A Brewing Water Chemistry Primer

The object here is to keep things very simple by freeing one from style considerations to the extent possible. Use the baseline and then adjust from there in successive trial brews. If you are quite sure you want lots of emphasis on hops then add some gypsum as well as the calcium chloride (British Beers).

Since it doesn't meet any of the deviations, go with the baseline. Since there will presumably be quite a bit of crystal, you might back off the acidulated malt just a smidge compared to the default recommendation, but overall an amber fits within the "typical beer" profile.

As AJ says in the primer, this recommendation isn't intended to dial your water in perfectly, just to get it over the net. If you really want a detailed profile you'll need to look elsewhere.

It would seem to me that I could make mash ph calcs far simpler if I start steeping instead of mashing all crystal/dark grains. My thought is, so long as I stick with the same base malt (typically maris otter for me), I can determine what additions I need to bring my mash water ph to 5.2-5.3 and from then on I can just use those same additions every time. Unless of course I add some other grain that needs to be mashed. Am I missing something with this logic?

Many brewers, home and professional, reserve dark grains until sparge or kettle but most seem to do it to keep the harsher flavor elements from these grains out of their beers rather than to simplify pH management though it does do that through the mechanism that you suggest. There are a couple of things to consider if you do this.
1. The beer won't taste the same. Roast barley steeped in the kettle or sparge water won't impart the flavor the roast barley included in the mash does. This is exactly why Gordon Strong and one of the head brewers at a local Gordon Biersch keep it out of the mash. But you may (note that this is in italics) lose some flavor components you want by doing this. Less extraction of acrid flavors, sharp flavors but less extraction of coffee flavor too.
2. You keep the acid of those colored malts out of the mash thus making the pH of the base malt the main determinant of the malt component of mash pH proton deficit. But that acid still goes into the kettle and its effect on kettle pH needs to be considered or at least kettle pH needs to be determined. This would especially be the case if, as would be typical for an Irish stout brewed with water of typical municipal supply alkalinity the proton surfeit of the roast barely were barely sufficient or even somewhat insufficient to bring the mash pH into the desired range necessitating the use of another acid source for that purpose (we'll look at that example in a minute)
3. It is no harder to determine the proton deficit (or surfeit) of a specialty malt than it is of a base malt. If we ever get to the point where maltsters supply that information then all you have to do is punch that data into a spread sheet or calculator.

In a recent post, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/mash-ph-prediction-control-442357/, in which thread this discussion should probably be taking place, I describe a spreadsheet which can be used for pH prediction. It is, perhaps, as valuable for the insight it lends into problems like this one as it might be for pH prediction. When I make Irish Stout I mash 60 pounds of MO with 8 lbs roast barley and 13 of flaked barley in 25 gal of water with about 1.5 mVal alkalinity (75 ppm as CaCO3) and a like amount of total hardness more or less evenly split between calcium and magnesium. Sticking those numbers in with some assumed parameters for the malts/barley derived from my own measurements on Weyermann Pils and Kai Troester's measurments on the others (with a WAG on the flaked barley) I get a predicted mash tun pH of 5.60 and a measured mash pH of 5.57 with the roast barley in the main mash. The spreadsheet reveals that the roast barley is contributing 129 mEq of protons and that it takes 114 of those to move the water to 5.6. Were I to hold out the barley I would need to get that 129 mEq of acid from elsewhere (129 mL of 1 N acid) so that when I added the barley later I would have 129 mEq more acid than I would otherwise.

In another recent example I looked at based on a question here where RO water was involved (0 alkalinity) that the colored malts' proton surfeits were insignificant compared to the base malt's deficit which had to be made up largely with lactic or other acid. This would be the case with most lighter colored beers.

You may wish to play around with this spreadsheet a bit yourself to try to gain similar insight. The thread referenced above contains links to it and to a set of power point slides which sort of describe it but are not really a user's manual.

Hi,

I have read about 40 pages of this thread and have gained a lot of info from it. It is a great way to get my feet wet about water chemistry and the importance of it as it pertains to brewing.

Sorry if this has been asked already: I see a lot of talk about IPA's and it is clearly addressed in the baseline by the OP. But say I wanted to brew an aggressively hopped DIPA but I want it to have a nice clean 'soft palate'. Like Hill Farmstead's beers. Would I still follow the baseline for an IPA? Or more like the baseline for 'soft' beers? Or something different all together?

Thanks,
Mike

I'm guessing that you will get what you want by keeping the chloride up and the sulfate low so I'd start with about 2.5 grams CaCl2/5 gal and no gypsum. See how that works and be sure to taste it with supplemented CaCl2 and gypsum in the glass to arrive at the best combination for use in subsequent brews.

ajdelange said:

I'm guessing that you will get what you want by keeping the chloride up and the sulfate low so I'd start with about 2.5 grams CaCl2/5 gal and no gypsum. See how that works and be sure to taste it with supplemented CaCl2 and gypsum in the glass to arrive at the best combination for use in subsequent brews.

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Thanks! Should I also keep the acid malt at 2%?

Yes, especially if that has been working for you in the past.

OK. First post here. I am loving the primer. It is saving me a lot of water adjustment angst. One question I don't think I've seen yet is what effect, if any, does bicarbonate have on flavor. I know different mash pHs lend different characteristics but, aside from pH, does bicarbonate itself lend anything to flavor. There is often a lot of focus on duplicating specific regional water profiles, including some with crazy high bicarb. But if you have to add a bunch of acid (through dark malts, acid malt or direct acid additions) to bring the pH down to a functional range, why bother duplicating HCO3? Maybe that's the whole point of the primer. You can play with levels for Ca, Cl, SO4 and Na to tweak flavor characteristics. Is there ever a time when you want the bicarb there other than for pH adjustment. I have pretty soft water so I would just as soon not add any bicarb since my pH works out well without it.

BlueHouseBrewhaus said:

OK. First post here. I am loving the primer. It is saving me a lot of water adjustment angst. One question I don't think I've seen yet is what effect, if any, does bicarbonate have on flavor. I know different mash pHs lend different characteristics but, aside from pH, does bicarbonate itself lend anything to flavor.

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Bicarbonate does have flavor and not a very good one as you would readily agree if you drank the water from my well in Quebec or as you can easily demonstrate by dissolving some baking soda in a glass of water but when you bring brewing water to mash pH you must overcome its alkalinity and in doing so you convert almost all the bicarbonate to carbonic which, under the hot conditions of the brewing process, breaks down into water and CO2 which escapes. Despite this I have seen, in professional brewing texts, comments to the effect that 'even neutralized bicarbonate is flavor negative'. I don't see how that could be as neutralized bicarbonate is gone so I mention this only because you may see similar comments elsewhere.

But there is some residual bicarbonate is beer (whose pH is even lower and in which, therefore, even more bicarbonate has been converted to carbonic) and I used to warn people to control bicarbonate for that reason until Kai Troester pointed out that when beer is carbonated some of the CO2 converts to carbonic acid and some of that, in turn, into bicarbonate. The level of bicarbonate is beer from the impressed CO2 is higher than the residual from the original water. One doesn't notice the taste - perhaps because of the biting effect of the CO2. When the beer goes flat that effect is gone but so then is the bicarbonate. So one does not say 'I want more of that Alka-Selzer effect, I'm going to add more bicarbonate' because the bicarbonate won't stay in the beer. If someone did dose his beer with bicarbonate to the extent that the pH didn't drop to an appropriately low level he would get the double whammy of poor starch conversion and high residual bicarbonate. Such a beer would not be very good but if carbonated to a high enough level even in such a beer the extra bicarbonate would convert to carbonic.

BlueHouseBrewhaus said:

There is often a lot of focus on duplicating specific regional water profiles, including some with crazy high bicarb. But if you have to add a bunch of acid (through dark malts, acid malt or direct acid additions) to bring the pH down to a functional range, why bother duplicating HCO3?

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Many brewers are engineers and engineers love to do things like generate elaborate spreadsheets that take things like ionic strength into account and incorporate algorithms that calculate salt additions which mimimize the weighted rms differences on log concentration between a profile they got from a brewing book and water synthesized with the calculated salt additions. I went through that phase and I'm not the only one. I would venture to say that 20 years ago it was thought among home brewers at least that to brew a good beer in a style that originated in Munich you had to reproduce Munich water. Having done that a few times, and having gone to considerable trouble to do it with that trouble related to getting the bicarbonate right and having noted that upon heating int the HLT much of that bicarbonate dropped back out I realized that this is what would happen in a Munich brewery too and there was no point in going to all the trouble to get 'authentic' water if your work was to be undone automatically in the HLT.

BlueHouseBrewhaus said:

Maybe that's the whole point of the primer. You can play with levels for Ca, Cl, SO4 and Na to tweak flavor characteristics.

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Perhaps not the whole point of the Primer (which is KISS) but certainly a large part of it.

BlueHouseBrewhaus said:

Is there ever a time when you want the bicarb there other than for pH adjustment. I have pretty soft water so I would just as soon not add any bicarb since my pH works out well without it.

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If one wants to closely match the profile of a natural water from pure water then he has to, WRT bicarbonate, get that into the water the way nature did and that is by dissolving limestone with CO2 as one cannot send off to Spectrum for a kilogram of calcium bicarbonate. If the brewer is lucky (in this regard) he will have an alkaline supply which he can dilute with RO (adding the 'salt' H2O in order to minimize ion content error) to which he can add some salts to come up with an 'authentic' Munich supply. Other wise hours of bubbling CO2 (as the wastage of a lot of it) are required. The only time I ever do this anymore is for teaching purposes and that's pretty rare.

Your water primer is, as it's been said, beyond helpful. I'm going to hit you with the nuts and bolts and just wanted to see if i'm on track…and yes I'm one of those who is taking the advice of the KISS method.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/centennial-blonde-simple-4-all-grain-5-10-gall-42841/

10 gal batch of the above.
100% distilled water (15 gal)

1 tsp of calcium chloride straight in the HLT (for both mash and sparge water).
3% sauermalz straight in the mash.

Question on sauermalz - will probably be using lactic acid. Unsure of how much to use. Swear I've been looking but 3% of the grist means?

Seriously, I have NOT been able to make a pale ale of any kind due to the fact that I live on some of the most mineral-packed water in Wisconsin. While I have done the 50/50 split of distilled/tap, I am tired of guessing.

Big thanks for the help.

100 grams of sauermalz would contain 1 - 2 grams of lactic acid. The lactic acid solution you buy at your LHBS is 88% lactic acid and has density 1.206 g/cc.

AJ, you rock! You and Martin are my water gurus. Thanks for such a detailed reply. I guess not so surprisingly, I am an engineer. Even so, pretty much everything you wrote after "Many brewers are engineers..." my brain translated as "Wa wa waaa wa wah wa waaa...". My engineering is more of the dirt and concrete variety. Regardless, thanks for making this subject so understandable. If my professors (many, many years ago) had been as coherent I may have even enjoyed my chemistry classes. Bottom line is I will not sweat my bicarb levels unless I have a pH issue. Thanks - Chris

ajdelange said:

100 grams of sauermalz would contain 1 - 2 grams of lactic acid. The lactic acid solution you buy at your LHBS is 88% lactic acid and has density 1.206 g/cc.

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So either 8 oz of acid malt or 5ml of lactic acid should do the trick?

BlueHouseBrewhaus said:

Even so, pretty much everything you wrote after "Many brewers are engineers..." my brain translated as "Wa wa waaa wa wah wa waaa...".

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Let me translate "Wa wa waaa wa wah wa waaa...": A lot of arcane stuff that while it is really interesting and requires nifty and clever implementation has little practical effect

With Noonan's Edinburgh water treatment example in the "Classic Beer 8 Style Series - Scotch Ale" . I don't see anyway possible for me to treat my Tennessee water to even come close to his example.

Using the water chemistry primer to come close to the Edinburgh example below, would I use 100% RO water and 2 tsp each of gypsum and calcium chloride?:

"For British beers: Add 1 tsp gypsum as well as 1 tsp calcium chloride

For very minerally beers (Export, Burton ale): Double the calcium chloride and the gypsum."

Thank you for sharing your insight!

LaFinDuMonde said:

Hi, I have read about 40 pages of this thread and have gained a lot of info from it. It is a great way to get my feet wet about water chemistry and the importance of it as it pertains to brewing. Sorry if this has been asked already: I see a lot of talk about IPA's and it is clearly addressed in the baseline by the OP. But say I wanted to brew an aggressively hopped DIPA but I want it to have a nice clean 'soft palate'. Like Hill Farmstead's beers. Would I still follow the baseline for an IPA? Or more like the baseline for 'soft' beers? Or something different all together? Thanks, Mike

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. I would say don't worry about the water that much. Get it in the middle with slight dominance of sulfate maybe something like.. chloride:sulfate 1:2 Then I would back off the bittering addition by 5-10% and first wort hop it. Makes a way bigger and predictable difference in hop "bite" and soften it without losing IBU. plus the water won't be "overdone" and still contribute nicely

If it's a physically realizable profile one can usually come pretty close to realizing it but the technique may involve sparging with carbon dioxide and dilution with deionized water. Depending on the qualities of your water it may be better to throw it out and use straight RO which, in any case, is the basis for this Primer.

Adding 1 tsp gypsum and 1/2 tsp calcium chloride should get you into the range of Noonan's water with the exception of the bicarbonate. I can't believe he wants the amounts of 'carbonate' (by which he clearly means either bicarbonate or alkalinity) listed in the table. That would lead to big problems. I did note, with interest, that one set of notes from an Edinburgh brewery said they used sodium bisulfate to combat alkalinity.

As with any dark beer you should be cognizant of pH problems. You shouldn't need alkalinity but ought to check pH.

old_tx_kbb said:

With Noonan's Edinburgh water treatment example in the "Classic Beer 8 Style Series - Scotch Ale" . I don't see anyway possible for me to treat my Tennessee water to even come close to his example.

Using the water chemistry primer to come close to the Edinburgh example below, would I use 100% RO water and 2 tsp each of gypsum and calcium chloride?:

"For British beers: Add 1 tsp gypsum as well as 1 tsp calcium chloride

For very minerally beers (Export, Burton ale): Double the calcium chloride and the gypsum."

Thank you for sharing your insight!

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Not to be that guy, but why are you even looking at the water treatment section in a book? Maybe I'm wrong as I've never read Scotch Ale but I have Lager Brewing which is 5 years newer and its the standard stuff, ie classic brewing cities pofiles (without a cited reference). Similar to the tongue taste map that appears in all the old books, just ignore everything said about water treatment.

I wouldn't advise that at all. This particular member of the series has quite a bit of information about the water of Edinburgh which, as much of it comes from old brewery notes, has to be interpreted in terms of the modern way of thinking but nonetheless lends insight as to what the water was like and, in this case, how the brewers dealt with it. My advice to brewers who wish to go beyond the Primer is to garner as much of exactly this kind of information as they can and use it to prepare liquor with the general characteristics of the region whose beer they are trying to emulate. This, I believe, can give better results than worrying about matching a particular profile.

So I am getting ready to make a Scottish Ale (Something close to Four Peaks Kiltlifter Clone by Scottland). I'm trying to figure out if I'd need acidulated malt for this grain bill following the primer and if so, what % of the grain bill. So far I have pretty much just followed the primer verbatim but I'm not sure which style this falls under for the basic guidelines.

9.5 lbs 2-Row
1.0 lbs C-80
0.5 lbs Carapils
2 oz Roasted Barely
0.5oz Peat Smoaked Malt

No. I wouldn't think so.

Thanks again AJ

Happy New Year All!


I'm planning on doing my first all-grain batch within the next week or so. My well water here is horrible so I will be using all RO water.

Based on the info on this thread, Could someone check me on a couple of things?

This is a IPA (8 SRM) (clone of Foothills Hoppyum IPA)

Grain Bill-

11lb of US 2-Row Malt
1lb of US Caramel 20L Malt
8oz of US Caramel 40L Malt


1) I should deviate from baseline as follows: "Double the calcium chloride and the gypsum." Correct?



2) I plan on using the 88% Lactic acid solution instead of the Sauermalz. So to calculate how much of the lactic acid solution I need, I first came up with the ammount of Sauermalz I would use:

12.5 lb. (grain bill) * .02 (2%) = .25 pounds of Saurmalz

Based on that, and this statement-

"100 grams of sauermalz would contain 1 - 2 grams of lactic acid. The lactic acid solution you buy at your LHBS

is 88% lactic acid and has density 1.206 g/cc."

.25 pounds of Saurmalz = 113 grams

I figure I can put 2cc of the lactic acid soultion into a syringe to get 2.4 grams of lactic acid and that should get me where I want to be. Does this sound right?

As always, thanks for all the help!

-Klink

Col_klink said:

1) I should deviate from baseline as follows: "Double the calcium chloride and the gypsum." Correct?

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That is what it says but that assumes you want a really minerally beer. If I could edit the sticky I'd put that caveat in there. A more conservative approach would be to use 1 tsp each of CaCl2 and CaSO4 and see how the beer turn out. You can add more gypsum in the glass to see if you think that makes it better and if it does then add more in the next batch you brew.

Col_klink said:

2) I plan on using the 88% Lactic acid solution...

I figure I can put 2cc of the lactic acid soultion into a syringe to get 2.4 grams of lactic acid and that should get me where I want to be. Does this sound right?

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It does to me.

Thanks for the reply AJ! Cheers!

This may be beyond the KISS philosophy of the primer but how do you handle water adjustments for a multi-step mash with an acid rest? Is there a way to figure how much the acid rest will effect pH or do you just have to measure it and adjust as you go? If it's the latter, when do you measure the pH? During the acid rest or in the protein rest? If I have to adjust as I go, it seems it would be better to skip the acid malt in the mash and just use direct acid additions. ...Or am I just overthinking this as usual

I'm afraid 'acid rest' is a bit of a misnomer. If you take malt and hold it overnight at 47 °C you should see an appreciable pH drop but that's more of a 'rest' than most of us have in mind when we use the term (which, BTW, I haven't heard in quite a while). The Primer applies to any mashing schedule from single step infusion through triple decoction. Some modulations may well be desired depending on the mash program you are actually using but that is indeed getting beyond the Primer's KISS.

I have heard the term ocassionally but never paid much attention to what it might mean until it showed up in a recipe I was considering. I did some poking around and learned just enough to be confused. Thanks for the clarification.

where does an American amber fit into the primer?

9# 2 Row
1 1/2# Crystal 60
9.3 oz Carapils
8 oz Munich 10
.9 oz Roasted Barley (.5% of grist to add a bit of color)

1.053 OG
36.6 IBUs
12.3 SRM

This is for a 5 gal batch with RO water.

The Primer could be made even simpler. Add 1/2 tsp of calcium chloride to 5 gal of low ion content water. If the beer is pale, add 2% sauermalz to the grist. Brew. Taste the beer adding incremental amounts of calcium chloride and gypsum until the most pleasing taste is found. Brew again using the additional salts (if any).

That's the approach I would take. If you can find an article or book that says, for example 'American amber is traditionally brewed with high sulfate water' then you could start with 1/2 or even one tsp of gypsum in addition to the calcium chloride. IOW if you can find any guidance wrt the water treatment for this style you can use it to guide what you do within the recommendations of the Primer. You will still have to experiment for best results.

Much appreciated. I'll take that advice.

As with many others who've posted to this thread... thanks AJ. I've been wrestling with this for a while and wish I had read this primer a month or so back. I have a question and will try to be brief.

I draw water from my own well. According to Ward Labs report all important mineral levels are close enough to your suggested baseline that simply diluting with 25% DI water will bring everything into line. The one exception is Total Hardness (CaCO3) which is at 168. How will this hardness level impact my brewing? Or will it even have an appreciable impact?

Hardness is beneficial to a certain extent in that it lowers mash pH. That sort of consideration goes beyond the Primer's reach where the idea is that all such considerations are taken into account through the addition of salts to low mineral water. Assuming half the hardness is attributable to calcium that would mean a calcium content of 33.6 mg/L and a magnesium content of 20.4 (the actual numbers are given on the report). Diluting these by 25% would get them 25% lower which is within the bounds generally acceptable for use of the Primer. A 1:1 dilution would cut them both in half.

ajdelange said:

Hardness is beneficial to a certain extent in that it lowers mash pH. That sort of consideration goes beyond the Primer's reach where the idea is that all such considerations are taken into account through the addition of salts to low mineral water. Assuming half the hardness is attributable to calcium that would mean a calcium content of 33.6 mg/L and a magnesium content of 20.4 (the actual numbers are given on the report). Diluting these by 25% would get them 25% lower which is within the bounds generally acceptable for use of the Primer. A 1:1 dilution would cut them both in half.

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Your estimates are spot on. Calcium is 32 and Magnesium 21. That being said, do I understand correctly that the hardness of my water is more likely beneficial than harmful?

In the majority of cases it is helpful - or at least the calcium part is as it conveys many benefits. But the idea behind the Primer is that you don't need any because you are adding plenty via the the calcium chloride and/or gypsum additions. At the levels you have I wouldn't worry much one way or the other.

ajdelange said:

. At the levels you have I wouldn't worry much one way or the other.

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Thank you sir. You are a genuine asset to our hobby.

Greetings! Great sticky! I know that this may have been discussed, but just for my own peace of mind, I am brewing an Irish red ale. It is only using about 3% roasted barley, would I use the additions for a roasted beer, or would I use the suggestions for British beers. I know I am probably over thinking this a bit, but I want to see if I can dial it in. Thank you any and all for your comments

ajdelange said:

Lactic is a fine choice - that's what's in sauermalz. There is a little bother calculating the amount of lactic acid. The rule of thumb is 1% of grist should be sauermalz per 0.1 unit pH reduction desired. If you know that sauermalz is 1 - 2% lactic acid by weight you can work that around to the equivalent weight of lactic acid required taking into account that most lactic acid in home brew shops is an 88% solution.
.

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I'm getting set up to make a traditional Irish red. I worked my way through the math (above) and it looks like your recommendation works out to just under 2 ml of lactic acid for 10 lbs of grain. Does that number seem right to you?

So to get to the baseline with my water chemistry:

Add 2.5 - 3.0 gal. distilled water to my well water to achieve 10 gal.
Add 2 tsp Calcium chloride + 2 ml lactic acid to the water

Make my beer noting the pH readings of mash and sparge. Taste the finished beer and then adjust the next batch as necessary.

Do I have this figured about right?

Puddlethumper said:

I'm getting set up to make a traditional Irish red. I worked my way through the math (above) and it looks like your recommendation works out to just under 2 ml of lactic acid for 10 lbs of grain. Does that number seem right to you?

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That depends on the grains and the alkalinity of the water but it is not an unreasonable number by any means. 88% lactic acid is 11.6 N which means that 2 mL yields 23.2 mEq. In a typical mash with 10 pounds of grain and 10 gal of water that might be expected to shift mash pH by about 0.06 pH or so.

Puddlethumper said:

Add 2.5 - 3.0 gal. distilled water to my well water to achieve 10 gal.
Add 2 tsp Calcium chloride + 2 ml lactic acid to the water

Make my beer noting the pH readings of mash and sparge. Taste the finished beer and then adjust the next batch as necessary.

Do I have this figured about right?

Click to expand...

Yes.