Building Water

After making a very boring Kölsch with only RO water I decided to try my hand at building my own water.

I used 7 gallons of RO water of unknown residual mineral content.

7 g Chalk
5 g Epsom Salt
1 g Salt
3 g Baking Soda

This seemed like a lot but the calculators on the web all seem to point to this much. I mixed it in the water and the water was very opaque, but not unpleasant to drink.

I was shooting for a Kölsch water profile.

Did I do it right?

I would have to look at the final numbers punched into a spreadsheet to know what comes out the other end. I know that the minerals dissolve into the water much more effectively when in the presence of malt. That is probably why the water was opaque. You may do better with this question in the "Brewing Science" forum.

I hate when people say you should have put this in another forum. I usually just look for good questions regardless of which forum it’s in.

Seams like a lot of bicarbonates, sulfates and calcium for a kolsch. I would think you would want to keep the water soft. When building water I use the KISS method.

King of Cascade said:

I hate when...

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Nobody cares what you hate. It was a useful suggestion.

Quick water profile search came up with basically Pilsner.

Your blend in 6-gallons of pre-boil wort has an RA of 130 which is works for SRMs 16-21.

Your Cl vs SO4 ratio = 0.31 = very bitter IBU

If your target profile is Pilsner, then your additions are too high nearly across the board.

I don't think you did that badly - Dave Draper lists a Koln profile of:

Ca CO3 Cl Mg Na SO4
104 152 109 15 52 86

in his "Brewing Waters of the World" (and again at his website ).

Assuming RO water has an initial ion concentration close to 0 (across the board), the EZ Water Spreadsheet shows a final profile of:

Ca Cl Mg Na SO4
106 23 19 46 74

I think if you were interested in trying to back off on the bitterness a bit, and increase your chloride ion concentration, I might have reduced the chalk and added some calcium chloride. But otherwise, pretty good.

Thanks for the responses.

I am going to have to get some calcium chloride. Thats the one thing I do not have yet.

m.

Duffer said:

Your Cl vs SO4 ratio = 0.31 = very bitter IBU
the board.

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I did notice the bitterness of the wort to be very bitter in comparison to the pure RO wort.

I guess calcium chloride will help with that.

Thanks
m.

SC_Ryan said:

Nobody cares what you hate. It was a useful suggestion.

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Useful suggestion? You told the OP you don’t have an answer for him then said to take his question somewhere else….yeah, very useful, Dude!

I never told him to do anything. I suggested he may find better answers in the section of the forum where experienced people talk about water chemistry. I was neither condescending or rude about it. I also explained to him why his water was opaque.