulda thought of that!" So, how many teaspoons is that?

Saccharomyces- it's funny to see me in your signature!

Yet one more question- I find the spreadsheets very help and am playing with Beersmith now. I understand that I can pick water profiles to match- great with German lagers especially.

But how do I find the "best" water profile for APAs and IPAs? I have most of the books, but I'm not sure I can find the profiles. Is there an online link that I can copy into Beersmith?

YooperBrew said:

Yet one more question- I find the spreadsheets very help and am playing with Beersmith now. I understand that I can pick water profiles to match- great with German lagers especially.

But how do I find the "best" water profile for APAs and IPAs? I have most of the books, but I'm not sure I can find the profiles. Is there an online link that I can copy into Beersmith?

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I don't think I can say it better than this post, so here you go. I had the same question recently.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/target-water-profile-pliny-elder-clone-128923/#post1449368

If you go to sheet 2 of the spreadsheet at the link, I used the saq pale water profile for my pale that I just put on tap and is amazing at the difference so far from my last batch. Thanks saq by the way

Not sure there IS a locale for best profile for an IPA.

I think just using the color in SRM and inputting that into the spreadsheet at the top and controlling the ranges of the major minerals and Cl/SO4 ratio is all that you need to be concerned with.

The whole profile by locale thing is based on traditional styles...our beers are not as picky and and do not have a historic locale.

Henry Hill said:

Not sure there IS a locale for best profile for an IPA.

I think just using the color in SRM and inputting that into the spreadsheet at the top and controlling the ranges of the major minerals and Cl/SO4 ratio is all that you need to be concerned with.

The whole profile by locale thing is based on traditional styles...our beers are not as picky and and do not have a historic locale.

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Well, that's the hard part for me. I don't know WHAT the target is, so it's hard to use the spreadsheet.

I saw that Saq had "Pliny" as one of the choices, so I used that. According to the spreadsheets, if I add 4 gm CaSo4, .5 gm NaCl, and 2 gm CaCl2, and use 50% RO water, I'll be pretty close to the "Pliny" water. The only problem? I have WAY too much HCO3, even with 50% RO water.

I can boil tonight to precipitate some of the bicarb out, but will that then affect my other calculations?

YooperBrew said:

Well, that's the hard part for me. I don't know WHAT the target is, so it's hard to use the spreadsheet.

Click to expand...

There is a chart in How To Brew that gives some water profiles here...that might help you with regional water profiles. Or if you're just trying to get the mash pH in a good range then just enter your target SRM in block B8, then pick a number somewhere in that range given in blocks C8/D8 and enter that number in block B23. You can then ignore that whole 'Target Water' stuff on rows 10 and 11. As far as how much of each salt to add...I just played around with the salt contributions (row 30) and monitored row 39 until I was satisfied the RA was on target, the Cl/SO4 ratio was OK, and there was not a lot of Na. I also sometimes have to add Epsom to get some Mg back if I've cut it with too much distilled (yeast need some Mg).

However, I have found that I usually don't need to add as much salts as indicated by the spreadsheet to hit the right mash pH (based on my pH strips...which may be inaccurate).

YooperBrew said:

Well, that's the hard part for me. I don't know WHAT the target is, so it's hard to use the spreadsheet.

I saw that Saq had "Pliny" as one of the choices, so I used that. According to the spreadsheets, if I add 4 gm CaSo4, .5 gm NaCl, and 2 gm CaCl2, and use 50% RO water, I'll be pretty close to the "Pliny" water. The only problem? I have WAY too much HCO3, even with 50% RO water.

I can boil tonight to precipitate some of the bicarb out, but will that then affect my other calculations?

Click to expand...

There are ranges in How to Brew for acceptable range levels of minerals-basically if you are close it will work great.

Adding and adding to get things to be in range put my water in high levels of minerals, and that was what I was trying to AWAY from in the first place.

This is why I looked at cutting it by 50%, using some HCl acid, just a few ml's, and then 2 grams of gypsum dropped me right in, with Cl/SO4 balanced, too, and no absurd high levels of anything.

This is why breweries use acids, too, although most use phos. It is driect and doesn't add other minerals that put things our of whack. I need HCl to balance the Cl/SO4 ratio.

Until I can find what I need at a reasonable price, I am just using 50% RO and shrugging....

Now if I can just obtain some NSP grade HCl, life would be great.

Boiling drops out some hardness but then you don't know what you have and what came out. It's what people did before getting tests became so cheap and easy.

Agreed the problem with boiling to preceipitate HCO3 out is you don't know how much came out. You are better increasing the RO dillution. At least that way you can ballpark the percentage of minerals left based on the percentage of original water.

Once you hit the desired level of calcium and hardness Palmer reccomends on the Brew srong podcast that you shoot for the ratio of chlroride to sulphate with the least amount of additions possible as the ratio is more important than the absolute levels. So if the style you are emulating has say 80ppm of sulphate and 40ppm of chloride that is a 2:1 ratio. If you can hit your calcium and hardness range with 40ppm sulphate and 20ppm chloride you have achieved the same 2:1 ratio.

I have never seen a chart of absolute style guidelines for minerals, but rather some suggested ranges based on style. Again if you haven't found the time listening to the 4 1 hour long podcasts on Brew Strong has a lot of great information. It is Palmer and Jamil. Here is a link to the Brew Network forum where a couple members tried to compile some highlight notes from the 4 episodes. They are a bit jumbled and as several people posted there is some repetitive info but it catches a lot of the highlights from the episodes. Listening to the podcasts helps clear up some of the things that weren't easy to capture in the notes.

The Brewing Network • View topic - Waterganza Notes: Parts 1 & 2

Also if you weren't aware Palmer advises the best place to make your initial mineral addition is in the mash with the grain addition as the acidity of the mash helps to disolve the salts better than they would disolve just in water.

I have also played with Saq's chart some and it is a nice piece of work with some good style additions already figured out. Pliny may lean more towards the bitterness ratio than is necesary for a standard IPA I'm not certain though.

Zen_Brew said:

Agreed the problem with boiling to preceipitate HCO3 out is you don't know how much came out. You are better increasing the RO dillution. At least that way you can ballpark the percentage of minerals left based on the percentage of original water.

Once you hit the desired level of calcium and hardness Palmer reccomends on the Brew srong podcast that you shoot for the ratio of chlroride to sulphate with the least amount of additions possible as the ratio is more important than the absolute levels. So if the style you are emulating has say 80ppm of sulphate and 40ppm of chloride that is a 2:1 ratio. If you can hit your calcium and hardness range with 40ppm sulphate and 20ppm chloride you have achieved the same 2:1 ratio.

I have never seen a chart of absolute style guidelines for minerals, but rather some suggested ranges based on style. Again if you haven't found the time listening to the 4 1 hour long podcasts on Brew Strong has a lot of great information. It is Palmer and Jamil. Here is a link to the Brew Network forum where a couple members tried to compile some highlight notes from the 4 episodes. They are a bit jumbled and as several people posted there is some repetitive info but it catches a lot of the highlights from the episodes. Listening to the podcasts helps clear up some of the things that weren't easy to capture in the notes.

The Brewing Network • View topic - Waterganza Notes: Parts 1 & 2

Also if you weren't aware Palmer advises the best place to make your initial mineral addition is in the mash with the grain addition as the acidity of the mash helps to disolve the salts better than they would disolve just in water.

I have also played with Saq's chart some and it is a nice piece of work with some good style additions already figured out. Pliny may lean more towards the bitterness ratio than is necesary for a standard IPA I'm not certain though.

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On another page from tab at bottom.

Let me take a quick stab at that. I just had to kick a keg of CAP to make room for another beer which means my writing may not be at its best.

The problem with your water and lighter beers is, that it is fairly alkaline. This means it will resist acidification from the grain unless there is enough acid in the mash to offset that alkalinity. John Palmer likes to reference a nice analogy of a see-saw where the water's alkalinity is on one end and the acids are on the other end. What you are looking for is a balance between the two such that the pH in the mash falls within an optimal range for mashing.

You have a number of options at your disposal:

1) add more calcium via calcium carbonate and/or gypsum. The calcium reacts with the malt and acidifies the mash which can offset the alkalinity. But you may have to add to much calcium to offset all that alkalinity. I would not go past 150 ppm Calcium

2) dilute your water with distilled or reverse osmosis water. This kind of water has no or little ions and will reduce the alkalinity of the water. The alkalinity side on the see-saw gets lighter because of this

3) add acids. acids like lactic, hydrochloric or sulphuric will neutralize some or all of the alkalinity. The latter two are dangerous to handle b/c they can burn you. And elegant option of adding lactic acid is acidulated malt which is malt that contains lactic acid and you use it as part of your grist.

Acids are also contributed by dark malts in the grist and that is why darker beers do require more alkaline brewing water than lighter beers.


There are also other options like precipitating alkalinity from the water, but they are rather advanced and I don't want to get into that right now.

Your best option is to look into the various spread sheets that are out there. I see that a number of links have been posted. There is also a 3 part series on water chemistry available as a podcast from the Brewing Network if you are into this kind of media. While I don't agree with all the points that are made I think it is a very good introduction into water chemistry.

I found that I had to read many different authors until it made click and I understood the concept of water chemistry and how the water and grain bill affect each other to create a good enough mash pH.

Kai

Thanks so much for the input! It's a bit overwhelming to get started, when John Palmer's book is so far over my head at this point. The podcasts will be a great place to start- baby steps, after all, for me work best.

I had another question in my mind at 3 AM today. (Yeah, I wake up and think about brewing). Anyway, someone mentioned to add my salts to my mash, since they will dissolve better in my mash and not just in plain water.

What do I do for my sparge water then?

I think it was from the brew strong podcasts, Palmer does not advocate any salts in the sparge water. He makes an addition to the mash based on volume of water, and he makes another addition to the brew kettle to cover the rest of the water volume, but skips any additions to the sparge. He believes an addition to the sparge is not necessay unless something is way off in your water to throw PH way out. I think he said even with distilled or RO water he would not make a further addition to the sparge. It is likely because the sparge is primarily a rinse, and the conversion process is pretty much complete.

Zen_Brew said:

I think it was from the brew strong podcasts, Palmer does not advocate any salts in the sparge water. He makes an addition to the mash based on volume of water, and he makes another addition to the brew kettle to cover the rest of the water volume, but skips any additions to the sparge. He believes an addition to the sparge is not necessay unless something is way off in your water to throw PH way out. I think he said even with distilled or RO water he would not make a further addition to the sparge. It is likely because the sparge is primarily a rinse, and the conversion process is pretty much complete.

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Oh, good points! My water is highly alkaline, and even with 50% RO, it's still alkaline but I guess it makes sense to add the additions to the brewkettle, and not the sparge water.

When deciding my additions, then- I add the salts to the mash water based on volume of the mash water I'm assuming. Then add the salts to the brewkettle, in the amount I'm "missing" in the sparge? Am I reading you right?

Yooper,

I too am trying to figure out when to add salts to the mash and then afterward. I guess you determine the amounts of salts for your strike water. Then, what ever your second runnings produce, add salts per that volume. If that what your thinking?

YooperBrew said:

Oh, good points! My water is highly alkaline, and even with 50% RO, it's still alkaline but I guess it makes sense to add the additions to the brewkettle, and not the sparge water.

When deciding my additions, then- I add the salts to the mash water based on volume of the mash water I'm assuming. Then add the salts to the brewkettle, in the amount I'm "missing" in the sparge? Am I reading you right?

Click to expand...

The way I do the math is build my mash additions. Let's say I mash with 3 gallons, then if I boil with 7 gallons, I basically build a salt profile for 4 gallons to put in the kettle. The part that this doesn't take into consideration is all the water that is held up in the grains from your initial mash but I am not looking for perfection, just in the ballpark.

brybarrett said:

Yooper,

I too am trying to figure out when to add salts to the mash and then afterward. I guess you determine the amounts of salts for your strike water. Then, what ever your second runnings produce, add salts per that volume. If that what your thinking?

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humann_brewing said:

The way I do the math is build my mash additions. Let's say I mash with 3 gallons, then if I boil with 7 gallons, I basically build a salt profile for 4 gallons to put in the kettle. The part that this doesn't take into consideration is all the water that is held up in the grains from your initial mash but I am not looking for perfection, just in the ballpark.

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Yep, that sounds like what I'm understanding. I mash in tomorrow (if I brew tomorrow- today was put on hold due to my hangover) with 16 quarts and so use the salts based on that addition. Then, I'll be boiling with 6 gallons. So, I add the salts based on that additional volume (sparging with 4.26 gallons) to the brewkettle.

I'm still way over my head with Palmer's nomographs, but it's clearing up slightly for me.

I'm still way over my head with Palmer's nomographs, but it's clearing up slightly for me.

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Did you try printing out one of those nomographs and plotting your water on it...then looking to see how additional hardness (mostly calcium but also Mg to a much lesser degree) or additional alkalinity affects the residual alkalinity? IMO, doing so sort of illustrates the 'see-saw' Kaiser was talking about.

Zen_Brew said:

Once you hit the desired level of calcium and hardness Palmer reccomends on the Brew srong podcast that you shoot for the ratio of chlroride to sulphate with the least amount of additions possible as the ratio is more important than the absolute levels. So if the style you are emulating has say 80ppm of sulphate and 40ppm of chloride that is a 2:1 ratio. If you can hit your calcium and hardness range with 40ppm sulphate and 20ppm chloride you have achieved the same 2:1 ratio.

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I believe I heard that as well, but maybe he was assuming the sulfate is already at least 50ppm, since according to his book he gives that number as a minimum (or higher for bitter beers). In Yooper's case (and coincidentally my own), even though the ratio might be balanced, the sulfate is low (below 50). Would it then be worth it to up the sulphate and chloride evenly?

from "How to Brew":
Sulfate (SO4-2)
Molecular Weight = 96.0
Equivalent Weight = 48.0
Brewing Range = 50-150 ppm for normally bitter beers, 150-350 ppm for very bitter beers
The sulfate ion also combines with Ca and Mg to contribute to permanent hardness. It accentuates hop bitterness, making the bitterness seem drier, more crisp. At concentrations over 400 ppm however, the resulting bitterness can become astringent and unpleasant, and at concentrations over 750 ppm, it can cause diarrhea. Sulfate is only weakly alkaline and does not contribute to the overall alkalinity of water.

YooperBrew said:

Thanks so much for the input! It's a bit overwhelming to get started, when John Palmer's book is so far over my head at this point. The podcasts will be a great place to start- baby steps, after all, for me work best.

I had another question in my mind at 3 AM today. (Yeah, I wake up and think about brewing). Anyway, someone mentioned to add my salts to my mash, since they will dissolve better in my mash and not just in plain water.

What do I do for my sparge water then?

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The remainder of the sparge is just for rinsing, but that water also needs to be amended for the proper balance in the boil for maltiness/bitterness.

The common wisdom is to just add the minerals required to the boil, as the mash reaction has already occurred, and the sparge is simply a mechanical rinsing of the grains.

SpanishCastleAle said:

Did you try printing out one of those nomographs and plotting your water on it...then looking to see how additional hardness (mostly calcium but also Mg to a much lesser degree) or additional alkalinity affects the residual alkalinity? IMO, doing so sort of illustrates the 'see-saw' Kaiser was talking about.

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The interactive Nomograph from Brisbane Brewers in the links is way better at realtime see-sawing, using sliding bars to increase or decrease the mineral levels, and where that change affects things as what is changed when the addition is made-a great learning tool to see what each mineral does directly, visually on a nomograph.

http://nomograph.babbrewers.com/

Palmer's version is ho-hum.

SpanishCastleAle said:

Did you try printing out one of those nomographs and plotting your water on it...then looking to see how additional hardness (mostly calcium but also Mg to a much lesser degree) or additional alkalinity affects the residual alkalinity? IMO, doing so sort of illustrates the 'see-saw' Kaiser was talking about.

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No, I've been using the one in the back of his book. Do you have a link to a printable one? It would make it much easier!