Water TOO pure?

Hey all, I am hoping someone can clear my dilemma up for me. I am preparing to do my first all grain batch, I started studying and realized the importance of water chemistry. Using John Palmer's Excel sheet and information I determined that my water sucks for making anything but Pilsners. Currently, I am trying to make a fairly dark Dunkelweizen. My water profile is:

Ca - 9.6
Mg - 2.2
Na - 7.5
SO4 - 2.6
Cl - 3.5
CaCO3 - 33
pH - 7.3

The excel sheet tells me that while aiming for a 22 SRM beer, my water will only yield a 7-12 SRM beer. My target residual alkalinity is 175-200 or so and i need 150 additional alkalinity to achieve the color alone. Baking Soda will help this, correct? I am hoping someone can suggest any advice on how to proceed. Either what salts to add ( i hope it doesn't require adding to much that it will ruin the beer), or perhaps just going to buy bottled water. Thanks for the help guys!

Your water is an excellent starting point for any beer because it is so low in mineral and brewing ion content. Adding what you need is fairly simple, much easier than trying to deal with very hard or mineral laden water. For a dark brew you will want some alkalinity but please don't use baking soda. You really don't want to add Sodium and IMO those spreadsheets that tie your salt additions directly to the beers color can be both confusing and misleading. Try putting a tsp of Calcium Carbonate in the mash along with a half tsp of Calcium Chloride and the beer should be fine.

I'm in the same boat with Seattle water, great for light beers, but actually need to add salts for darker beers. You could add baking soda (NaHCO3), and can calculate how much from the nomograph. If you need another 150 hardness, then you'll need to add 183 ppm HCO3 (150/50*61). To get that, you'd need to add .96g/gal of baking soda. However, like BigEd mentioned, that's also going to add a bunch of sodium (about 72ppm/gal). While that would only bring you up to about 80ppm sodium, below where things can potentially get bad, I don't know that I'd go that route without a reason to add sodium, especially for your first all-grain.

Plus, you'll want to increase your calcium, since the yeast really needs at least 50ppm calcium to flocculate well. I'd say go with BigEd's advice and add a little CaCl2 and a little chalk (calcium carbonate) to your mash. The chalk won't dissolve until it hits the mash, so don't put it in the strike water, it will just sink to the bottom. Not all of it will dissolve in the mash either, but that's where a pH meter or pH strips can help you to adjust after about 15min of mashing if you think you need to. Once you've got a few brews under your belt, then you can start playing around with sodium levels, chloride/sulfate ratios, and all of that.

Also, one last thing, in case you want to skip the salt additions all together. Depending on what dark malts you're using, you don't necessarily need to mash them the whole time. Some people will mash in all the wheat/base malts without the dark malts for 45-60 min, allowing most, if not all, of the conversion to take place. Then you could stir in the darker malts. Most of the heavily roasted malts don't have much left in the way of starches to convert, so 15min. or so is plenty to dissolve all the compounds within them. This way you get to use your nice, clean water to mash the bulk of your grains, and still get the dark color and flavors from the dark malts. If you did it this way, I'd still probably add a little calcium chloride to up the calcium content a little, but wouldn't worry about pH as much.

erikpete18 said:

Also, one last thing, in case you want to skip the salt additions all together. Depending on what dark malts you're using, you don't necessarily need to mash them the whole time. Some people will mash in all the wheat/base malts without the dark malts for 45-60 min, allowing most, if not all, of the conversion to take place. Then you could stir in the darker malts. Most of the heavily roasted malts don't have much left in the way of starches to convert, so 15min. or so is plenty to dissolve all the compounds within them. This way you get to use your nice, clean water to mash the bulk of your grains, and still get the dark color and flavors from the dark malts. If you did it this way, I'd still probably add a little calcium chloride to up the calcium content a little, but wouldn't worry about pH as much.

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This is a good way to address your "problem." The dark grains do not need to "mash" - some people even just steep them. I would conduct a mash with all of the base grain and add the dark grains when it is almost time to sparge. BTW - I am getting ready to go to walmart tomorrow and pay .39 cents a gallon so that I can purchase the water that comes out of your tap I have bicarbonate levels around 270..... so I am in the opposite boat as you.

39 cents a gallon? My Wal-mart is double that. Are those for the typical gallon jugs of DI/RO/Spring or a water exchange type deal they have going on?

That is great water! Always brew without additions first, then only slowly add salts as you progress each recipe. My opinion.

Braufessor said:

BTW - I am getting ready to go to walmart tomorrow and pay .39 cents a gallon so that I can purchase the water that comes out of your tap

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Yeah, no kidding! I'd love to have the OP's water.

My water has off the charts mineral content - 342 mg/l total alkalinity. I bought an RO set up and then follow the water chemistry primer (sticky). I couldn't get RO water in my little town. Wal Mart carries Primo drinking water, which wouldn't be bad for brewing but it's $6.50/ 5 gal. Ouch

Bamsdealer said:

39 cents a gallon? My Wal-mart is double that. Are those for the typical gallon jugs of DI/RO/Spring or a water exchange type deal they have going on?

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It is .39 if you bring in your own jugs and refill them from the RO/culligan machine they have there (not sure, but I would think all walmarts would have them). It is double that if you are buying it in jugs off the shelf. You get some funny looks when the only thing you have in your cart is 25, one gallon jugs of water

NVBrewer88 said:

. My water profile is:

Ca - 9.6
Mg - 2.2
Na - 7.5
SO4 - 2.6
Cl - 3.5
CaCO3 - 33
pH - 7.3

Click to expand...

This water should be good for a range of less acidic grists, which generally means 'lighter colored beers'. Its much easier to add ions than take them out. This is a good starting point.

Be careful with the recommendations of Palmer's nomograph. It tends to be a little agressive in the amount of alkalinity it recommends. I find that alkalinity requirements for beers are much lower than what the nomograph suggests.

One problem that anyone with a great water such as this or anyone that brews with RO or distilled water is that alkalinity is needed for more acidic grists and the alkalinity can be slightly difficult to add. Chalk does not work reliably and baking soda could add too much sodium to the water. My recommendation is to pick up some Pickling Lime and an accurate scale to use for adding alkalinity to your mash. You can learn more about Pickling Lime and dosing at the Bru'n Water website.

I've found the EZ Water Spreadsheet to be an excellent tool for calculating brewing salt additions.

http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

NVBrewer88 said:

Hey all, I am hoping someone can clear my dilemma up for me. I am preparing to do my first all grain batch, I started studying and realized the importance of water chemistry. Using John Palmer's Excel sheet and information I determined that my water sucks for making anything but Pilsners. Currently, I am trying to make a fairly dark Dunkelweizen. My water profile is:

Ca - 9.6
Mg - 2.2
Na - 7.5
SO4 - 2.6
Cl - 3.5
CaCO3 - 33
pH - 7.3

The excel sheet tells me that while aiming for a 22 SRM beer, my water will only yield a 7-12 SRM beer. My target residual alkalinity is 175-200 or so and i need 150 additional alkalinity to achieve the color alone. Baking Soda will help this, correct? I am hoping someone can suggest any advice on how to proceed. Either what salts to add ( i hope it doesn't require adding to much that it will ruin the beer), or perhaps just going to buy bottled water. Thanks for the help guys!

Click to expand...

How sure are you about that water profile?
If that is your tap water, then I have a lot of difficulty believing it. If it's bottled water, then OK.

Sorry, I cannot help with the required water profile for a Dunkelweizen because I never brew them.

-a.

I live next to a crystalline lake, so I get super pure stuff here.
http://www.ivgid.org/client_uploads/ccr_2012.pdf. proof of water report. So from what I can tell, I am lucky to have this stuff. Good to know, I already have all my grain mixed so the different batch boiling for the grain sounds appealing but I might have to try that next time. I think i might just try the Sodium Chloride and Sodium Bicarbonate the initial repliers mentioned and see how it turns out! Thanks all!

Scratch that. CALCIUM Chloride and Calcium Bicarbonate

Since you already got some decent answers, I'm just going to brag about how amazing my water is. All of these numbers were measured from the output of the water treatment plant in December 2011. I <3 Portland, OR water.

Ca - 2.2
Mg - .94
Na - 3.4
SO4 - <.25 (apparently their testing method didn't even detect it)
Cl - 2.7
CaCO3 - 13
Total dissolved solids - 38
pH - 8.0

erikpete18 said:

Also, one last thing, in case you want to skip the salt additions all together. Depending on what dark malts you're using, you don't necessarily need to mash them the whole time. Some people will mash in all the wheat/base malts without the dark malts for 45-60 min, allowing most, if not all, of the conversion to take place. Then you could stir in the darker malts. Most of the heavily roasted malts don't have much left in the way of starches to convert, so 15min. or so is plenty to dissolve all the compounds within them. This way you get to use your nice, clean water to mash the bulk of your grains, and still get the dark color and flavors from the dark malts. If you did it this way, I'd still probably add a little calcium chloride to up the calcium content a little, but wouldn't worry about pH as much.

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This is what I've done with success for darker beers.

Also, try the bru'n water spreadsheets to figure out salt additions. Takes a minute to figure it out, but it's very accurate in my opinion: https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/.

Martin Brungard, the guy who wrote the spreadsheet, recommends adding pickling lime to help balance the mash pH for darker beers instead of chalk or baking soda. I got a bag of it at Walmart for a few bucks and it's gonna last me 10 years. Just be careful because a little goes a long way.

I've also contacted him directly via email with specific water questions. He was very helpful and got back to me right away.

Please ignore my previous post.
According to my prejudices, and the map in New Brewing Lager Beer (Greg Noonan), you should have pretty hard water.
I looked up the water report for Incline Village, and it appears that we are both wrong.

Sorry,

-a.

Braufessor said:

This is a good way to address your "problem." The dark grains do not need to "mash" - some people even just steep them. I would conduct a mash with all of the base grain and add the dark grains when it is almost time to sparge..

Click to expand...

+1 to this. I've added dark grains in the last 5 minutes of the mash, and I've also cold steeped the dark grain for 24 hours and added the liquor to the boil. Both methods work great!

pvtschultz said:

I've found the EZ Water Spreadsheet to be an excellent tool for calculating brewing salt additions.

http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

Click to expand...

+1 to this, too! EZ Water is what I use on every batch. Bru'n Water won't download on my computer for some reason...

If you are interested in some water strategies and the concept of adding dark grains at the end of your mash, check out podcast #39 - just listened to it today while brewing and it hits this topic very well. http://beersmith.com/blog/

NVBrewer88 said:

Hey all, I am hoping someone can clear my dilemma up for me. I am preparing to do my first all grain batch, I started studying and realized the importance of water chemistry. Using John Palmer's Excel sheet and information I determined that my water sucks for making anything but Pilsners. Currently, I am trying to make a fairly dark Dunkelweizen. My water profile is:

Ca - 9.6
Mg - 2.2
Na - 7.5
SO4 - 2.6
Cl - 3.5
CaCO3 - 33
pH - 7.3

The excel sheet tells me that while aiming for a 22 SRM beer, my water will only yield a 7-12 SRM beer. My target residual alkalinity is 175-200 or so and i need 150 additional alkalinity to achieve the color alone. Baking Soda will help this, correct? I am hoping someone can suggest any advice on how to proceed. Either what salts to add ( i hope it doesn't require adding to much that it will ruin the beer), or perhaps just going to buy bottled water. Thanks for the help guys!

Click to expand...

The well water at my home is even lower in minerals than yours, and I have brewed some kickass beers - several Altbiers, a Bourbon-barrel Porter, even a dark smoked lager that finished at 10.5% abv, as well as a light hefeweizen and a very nice light summery cream ale - ALL of them with no additives. I'm not saying they couldn't be improved by some additives, but the even without they came out fantastic! My guess is yours will too.