1st water adjustment - please check my numbers

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JLem

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I'm set to brew tomorrow and would like to adjust my water to match the beer. I'd appreciate someone(s) checking my numbers, at least generally, to make sure I'm not overdoing things. Here is my current water profile:

Calcium - 11.5 ppm
Magnesium - 2.5 ppm
Bicarbonate - 34 ppm
Sodium - 50 ppm
Chloride - 110 ppm
Sulfate - 9 ppm

I'm going to brew a Scottish Ale, SRM ~15. I'd like to get my residual alkalinity up some and bring the sulfate up as well since currently my SO4:Cl is way too skewed (though for this beer maybe not too big a problem)

I'm doing a 5.5 gallon batch with a partial mash (~1 gallon mash).

Messing around with some of the software/spreadsheets out there, I've come up with the following additions:

Chalk - 0.5 g in mash; 2 g in boil
Gypsum - 0.5 g in mash; 2 g in boil
Baking Soda - 0.5 g in mash; 2 g in boil

Does this look like "normal" amounts? Any input would be greatly appreciated.
 
Looks ok. Not sure the effect of splitting some in the mash and some in the boil.

I personally just started building my water or amending it as needed.

What calculators are you using?
 
Looks ok. Not sure the effect of splitting some in the mash and some in the boil.

I personally just started building my water or amending it as needed.

What calculators are you using?

I'm using one of the spreadsheets posted here on HBT - EZ Water Adjustment

If I put everything in the mash, my mash residual hardness will not be correct. Likewise if I don't put any in the mash. The idea, I think, is to split it proportionally so that the mash and the final beer will have the appropriate chemistry.
 
Ended up not brewing this weekend - other things took longer than expected. So, if anyone else has any advice/suggestions, I'm all ears!
 
I would go with .5g of epsom salt too to get the magnesium and sulfate up a bit more. Since most of your fermentables are coming from extract (that already has ions), you might not need the boil additions at all.
 
Since most of your fermentables are coming from extract (that already has ions), you might not need the boil additions at all.

I read something about that, but wasn't sure how to factor it in. You say may not need - how would I know?
 
What's the recipe? What is your water to grain ratio for the partial mash?

I generally mash at 1.25 quarts per pound

my grain bill is:
1 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (16.56%)
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt 40L (16.56%)
7.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt 120L (7.28%)
7.0 oz Honey Malt (7.28%)
7.0 oz Munich Malt (7.28%)
1.9 oz Chocolate Malt (1.99%)
2 lbs 9.6 oz Extra Light Dry Extract (43.05%)
 
I never quite figured out what the best assumption is to be made on the ions in extract. I know that if I were making malt extract, I'd probably shoot for calcium/magnesium levels at the minimum to make wort efficiently and keep everything else low and balanced. But... who knows what the heck they do.
 
First, you should put just your grain bill into promash/beertools/whatever and figure out what the expected SRM of that beer would be (i.e. if you didn't add the DME). That will tell you the SRM of the mash, and what RA to shoot for. Add salts to your mash to get the proper RA for that color, not the final beer color.

With regards to your Cl:SO4 ratio, you can probably assume that the company that makes the DME uses a balanced ratio and you can shoot for balancing out the ratio for the water that you're adding. I'd probably add a mix of gypsum/epsom to the boil kettle for balancing the Cl:SO4 ratio since your water is really skewed towards chloride. It's up to you what you want the final ratio to be.
 
My guess is that the extract mfgs. are very consistent about their ion content. If you're really ambitious, you can call the manufacturer and get the salt concentrations in the extract.
 
First, you should put just your grain bill into promash/beertools/whatever and figure out what the expected SRM of that beer would be (i.e. if you didn't add the DME). That will tell you the SRM of the mash, and what RA to shoot for. Add salts to your mash to get the proper RA for that color, not the final beer color.

That makes sense, but if I take out the DME, the color estimate doesn't change that much in BeerSmith (15.1 -->14.6) . Also, BeerSmith doesn't give me the mash SRM, but the final beer SRM. The mash SRM would be much darker, right? With ~3.5 lbs of grain, I'm only using ~1 gallon of water in the mash and then effectively diluting it with the sparge/boil water to reach my final wort/beer SRM.


With regards to your Cl:SO4 ratio, you can probably assume that the company that makes the DME uses a balanced ratio and you can shoot for balancing out the ratio for the water that you're adding. I'd probably add a mix of gypsum/epsom to the boil kettle for balancing the Cl:SO4 ratio since your water is really skewed towards chloride. It's up to you what you want the final ratio to be.

The amount of additions I'm proposing to add balances out the Cl:SO4 (1.25), so I think I'm good there, though with a Scottish ale, I could err on the malty side.
 
You're right about the mash SRM being a lot higher than the final beer but that's the point. The SRM cue for figuring out mash pH only cares about what's in the mash. It's the ratio of dark/roasted grains and their inherent acidity that we're trying to balance for. The way you'd figure the mash SRM would be to temporarily set the batch size to something like 2 gallons. That would get you closer.

When we're figuring RA for a full all grain batch, the mash SRM and final beer SRM will be very close since it's not topped off.
 
When we're figuring RA for a full all grain batch, the mash SRM and final beer SRM will be very close since it's not topped off.

But what about the sparge water? I would think the mash color in an all-grain batch would still be considerably darker than the final beer because of the amount of sparge. Or am I not understanding the AG process?
 
That's a good point actually. I have to wonder if the texts that talk about appropriate RA to SRM relationships already take this into account. I'm stumped.

Are there hard and fast numbers for RA to SRM? Or general guidelines, I haven't found either.
 
Palmer's section on it http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html seems like it's relatively predictive. That data carries over the TH's spreadsheet and any other utility that gives you appropriate SRM ranges based on calculated RA. The thing I can't get my head around is what's being discussed above. A beer that uses a typical mash/sparge routine will probably have a mash SRM of about twice the finished beer. A 35 SRM stout is probably 60 SRM in the mash. Certainly you can't broadly modify your water profile for 60 SRM or you'll way overshoot your pH.
 
Palmer's section on it http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html seems like it's relatively predictive. That data carries over the TH's spreadsheet and any other utility that gives you appropriate SRM ranges based on calculated RA. The thing I can't get my head around is what's being discussed above. A beer that uses a typical mash/sparge routine will probably have a mash SRM of about twice the finished beer. A 35 SRM stout is probably 60 SRM in the mash. Certainly you can't broadly modify your water profile for 60 SRM or you'll way overshoot your pH.

Palmer (and TH) uses the finished beer SRM when suggesting RA range. I imagine its just to keep things simpler. I suppose the SRM for a mash could have been used since it might not always be proportional to the finished beer depending on how thick or thin the mash is, but - as palmer points out quite often - this isn't an exact science. Even two mashes with the same SRM's can have different affects on pH depending on which malts are used, etc.

This is from Palmer's instruction page on his spreadsheet:

...However, the relationship is a general one – different malts of the same Lovibond color value can have different amounts of acidity. You can use the calculated color of a beer recipe as a guide, but don’t rely on it as gospel to determine the appropriate amount of residual alkalinity; it is a general relationship, like cloud color and rain.

Instructions:
Step 1, Determining RA Target: Decide on the color of the beer you would like to brew. Look at the BJCP Style Guidelines at www.bjcp.org or at a brewery website that lists the color of the beer you would like to brew. Enter the color value in the Target Color box, and the spreadsheet will calculate a range of RA that should generate a mash pH that falls in the correct range. Remember, roastier grain bills will have a higher acidity than grain bills composed of caramel and toasted malts. Look at the range of RA present and choose a number that you feel is appropriate to the style of beer you want to brew. For example, if the target beer color is 10 SRM (20 EBC), the RA range is 0-60. Water with an RA close to zero will create a lower, more acidic mash pH, probably around 5.4 @ 20°C. Water with an RA closer to 60 will create a higher, less acidic mash pH, probably around 5.8 @ 20°C. The mash pH will drive the final beer pH. Lower beer pH translates to a sharper or brighter expression of beer flavors, while a higher beer pH softens and mellows out the flavors. A softer character is usually desired for roastier beers to prevent them from tasting acrid.
 
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