What should I brew? (water report inside)

I am going to be brewing my first AG batch soon. What would be a good beer? Since it is my first time going all grain I would like to not have to worry about adding anything or adjusting pH etc. Any suggestions?

pH: 8.0
Sodium: 19 ppm
Potassium: 2 ppm
Calcium: 34 ppm
Magnesium: 9 ppm
Total Hardness (CaCO3): 123
Nitrate: 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate (SO4-S): 9
Chloride: 26
Carbonate: 6
Bicarbonate: 108
Total Alkalinity: 98

You should be able to brew an English Brown at about 18 SRM without needing any pH adjustments. I would however, add some calcium to the boil (either through chalk, calcium chloride, or gypsum) to get your total calcium above 50ppm for yeast health.

The assumptions I made for the grain were:
8.5lbs grain
0.5lbs crystal grain
0.375 roasted grain (chocolate)
mash thickness 1.15 quarts/lb

That should get you in the ballpark.

You might be able to get by with an Amber beer but as mentioned above, brown beers will suit this water well. Bringing the calcium to a minimum of 50 ppm will help with yeast health and promote good break precipitation.

Forget chalk under all circumstances, it does not dissolve well in water or in the mash and does not contribute its components reliably. A better approach is to use pickling lime when increased alkalinity is desired for black beers. Visit the website shown in my signature line and download Bru'n Water to have a tool which includes pickling lime. Bru'n Water also has an extensive water knowledge section that will help you understand brewing water chemistry.

mabrungard said:

You might be able to get by with an Amber beer but as mentioned above, brown beers will suit this water well. Bringing the calcium to a minimum of 50 ppm will help with yeast health and promote good break precipitation.

Forget chalk under all circumstances, it does not dissolve well in water or in the mash and does not contribute its components reliably. A better approach is to use pickling lime when increased alkalinity is desired for black beers. Visit the website shown in my signature line and download Bru'n Water to have a tool which includes pickling lime. Bru'n Water also has an extensive water knowledge section that will help you understand brewing water chemistry.

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That's quite a spreadsheet. How did you estimate acidity contributions between different malts?

Kai Troester did a nice set of experiments on malt acidity and identified definite trends for various malts. Visit the following site for more info.

http://braukaiser.com/documents/effect_of_water_and_grist_on_mash_pH.pdf

Thanks, that's an awesome website. I'll have to play with it for a while.

If that's Black River water, I wouldn't brew anything with it!!!

bmud0314 said:

If that's Black River water, I wouldn't brew anything with it!!!

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No, our municipal water actually comes from a well.

Where can you buy pickling lime?

I picked up some from my local grocery store, but I had to ask the store manager if they had it. He took me to an aisle I would not have looked in. Some stores keep it a canning section, some in a spice section, and some in a cleaning section. Best to ask, if you don't find it right off.

The other option is to look it up and buy it online. A pound of the lime is cheap, but it will probably cost as much for the shipping if you buy it online.

After looking at that spreadsheet, It has me adding 0.2 grams of Calcium Chloride and 0.2 grams of pickling lime. What is the best way to weigh 0.2 grams. or is it even worth it? I was planning on buying a scale to weigh grains anyways but after looking I don't see anything that will weigh in that small of an increment.

Digital scales that have 0.1 gram resolution are readily available at a lot of places and they are relatively inexpensive (easily under $30). With something as potent as pickling lime, it is VERY important to measure closely. Don't kid yourself and assume you can use something like a teaspoon to meter out the small masses of minerals needed for the typical homebrew batch.

Make the investment in a scale. It comes in handy for hop additions too. Do a search for digital scales 0.01 and you should find plenty of options.

Oh by the way, make sure you're considering the total amount your adding to the mash. There is a calculator on the right side of the Water Adjustment sheet that you put your water volume in and it calculates the total amount of the mineral or acid that you would add to the mash or sparge water. The number that is entered at the left side of that sheet is grams per gallon of water so it needs to be multiplied by the water volume treated.

ok, I guess I read it wrong. On the water adjustment page is that for all the water you use or for mash water or for sparge water? I am a little confused now.

Your confusion is justified and I need to correct that in the program and instructions.

For the most part, Bru'n Water is geared toward producing better mashing conditions. Those mineral and acid adjustments apply to the mash.

But justifiably, you ask "what about adjustments to the sparge water". I haven't explained enough to Bru'n Water users how they should be applying those water adjustments to the sparge water.

The bottom line is that most of the mineral adjustments do need to apply to the sparge water (or be added directly to the kettle) to provide the intended ion concentrations in the starting wort. The only additions you do not want to add to the sparge water (or kettle) are alkalinity increasers (chalk, baking soda, or pickling lime) or alkalinity reducers (acids). The reasons for this follow.

Sparge water typically needs to have a slightly acidic pH to help avoid leaching tannins into the wort. Bru'n Water includes a Sparge Water Acidification calculator to help the brewer find out how much of a particular acid they should be adding to that volume of sparge water to reach that desired pH range of 5.5 to 6.0. Assuming the brewer has done this to their sparge water, they would not want to add any additional acid that the Water Adjustment sheet recommended. So for sparge water, ignore the acid addition recommended on the Water Adjustment sheet.

As mentioned above, sparge water typically needs an acid addition to produce that desired 5.5 to 6.0 pH. Since the alkalinity increasers (chalk, baking soda, and pickling lime) will typically increase water pH, it should be obvious that you don't want to add them to the sparge water. Unfortunately removing chalk and pickling lime from the sparge water additions means that you may not have the intended calcium concentration in your starting wort. There are a couple of options in this case. The first is to ignore the deficiency. This is OK unless the overall Ca concentration is going to drop under 40 to 50 ppm. This could cause fermentation and precipitation problems in the beer. Another option is to overcompensate the calcium deficiency with an addition of either calcium chloride or gypsum.

Could I add the need amount of pickling lime and calcium chloride calculated for the sparge water to the boil kettle before I start boiling? Or would I be better off overcompensating and adding it to the mash water? Sorry for all the questions, this will be my first batch and I am trying to get this stuff figured out.

Yes, adding it to the kettle is a good alternative. The calcium chloride is OK for adding to sparge water since it is not an alkalinity increaser. You're OK with adding that to the kettle too.