Step of building my water/ph?

I've recently been reading and experimenting over the last two batches with gypsum salt and ph but want to understand the steps to everything.

i.e. take distilled water and add gypsum salt to it and take a ppm reading then when I get to around 100ppm use this for mash water?
or
use distilled and mash in and then add gypsum to adjust the ph? But then it may not be the amount of calcium and sulfate I'm looking for?

search this forum for the EZ water spreadsheet, download that and use it to build you water profiles. Then read the water chapter at www.howtobrew.com to learn how to use calcium chloride, gypsum, baking soda, epsom salt to adjust for different beer styles. When you adjust your water, you adjust it based on the color of the beer, effectively doing that will give you the perfect ph for the mash, the spreadsheet makes it very easy to understand this. You also have to adjust your so4/cl ratio to give a more pronounced hop bitterness or a more pronounced malt backbone, the spreadsheet makes this easy too. Maybe this will help jump start your learning more about water adjustment, which in my case was the single biggest improvement I made to my homebrew.

also your above method of adding 100ppm of gypsum to distilled water for mashing would work good for maybe a really pale beer, but it would suck for a darker beer. You'll understand this if you'll play around with that spreadsheet that I mentioned above. You'll be better off adjusting all the critical components of the water instead of just the sulfate. Also theres a program called Brewater 3.0, if you'll search and download it theres a formulation wizard in the menu that makes targeting specific water profiles very easy. Hope this helps.

When calcium ions in your water, including ones that already in the water and those you have added by tossing in gypsum, calcium chloride, or any other calcium salt, react with phosphate in the malt they release hydrogen ions which are responsible for the lowered mash pH's seen with hard water. But the dark malts, if any, contribute additional acid and also lower pH. In most cases, the sum of these is not sufficient and additional acid is required for proper mash pH. The best way to proceed is to understand roughly what mineral profile is required, establish that, mash, check pH and make adjustments with additional acid or alkali additions. There are 2 approaches to getting the initial mineral content approximately correct. One is to get your water's mineral content measured. Reducing an ion concentration that is too high is easily done by dilution with deionized water. For example, if alkalinity is 100 and you want alkalinity of 50 you dilute 1:1, for 33 you dilute 2:1, for 25 3:1 and so on. To increase an ion's concentration you add a salt of that ion. For example, to increase 50 mg/L calcium to 150 mg/L you would add 368 mg calcium chloride dihydrate to each liter of water. This also increases chloride by 177 mg/L because there is a fixed ratio of chloride to calcium in this salt. This methodology works well until bicarbonate or carbonate become involved. You cannot increase calcium by adding calcium carbonate. It won't dissolve unless you add acid. But whatever you do, the critical step is measuring mash pH and controlling it. If you get this right you will see a dramatic improvement in your beers.

You aren't going to get up to speed on all if this overnight. To get you started brewing there is a Primer in the stickies area at the top of Brewing Science. It really simplifies things and people are reporting good results using its guidance.

Finally, you should be cautioned with respect to the various spreadsheets. They do not model carbonate/bicarbonate accurately (if they did they would be much more complicated than they are), there is really only a very weak correlation between water alkalinity and beer color and chloride sulfate ratio is not a measure of maltiness vs hoppiness in all, or even most beers. The spreadsheets are fine in some cases, not in others and unless you have pretty in depth understanding of the chemistry you won't know which. The EZ spreadsheet author recognizes these shortcomings and lists many of the caveats on the spreadsheet. You should heed them.

That is very helpful. I went back to Palmer's book several times and took a little more away each time. Where I was confused was about the starting water profile and then whether or not it would be a huge change to add salts to adjust up and down which would then change the water profile. Palmer didn't address this and also down plays ph to some extent in this discussion.
So what I glean from the discussion so far and threading is to adjust the water appropriately using a calculator for a good starting point depending on the style of beer and water profile i want. Then make make small adjustments at a time to get the mash into the proper ph range?

In a concrete way I should mash in and let it sit for 5-10 minutes and then open up check temps and ph. Then add the appropriate salt up or down depending. Then stir and give it a few minutes to adjust and check again? How quickly with a good stir will the ph adjust?

I should share the reason I'm focusing on this so much is that I accidentally adjusted my water by using some spring water with a ppm of 30 and then added little gypsum nad it came out great.
Did another batch with the town water ppm of 160 and added the gypsum and it came out no where near as good. The flavor of the hops did not come through and the harsh sulfate taste with all the bitterness came through.

Would you use the pilsen water profile for an allagash white clone?

HOPCousin said:

In a concrete way I should mash in and let it sit for 5-10 minutes and then open up check temps and ph. Then add the appropriate salt up or down depending. Then stir and give it a few minutes to adjust and check again? How quickly with a good stir will the ph adjust?

Click to expand...

Salts are not a very effective way to control mash pH down because it takes so much calcium to move the pH a little. This is why I don't recommend the spreadsheets - they often have you adding so much salt the beer winds up tasting like Alka Seltzer (not my description but apt). You should start with a water of nominal calcium content and as little alkalinity as you can manage. RO water plus 1 tsp calcium chloride per 5 gal meets this requirement. If you like the way sulfate and hops interact you should add a tsp of gypsum in addition to the calcium chloride. You should mash with this water then, as you say, check pH. If pH is too high, which will be the case most of the time, you will need to add acid in the form of sauermalz, lactic acid or a mineral acid to get pH down. If pH comes in too low (beers with lots of dark malt) you will need to add some base usually in the form of calcium carbonate to raise it. Next time you brew you will know how much acid or base is required for the particular grain bill and water composition. You have now met the first requirement of brewing water treatment: making sure mash pH is correct. The second part is getting the flavors the way you like and this is done by making adjustments to the sulfate to get the right hops perception. Once that is done you can go back and fiddle with the calcium chloride. It takes several brews before you get you settings dialed in.

I am puzzled by your use of the term "ppm". When you say "spring water with a ppm of 30" what does that mean. Thirty ppm sulfate? Thirty ppm alkalinity? Thirty ppm calcium hardness?

ppm is "parts per million." I have a parts per million meter so I can essentially measure the amount of whats in the water. Palmer lists the ppm of 1 gram of whatever salt/bicarbonte will add to the water.
So I'm planning/hoping on doing the math and taking my preliminary reading and trying to add in to get toward a water profile and measure as I go. I do have food grade acid to adjust down so I will prepare the water and then use the acid to adjust down once I have the mash going. I have epsom salt, gypsum salt and baking soda. Will they have calcium chloride at my LHBS do you think?
Thanks again for the help

after doing some calculations I see I'm going to need that calcium chloride to get it right as you were saying with salts

Apparently you have a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter. These are useful for getting a general idea about a water sample but do not give any information about how much of what is in the water. For example, RO systems often incorporate a TDS meter. If the feed stream measures 200 and the permeate stream 2 then you know the system is working as it should but you cannot say that each ion was reduced by 99% - only that the conductivity of the water was decreased by a factor of 99 as it is conductivity that these meters measure. The conductivity is converted to a ppm reading by calibrating to sodium chloride. So while the meters are accurate for brines they are not accurate for more nominal water ion compositions. A sodium chloride solution of 491 mg/L has a conductivity of 1000 uS/cm. Thus a TDS meter is calibrated to read 0.491 ppm/uS/cm. A 491 mg/L solution of CaSO4 (no water of hydration i.e. not 491 mg/L gypsum but the amount of gypsum that contains 491 mg/L CaSO4) has a conductivity of only 692 uS/cm thus a TDS meter would read only 0.692*491 or about 339 mg/L in a solution of that strength. Knowing this you can get a rough idea of the strength of a CaSO4 solution from a TDS meter by dividing its ppm reading by 0.692. This all flies out the window if any other ions are present.

If you want to prepare solutions of a given strength of CaSO4 I think you will do better to weigh out the salt and add it to a known volume of water than try to grope for the proper addition through TDS measurement. The EZ or other spreadsheets will let you do effectively the same thing. If you specify a weight of gypsum to be added to deionized water it will calculate the calcium and sulfate ion concentration. These spreadsheets are fine for that purpose. It's only when carbonate and bicarbonate are involved that they are lacking.

I do recommend that people start with calcium chloride rather than gypsum because not everyone likes what sulfate does but everyone (OK - there must be exceptions) seems to like the effects of chloride. Once you have pH under control (with acid) you can then add gypsum to see if you like sulfate. Check the Primer here.

I don't know anything about Allagash White so I can't recommend a Pils or any other water profile. If it's a wit beer then I would think a Pilsner (soft) water would be appropriate.

I agree. I'm hoping to use the meter just to get an overall number and see about how much is entering. I've been doing the calculations and found Calcium Chloride at my LHBS so I'll head over there today.
1.5 grams of calcium chloride per gallon. What about adding some sodium bicarbonate? Would these be helpful in rounding out the flavor in a small amount .2 grams of baking soda per gallon? That would hit calcium, chloride, sodium, and bicarbonate with pale beer limits. I'm planning this for tomorrow's IPA recipe:

3 Gal. OG 1.057 SRM 9

5lbs. American 2 row pale
1lbs. Munich 10L
4oz. Crystal 60L
4oz. Caramunich II

IBU's 48

Whenever someone asks about sodium bicarbonate I always suggest that he dissolve a bit in a glass of water and taste it. Doesn't taste very good does it? Now add to that the fact that it has a detrimental effect on the pH of beers (with the exception of ones made with substantial amounts of dark malts) and I think you will realize that it isn't something you really want in your beer (except under certain circumstances). Over the years brewers have struggled to get it out of their water. I don't think anyone except home brewers puts it in.