Yet another Water Chemistry Question

I finally got around to getting my water treated and am trying to wrap my head around all the information out there. . .I have a brew day coming up on friday and actually had 2 questions.

1. I have always had an off flavor that appears in my lighter higher hopped beers (IPA's and PA's). I have had a hard time getting much hop flavor and there is always a rather harsh bitterness there. Based on my water report below does it sound like the water has been my problem here or should I start looking at other potential factors.

2. I am planning on brewing a basic pale ale this weekend (something along the lines of Lake Walk or Bee Cave's Haus Pale Ale), what additions should I make to my water to bring out the best in a pale ale.

Thanks in advance

--Pava


Water Report from Ward Labs:
pH
7.0
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est
222
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm
0.37
Cations / Anions, me/L
3.4 / 3.1
ppm
Sodium, Na
12
Potassium, K
<1
Calcium, Ca
30
Magnesium, Mg
16
Total Hardness, CaCO3
142
Nitrate, NO3-N
3.5 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S
2
Chloride, Cl
35
Carbonate, CO3
<1
Bicarbonate, HCO3
103
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3
84
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

Since you are pretty low on calcium and sulfate you could add some gypsum, this would bring out the hops a bit more.

Using the EZ spreadsheet I have linked in my sig, here are your results:

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 30
Mg: 16
Na: 12
Cl: 35
SO4: 2
CaCO3: 84

RA (mash only): 53 (10 to 14 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 17.50 (Very Malty)

You can see that your water is ideal for 10-14 SRM beers. Those are "amber".
Also, the Cl to SO4 ratio is going to accentuate malty flavor, not hoppy. Actually, a ratio this high isn't appropriate for anything IMHO. My water is very similar and I've choked down a few pale ales before figuring this out. What you want to do, at minimum, is add Gypsum. In fact, for a pale ale, it's really all you need. 1 gram of gypsum per gallon of water used is great because it raises your calcium and sulfate to where they should be and also gets your RA down to support a mash pH with a paler beer.

Here's what you get:

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 1 / 0
Dilution Rate: 0%
CaSO4: 1

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 90 / 90
Mg: 16 / 16
Na: 12 / 12
Cl: 35 / 35
SO4: 149 / 149
CaCO3: 84 / 84

RA (mash only): 10 (6 to 11 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.23 (Very Bitter)

So, if you strike with 4 gallons, add 4 grams of gypsum into the mash and stir it in well.
If you sparge with 5 gallons, add 5 grams of gypsum into the boil kettle.

According to -TH-'s website (http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/EZ-water-calculator.htm) it looks like your water is pretty low in SO4, like Tonedef131 mentioned.

For a 5G batch, I would probably go with 5 grams of gypsum in the mash and 10 in the boil kettle... it should end up like this:
Ca - 130
Mg - 16
Na - 12
Cl - 35
SO4 - 248
Alkalinity (CaCO3) - 84

I aimed for this by looking at Mosher's Ideal Pale Ale profile: (Ca=111, SO4=337, Mg=18, Na=35, Cl=32, CO3=38, Hardness=352, Alkalinity=31)

It isn't perfect, but I think it is close enough to get you were you are going.

edit: Bobby beat me... I just went a little more hardcore on the gypsum I suppose

I don't think there's any harm in pushing the gypsum more like you've mentioned. I went more conservative and what I'd think would put him into acceptable range. Let's just say you can use anywhere between 1 and 2 grams of gypsum per gallon used.

Thanks so much everyone. . .this gives me a great place to start and hopefully I won't be choking down yet another pale ale after I make this addition.

Do I have to get my gypsum from the homebrew shop (is there different gypsum that is deemed food safe as opposed to what you may find in a hardware store)?

Bobby . . . can you describe how your pale ales tasted before the gypsum addition. Mine had a good amount of bitterness (but it was often rather harsh) and very little hop flavor and also had some strange aftertaste that was very noticeable when burping. Does this sound at all familiar? I am really hoping that the water additions fix this issue and I don't have another problem somewhere in my process.

I think it was a two-fold problem with a high mash pH and horribly low SO4. The flavor was harsh and had a tongue numbing effect. I think a good way to describe the latest attempt is clean with a much more focused hop flavor.

If you can find pure calcium sulfate somewhere, I'm sure it's fine. It's dirt cheap at the homebrew store though. If you bought chalk, gypsum and calcium chloride from the brew shop and baking soda and epsom salt from the pharmacy, you'd be out a whole $10 to do just about anything with your water.

When you add gypsum or any other salts to alter your water, could you just find the total water needed for your recipe and add the stuff all at once? So say you had 4 gals for mashing, 4 gals for sparging. Could you put 8 gals in a pot and add 8 grams of gypsum to it and use the water when you need it? I usually dunk a 2 qt pitcher in my water pot to transfer it over to the mash tun for mashing and sparging.

certain minerals are only used for mashing to get to the right PH and others are used during the boil for flavor so you adjust your salt additions according. Also you need to add the salts during the mash and boil and not plain water because some wont dissolve in plain water. You can add all the salts during the mash but only calculate RA for the volume of mash water then Cl/So4 ratio for the whole boil volume.

So the link in Bobby_M's signature to the ezwateradjustment spreadsheet, under the "Adjustments" section, there is a "mash additions" and a "sparge additions".

You enter grams in the mash additions until you get what you want in the results section, and then you when mashing put the amount from "mash additions" in. When boiling, put the amount from the "sparge additions"?

I just threw numbers in but I put 1 under chalk in the mash additions and the sparge additions tells me 1.1. So I would put 1 gram in the mash and when boiling put in 1.1 grams? I put 8 under gypsum and sparge tells me 9.1, so 8 in the mash and 9.1 in the boil? Is this how it works?

Correct, just add the "Sparge Additions" into the boil. Chalk is a good example because it is nearly impossible to dissolve into water, but it will dissolve into boiling wort from what I understand. That is a good reason to just add it to the boil.

yup that's all there is to it. You can also uncheck the box for sparge additions and put the whole amount in your mash, its a balancing act whether it is easier to split it in some cases or not. YOu also need to find out what minerals affect RA and what affects flavor. There is no sense in adding minerals that affect RA in the boil since it was meant to be added to the mash like chalk but you can add the minerals for flavor in the mash as long as you keep in eye on RA its a balancing act lol

Thanks again for all the help guys. . .I just picked up a couple of ounces of gypsum and now have high hopes for the pale ale coming up as well as the barleywine and double simcoe IPA that are on deck. HBT always comes through with great advice. I think I will also be adding the rest of the additions to my collection at some point so that I can change my water into whatever I want.

Bobby -- I took a little time this morning and started playing around with the water adj spreadsheet that you recommended and you are right, it is awesome and easy to use. I think I am slowly (ok very slowly) starting to get a handle on water chem.

Thanks again for all the help

So are you going to go with the 1gm gypsum per gallon of water? Are you adding anything else? I have almost the same water profile as you and am going to be brewing Edwort's Pale Ale within the next week.

yea, I think I am going to start out at 1gm per gallon and see how that goes. Unfortunately it will be a good 6-8 weeks before I am sampling it so I won't have any updates for you before you are ready to brew.

After playing around with the spreadsheet that Bobby referenced I think the 1gm is the way to go to start off with...maybe next time I will increase it, but I am going to try to take this water chem stuff somewhat slowly. Good luck on your brew, I have much higher hopes for mine now that I know the water I am dealing with.

On Palmers website in the water section, it talks about how grains can lower the pH without having to add things like gypsum or calcium sulfate. In his nomograph example it shows that with a pH of 5.8 you can brew most pale ales, brown ales, and porters with confidence because the grains will equalize the pH to 5.2-5.6. I graphed out my numbers on the nomograph and got a little below 5.8. So according to Palmer, wouldn't I be able to brew this Pale Ale without adding any additions to the water? I mean, how can you tell what your grains are going to do to the pH?

snail said:

I mean, how can you tell what your grains are going to do to the pH?

Click to expand...

Thats what the nomograph is for and all these spreadsheets and software is for. The darker the grains the more it will bring down the PH. whats your cl/S04 ratio, for pale ale you would probably want to be in bitter range

My water is almost identical to the OP's. So it about .23-.30.

So if my pH is at about 5.8, would I need to add gypsum to the water to lower it or will the grain do it itself?

I don't want to lower it with gypsum and then add grains which lowers it even more... or is this totally going over my head lol....

Just use -TH-'s website. Make sure you RA is within range for your SRM (this is the part that adjusts for pH of the mash) then make sure the Cl:SO4 ratio is within bounds for the maltiness and/or bitterness you are looking for. In short, you are making it too complicated IMO. At least if I understand it correctly, lol!

Here are some video's to check out: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/water-modification-videos-ths-spreadsheet-144461/

nealf said:

Just use -TH-'s website. Make sure you RA is within range for your SRM (this is the part that adjusts for pH of the mash) then make sure the Cl:SO4 ratio is within bounds for the maltiness and/or bitterness is within the range you are looking for. In short, you are making it too complicated IMO. At least if I understand it correctly, lol!

Click to expand...

+1 the hard part has already been done for you i.e spreadsheets and all the research, all you have to do is plug in some numbers on the spreadsheet and poof your done.

I know, I know... I'm just trying to understand how this works.
I understand that by plugging in values for your water's minerals it will give you the RA and that number is best for certain types (SRMs) of beers.

You can adjust the RA by adding different things to the water, got that.

But certain types of grains (roasted or toasted, dark grains) will also bring down the pH. The spreadsheets don't account for that. All they account for is the RA based on your water's minerals.

I'll just plug the numbers in the spreadsheet and use what it gives me I guess. It's worked for plenty of other people so it must be right!

snail said:

But certain types of grains (roasted or toasted, dark grains) will also bring down the pH. The spreadsheets don't account for that. All they account for is the RA based on your water's minerals.

Click to expand...

Correct, which is why you adjust the RA to the SRM (color) of the beer you are creating. The darker the beer... the higher the RA needs to be. Darker beers comes from darker grains as I'm sure you have guessed.

Makes sense.... thanks for sticking with me

Apparently my HBT connection from work is being harshly throttled by IT otherwise I would have chimed in. It looks like you're getting the idea. Yes, darker kilned malts are acidic so they don't require the RA to be as high. Another way to say it is the higher your RA the more acidic dark malts need to be used hence the SRM range in the spreadsheet goes up. If your planned beer color (here's were brewing software comes in) is 18 SRM, but the spreadsheet is saying 3-8 SRM, you need to raise your alkalinity until the SRM range moves up.

You can get exact values for your additions if you know ahead of time how much mash water and sparge water you need to use. Once you enter those, it will then calculate the quantity of salts will have to be added to the boil (it's based on a simple ratio against the mash water volume).

This is all much harder to write, read and understand than it really is. Nothing beats playing around with the spreadsheet and trying to get close to a target profile.

You don't have to worry about your water's original pH if you get all the numbers in range via the spreadsheet.

I think I finally got it! I'm just going to follow the spreadsheet and I'm sure it will turn out great. Thanks for the detailed explanation...

Question guys.

I use a 5.2 buffer compound to ensure my mash pH is always around 5.2. If you use a buffer then mineral additions at mash aren't required?

The buffer seems to me to be a low cost solution to simplify pH management. I often wondered what the trade off must be otherwise everyone would be doing this...

Comments anyone?

I have heard Kai say that Five Star's 5.2 pH buffer doesn't always work perfectly... if I remember correctly. Here is a link with a discussion on 5.2 pH buffer:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/adjusting-ph-149790/

That said, I still use it after adjusting with brewing salts... just in case I am off by a bit... it could be overkill, but that is ok. I have noticed quite an increase in efficiency when adjusting with brewing salts... a greater increase than I noticed with 5.2 alone.