undissolved vs. dissolved chalk

I finally published the report about the use of undissolved and dissolved chalk in two batches of my Schwarzbier.

As a background. A while back I noticed that most water spreadsheets don't handle chalk additions correctly when calculating alkalinity. That sparked some experiments including the mash pH experiments that I published a while back. The result was that undissolved chalk has only a limited ability to raise mash pH. At low chalk levels (less than 300 ppm) it seemed that undissolved chalk has only half the alkalinity potential of dissolved chalk.

I wanted to test that in a side-by side and brewed one batch of Schwarzbier with chalk simply suspended in the water and the other one with half that amount of chalk but dissolved with CO2 pressure. The results can be found here:

http://braukaiser.com/lifetype2/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=132&blogId=1

I also updated my water spreadsheet to include dissolved chalk:

http://braukaiser.com/documents/water_calc_v15.xls

Going forward I plan to expand this spreadsheet based on the results of my mash experiments but I have to test that first with my own data. My intention is to make the spreadsheet versatile yet easy to use. Less commonly used or more complicated options would be further down or grayed out.

Check it out and let me know what you think. In particular where there is confusion or something is less intuitive than it should be.

Kai

How do you dissolve it?

bakins said:

How do you dissolve it?

Click to expand...

2l soda bottles with a carbonator cap. When you attached the cap, make sure to squeese out as much of the air as possible. You want to fill the head space with CO2 and not with air. Then shake to dissolve the CO2 and let it stand. It should clear up after a while. Some residual sediment may remain but if there is too much chalk left undissolved your CO2 pressure may be too low or your chalk concentration is too high. If the latter is the case you need to use more soda bottles.

Kai