Virginia Beach Water Report & ph confusion

According to my Virginia Beach Water Report (which is put out quarterly) my numbers are as follows.
Calcium: 15.6ppm
Magnesium: 4.6ppm
Sodium: 13.8ppm
Chloride: 24ppm
Sulfate: 28.4ppm
Alkalinity: 28ppm
Ph: 7.4
Based on what I have read my water is soft, and does not have any HIGH values to worry about.

Based on the Water Chemistry Primer by Yooper/Ajdelange my first goal is a pH of 5.1-5.5. Like most curious brewers I purchased the “brewing” ph strips which have a tighter range of 4.6-6.0. In measuring several different beers at both mash temps and room temp, my paper color has not changed. I have taken samples at various points during the mash, soaked the paper for various amounts of time and also read results anywhere from 5sec-20min. There has not been any change in color observed. This makes me wonder if my ph is really in the 4.5 range.

Therefore based on ph testing I need to raise or alkalize my mash. Using EZ Water 3.0 for a 5gallon batch, I can add 6grams of Baking Soda to just the mash (3gal) which raises my ph ~.3 while keeping my overall (mash+sparge) sodium within acceptable ranges(86ppm). However, doing this raises my mash RA to 328? Would that kind of alkalinity have adverse effects on the mash, also how would I find the overall RA for the entire water volume, or does this matter?

I can add 2g gypsum & 3g Calcium Chloride to the Sparge water in order to lower the RA while also raising my overall water profile to 72ppm Ca, 88ppm Cl & 78ppm Sulfates (All "acceptable ranges").

Is this the best way to do this or am I overthinking the whole thing?
In summary my thought process is:
Mash ph too low
Raise Mash water ph with 6g Baking Soda
New mash RA too high?
To maintain mash PH, but Lower overall (mash+sparge) RA, add 2g Gypsum, 3g CaCl2 to Sparge
Resulting Overall water profile lands within acceptable brewing ranges for a Pale Ale. (if i was doing pilsners I wouldnt have touched the water chem)
Ca:72 Mg:5 Na: 86 Cl:88 SO4:78 Cl:SO4=1.13
Problem solved?

Your adjusted Na and Cl levels are too high. Try keeping Na below 20 and Cl below 80. Likewise, your adjusted Calcium and Sulfate levels are too low for a hop-forward ale. Try attaining 100-150 Ca and 150-175 SO4.

Use Calcium Sulfate and Calcium Chloride in the mash, and Phosphoric acid in the sparge if you wish (DO NOT use Bicarbonate/Baking Soda). High levels of bicarbonate cause high pH values throughout the brewing process. It should be noted that bicarbonate ions are rather more effective at raising wort pH than calcium ions are at reducing it. The conversion of bicarbonate to carbonic acid is reversible until heat is applied, which drives off the carbon dioxide. This effectively removes the acidic hydrogen ion from the system by using it to form a stable water molecule. The wort pH therefore remains high and all the advantages derived from the presence of adequate calcium levels and reduced pH are lost.

I suggest dissolving the minerals first in cold water, and then proceed to heat that water and use for the mash and the boil. Your other option for adding calcium is Lime (calcium hydroxide) which will precipitate bicarbonate as calcium carbonate. Like gypsum, it is more soluble in cold water.

There are 2 major drawbacks of Lime:

1. The amount added needs to be exactly calculated and over addition may result in an overall increase in alkalinity.

2. The precipitated calcium carbonate can form a sludge that will need periodic cleaning and racking.



On the subject of pH...

The pH of water may vary from about pH 5 to pH 8 dependent upon the levels of dissolved carbon dioxide - even de-ionized water can have pH levels as low as 5 after exposure to the air. However, a combination of the presence of calcium ions and the decrease in pH has a number of effects on the brewing process. Wort produced from liquor containing no calcium has a pH in the order of 5.8 - 6.0, compared to values in the range of 5.3 - 5.5 for worts produced from treated brewing liquor.

Phosphates in wort are very high. They act as a buffer by mopping up hydrogen ions and keeping wort pH higher than desired. Phosphate then combines with calcium to create calcium phosphate which releases hydrogen ions into the wort. This increases calcium ions and decreases pH. The lower pH triggers B-amylase activity, and thus wort fermentability. This process is boosted by the presence of calcium in the mash and the boil, which in turn transforms amylase to maltose via the B-amylase enzyme. Calcium reduces protein levels and increases free amino nitrogen for yeast health.

The hydrogen ions released further reduce the pH which encourages further precipitation of proteins. Proteins are also degraded, that is converted to simpler substances by proteolytic enzymes called proteases. These are found in the malt, and have optimum activity at pH values of about 4.5 - 5.0. The reduction in pH then caused by the presence of calcium encourages proteolysis, further reducing protein levels and increasing wort Free Amino Nitrogen levels.

You will see that much of the calcium added to the mash is lost - precipitated out as phosphate, proteinate or oxalate. With all the above advantages of the presence of calcium and reduction in pH there is one minor disadvantage: The reduction in pH causes a decrease in hop utilization, giving less bitter beers. This increases hopping costs, since more hops will be required to achieve a desired level of bitterness.

I'd enter your water report into the spreadsheet and trust it for mash pH vs. reacting to the pH test strips. Better yet would be budgeting about $125 for a pH meter & solutions and still using the spreadsheet for planning.

CaCl2 & CaSO4 should be your only salts needed.

I don't see anything in that water report that would suggest that the mash pH would drop as low as the pH strips may suggest. It would take a very healthy percentage of crystal or roast malts to bring a mash pH that low. I'm thinking that the strips are faulty and the mash pH is much closer to the desired range. There should be no need for baking soda when brewing with this water unless the grist includes a lot of crystal or roast. That will avoid excessive sodium in the water.

Since this water has low alkalinity, getting aquainted with lime usage will improve the ability to control mash pH drop when brewing those darker or more crystal-laden grists. When added directly to the mash, lime does not increase the precipitation of calcium carbonate. All of the hydroxl ions (OH-) are immediately neutralized by reacting with the mash acids. The Ca ions just go into solution. This mineral is a far better alkalinity increaser than baking soda since excessive sodium is not added. Bru'n Water has a good tool for determining appropriate lime additions for mash pH control.

That water is well suited for light lagers like pilsner due to the low mineralization. The calcium content should be increased in most cases to help improve yeast health and beer clarity and reduce beerstone formation potential. Taking the Ca level to around 40 to 50 ppm is an appropriate goal. Increasing the Ca above that level is not desirable unless it has to be added to provide its desirable anion (Cl or SO4) concentration. In the case of a pale ale, significant SO4 concentration is desirable to most drinkers. That target SO4 level is debatable, but I find that levels in the 300 ppm range are not excessive.

Given the low alkalinity of the tap water, acidification of the water for sparging should not be needed. This is regardless of the water's existing 7.4 pH. Its the low alkalinity that makes this feasible. The acidification calculator in Bru'n Water indicates that it would take 0.1 tsp of 88% lactic in 5 gal to drop the pH from 7.4 to 6.0. That is a teeny amount and it helps illustrate that there is little need. The acidity of the mash will be able to keep the mash pH from rising above 6.

@ bobbrews, Alot of my beers have been known to be lacking in mouthfeel, i have tried to adopt mashing in higher in order to counteract this, but I have also read Na & Cl both contribute to mouthfeel & fullness. Briggs 2004 mentions up to 150ppm of NaCl being ok and palmers ranges are 0-150 for Na & 0-250 of Cl. Could you clarify the negative effects of those levels, is it because a pale ale should not have a heavy/sweet mouthfeel, are these levels too high overall or just too high for the mash?

I only mention using Bicarbonate/Baking Soda as it appears my current mash is too acidic. My ph readings right now are 4.5, which explains why my beers also dont turn out very hoppy based on some hoppy recipes.

What is your solution for this? If my pH was in the acceptable 5.1-5.6 range it seems Calcium Sulfate and Calcium Chloride would def. work as my only additions. By using more or less CaSO4 I can essentially drive the Cl:SO4 ratio which ever direction i need to make a maltier/hoppier beer.

Also is a RA of 311 in the mash really outrageous or just high? If I am adding the CaSO4 and CaCl2 to the sparge the net RA for the whole boil volume should come down significantly?

@DSmith yup, A ph meter & assoc chemicals is on the to buy list...but there are plenty of other brewing things on that list too, havent yet weighed the importance of this quality improvement step vs some others.

@ mabrungard Thank you...this is pretty much exactly the advice i was looking for.

I brew an occasional porter so I will pick up some lime to experiment with next time. Most of my brewing is on the lighter side however.

I have tried Bru'n water a few times & still have not quite managed to get the hang of everything going on. When you say Ca above 50ppm is not desirable unless attempting to increase Cl or SO4 why does a higher range then become more acceptable?

Here is a quick run through of my thought process:
Goal: Increase Ca & try to accentuate hop bitterness with lower Cl:SO4 ratio
-Add 2g CaSO4 to total water (mash+sparge)
Resulting Water Profile: 36ppm Ca, and 78ppm SO4.
New Issue: Cl:SO4 ratio is now very low, (.31) how low is unacceptable?
-Add 2g CaCl2 to total water (mash+sparge)
New Water Profile: 60ppm Ca, 66ppm Cl and 78ppm SO4.

Got my Cl:SO4 Ratio now at (.86) or slightly hoppy, call it a day?

And if i was going to brew something more balanced or malty, I would just up the CaCl2?
Goal: Increase Ca & try to accentuate maltiness with higher Cl:SO4 ratio
-Add 1g CaSO4 to total water (mash+sparge)
Resulting Water Profile: 26ppm Ca, and 53ppm SO4.
New Issue: Cl:SO4 ratio is now very low, (.45)
-Add 2g CaCl2 to total water (mash+sparge)
New Water Profile: 50ppm Ca, 66ppm Cl and 53ppm SO4.

Got my Cl:SO4 Ratio now at (1.26) or slightly malty, call it a day?

More Na will not add the mouthfeel you're seeking, just a saltiness which will become domininating at a certain point. The problem with giving recommended ranges of minerals in beer is that it really depends on the style of beer being brewed. A Gose may contain 250 ppm Na. And while 10-100ppm Na may usually be recommended as a very general rule, I find better results <25ppm Na for hop-forward pale ales.

More Cl will add minerality of flavor, palate fullness, and sweetness to an extent, but not technically the mouthfeel you would get from Ca/Mg. A ratio of about 2:1 sulphate to chloride is about right for a bitter beer, and it makes little difference if the actual values are 500:250 or 350:175 or 150:75. The ratio is what is really important. For mild ales, 1:2 sulphate:chloride are recommended, while a ratio of 1:3 may give best results for stouts or porters. I don't know why Palmer would recommend 0-250ppm chloride. That seems like an awfully big jump to me. Dortmund water is quite minerally in taste and has approx. 130 ppm chloride. I find that 50-80ppm Chloride is best for pale hoppy beers. In effect, this would mean that for a pale hoppy bitter beer, your Sulfate levels should be between 100-160ppm.

Moderately hard to hard water is generally required for brewing most pale hoppy beers. Hard water has adequate levels of Ca and Mg. This is what you want to adjust for better mouthfeel. Above all minerals, Ca is the most important mineral in brewing and usually required in 50-200ppm depending on the style of beer. Low levels of 2-15ppm Mg are just fine for most beers.

In brewing:

Hardness -> Good : Alkalinity -> Bad

Alkalinity has a direct relationship with Bicarbonate. Bicarbonate needs to be very closely controlled in order to achieve good beer. For a lager, it's not uncommon to have 100ppm bicarbonate, but for just about every other style such as porter/stout, ipa/apa, or mild ale, the recommended HC03 is usually 15-50ppm tops. If your bicarbonate is too high in the mash, you'll need to look into implementing a Lime treatment, which will precipitate the bicarbonate as calcium carbonate. Lime must be added to the water when cold, so it can dissolve in the mash water, and then later heated to your target mash temp. Boiling the wort later in a larger mass of water will help to take care of some of that excess bicarbonate through dilution and boiling.

I would also recommend adding CaS04 and CaCl to the mash water. For a hoppy beer, you can also add some extra CaS04 at 15 minutes left in the boil to accentuate hop crispness.

These levels are quite extreme, but to get a better hint of soft vs. hard:

Very Soft Water:

Ca: 10
Mg: 2
HC03: 15
SO4: 5
Cl: 5

Very Hard Water:

Ca: 240
Mg: 50
HC03: 250
SO4: 500
Cl: 50

bobbrews said:

Alkalinity has a direct relationship with Bicarbonate. Bicarbonate needs to be very closely controlled in order to achieve good beer. For a lager, it's not uncommon to have 100ppm bicarbonate, but for just about every other style such as porter/stout, ipa/apa, or mild ale, the recommended HC03 is usually 15-50ppm tops. If your bicarbonate is too high in the mash, you'll need to look into implementing a Lime treatment, which will precipitate the bicarbonate as calcium carbonate. Lime must be added to the water when cold, so it can dissolve in the mash water, and then later heated to your target mash temp. Boiling the wort later in a larger mass of water will help to take care of some of that excess bicarbonate through dilution and boiling.

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What kind of lager are you speaking of? The classic example of a lager, the Bohemian Pilsner, most certainly doesn't have a bicarbonate level of 100ppm.

Also, he most certainly doesn't have to use lime treatment to lower bicarbonate in his mash. Most brewers use acid to lower their alkalinity. Also, he doesn't have to heat his water when doing lime treatment, though that will probably speed the precipitation of CaCO3. Also, your description of lime softening is odd. You don't mention racking off of precipitate.

EDIT: Also, it seems that you're almost verbatim quoting that one page that you suggested Martin read in another thread (in some of your statements...not all).

tsb22 said:

According to my Virginia Beach Water Report (which is put out quarterly) my numbers are as follows.
Calcium: 15.6ppm
Magnesium: 4.6ppm
Sodium: 13.8ppm
Chloride: 24ppm
Sulfate: 28.4ppm
Alkalinity: 28ppm
Ph: 7.4
Based on what I have read my water is soft, and does not have any HIGH values to worry about.

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Correct. You are blessed.

tsb22 said:

Based on the Water Chemistry Primer by Yooper/Ajdelange my first goal is a pH of 5.1-5.5. Like most curious brewers I purchased the “brewing” ph strips which have a tighter range of 4.6-6.0.

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Waste of money. pH test strips have been shown over and over again to be worse than useless in brewing. A good example of this is the steps you are proposing to take in order to compensate for the bad pH data you have obtained.

tsb22 said:

In measuring several different beers at both mash temps and room temp, my paper color has not changed. I have taken samples at various points during the mash, soaked the paper for various amounts of time and also read results anywhere from 5sec-20min. There has not been any change in color observed. This makes me wonder if my ph is really in the 4.5 range.

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All this proves is that the strips are worthless. For a typical mash with this water pH will be from 5.5 - 5.7. Exception would be in the case of lots or roast and/or dark crystal.

tsb22 said:

Therefore based on ph testing I need to raise or alkalize my mash.

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You haven't really done pH testing. You have stained some paper with wort coloring material but what you concluded about pH is erroneous.

tsb22 said:

Using EZ Water 3.0 for a 5gallon batch, I can add 6grams of Baking Soda to just the mash (3gal) which raises my ph ~.3 while keeping my overall (mash+sparge) sodium within acceptable ranges(86ppm). However, doing this raises my mash RA to 328?

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Do you really think ant brewery has ever produced a beer with water with this level of RA. I talked to one guy from Gordon Biersch who had water that alkaline. He had his water brought in by truck.

tsb22 said:

Would that kind of alkalinity have adverse effects on the mash, also how would I find the overall RA for the entire water volume, or does this matter?

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It would absolutely be detrimental. For most beers you need to add acid - not alkali.

The whole concept behind the Primer is that you don't need to worry about things like RA until you are ready.

tsb22 said:

I can add 2g gypsum & 3g Calcium Chloride to the Sparge water in order to lower the RA while also raising my overall water profile to 72ppm Ca, 88ppm Cl & 78ppm Sulfates (All "acceptable ranges").

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I would just follow the recommendations of the Primer i.e. less of each salt. Then experiment on subsequent batches to see if you like more chloride (generally beneficial up to a point) or more sulfate (matter of personal taste but do not use with noble hops).

tsb22 said:

Is this the best way to do this or am I overthinking the whole thing?

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Yes!

tsb22 said:

In summary my thought process is:
Mash ph too low

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Actually probably too high (but note I said 'probably'.)

tsb22 said:

IRaise Mash water ph with 6g Baking Soda

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Started too high and now have pushed it higher (probably)

tsb22 said:

New mash RA too high?

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Doubtless

tsb22 said:

To maintain mash PH, but Lower overall (mash+sparge) RA, add 2g Gypsum, 3g CaCl2 to Sparge

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There are reasons for adding salts to the kettle or sparge water (flavor) but alkalinity (bicarbonate) does its damage in the mash tun. You can't recover from that in the kettle or sparge. Also remember that it takes 3.5 equivalents of calcium to undo the damage caused by 1 equivalent of bicarbonate.

tsb22 said:

Resulting Overall water profile lands within acceptable brewing ranges for a Pale Ale.

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RA of 328 is not in the acceptable range of pale ales. They are usually brewed with negative RA.

Huh, I didn't realize that the Gordon Biersch was in McLean (I looked it up when you mentioned it.). I think I remember having a decent alt beer there. Of course, I'm assuming you're talking about the Gordon Biersch in the mall down by you, but I could be wrong.

This fellow was from the mid west somewhere. Wisconsin? The water in McLean is actually pretty decent for most things (excepting Boh Pils etc.).

ajdelange said:

This fellow was from the mid west somewhere. Wisconsin? The water in McLean is actually pretty decent for most things (excepting Boh Pils etc.).

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Btw, I'm curious, considering your location, did you work for Raytheon?

bobbrews said:

A ratio of about 2:1 sulphate to chloride is about right for a bitter beer, and it makes little difference if the actual values are 500:250 or 350:175 or 150:75. The ratio is what is really important.

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This is a common misconception based on a couple of papers written in the UK in which the investigators found that higher chloride beers were preferred by taste panels in accordance with the sulfate ratio. It is well known that in continental brewing the preferred chloride to sulfate ratio (see, for example, Kunze) is infinite i.e. no sulfate if possible and this is certainly the case when ever noble hops are used. Do you really think a beer with a 500:250 ratio would taste anything like one with 150:75, or, lets use reductio in absurdam, 15:7.5?

Sulfate and chloride each has its own effects. They are in no sense antipodal. Increasing one does not counter balance the effects of the other. Increasing chloride usually benefits the beer (up, of course, to a point). Increasing sulfate generally does not but some people like the effects of sulfate and some do not. That alone blows away the notion of the worth of a ratio.

ajdelange said:

It is well known that in continental brewing the preferred chloride to sulfate ratio (see, for example, Kunze) is infinite i.e. no sulfate if possible and this is certainly the case when ever noble hops are used.

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Isn't that technically undefined, at least for real numbers?

AJ, i think i was really just hoping for you to pop in on this thread & school me. Mission accomplished, you kicked my a**!

I guess what this boils down to is that my water is "probably" awesome for brewing, the test strips are "definitely" crap.

This week of HBTing has been devoted to water chemistry, i kept wondering if maybe some of my beers were not tasting their best because of water & I have in my ability to fix this with the proper knowledge.

Now that I know what I know, I will definitely refer back to the primer. I had kind of disregarded it as I thought my wort was already too acidic.

I have recently gotten my hands on a copy of Brewing, Science & Practice by Briggs and although it is a ton to digest it has opened my eyes to the amount of detail in brewing. It has an entire chapter on the discussion going on here. Again, thought my water was skewed the wrong way. I would looove to own a copy of Kunze someday (perhaps a pH meter needs to come first :cross

So did my newer post look right?

tsb22 said:

Here is a quick run through of my thought process:
Goal: Increase Ca & try to accentuate hop bitterness with lower Cl:SO4 ratio
-Add 2g CaSO4 to total water (mash+sparge)
Resulting Water Profile: 36ppm Ca, and 78ppm SO4.
New Issue: Cl:SO4 ratio is now very low, (.31) how low is unacceptable?
-Add 2g CaCl2 to total water (mash+sparge)
New Water Profile: 60ppm Ca, 66ppm Cl and 78ppm SO4.

Got my Cl:SO4 Ratio now at (.86) or slightly hoppy, call it a day?

And if i was going to brew something more balanced or malty, I would just up the CaCl2?

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afr0byte said:

Btw, I'm curious, considering your location, did you work for Raytheon?

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Almost. They offered to buy us but it was a super high-ball offer and the transaction never went through.

afr0byte said:

Isn't that technically undefined, at least for real numbers?

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It's pretty widely accepted that lim([SO4--->0]) {[Cl]/[SO4]} = infinity. However if I give IGOR (the analysis program I use) the command
•print 1/0

It can't compute a value (in which sense it's undefined) so it returns

inf

in which sense it is because in response to other things it can't compute such as
print asin(2)
NaN
and
print sqrt(-1)
NaN

it simply says that the result is 'not a number'. But 1/0 is a number, of sorts, i.e. inf so in that sense it is defined.

Excel, OTOH, returns

#DIV/0!

for 1/0 and #NUM! for the other 2 examples so it too has a particular 'value' for 1/0.

To a mathematician there is denumerable infinity which is different from numerable infinity and there are many other arcana.


Of course in the real world we'd never come anywhere close to such a ratio even with a liter of DI water to which a tsp of calcium chloride had been added.

bobbrews said:

A ratio of about 2:1 sulphate to chloride is about right for a bitter beer, and it makes little difference if the actual values are 500:250 or 350:175 or 150:75. The ratio is what is really important.

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I'm glad to see information from the Water Knowledge page of Bru'n Water rubbing off on Bob. But the information above is incorrect. The sulfate/chloride (or chloride/sulfate) ratio is only applicable in a narrow range of ionic concentration. Its the levels of those ions, not the ratio that is most important.

At low concentrations, the effect is relatively impercievable (like 10 ppm SO4 to 5 ppm Cl). At high concentrations, the ions are in excess and their flavor contributions become antagonistic (like 350 ppm SO4 to 175 ppm Cl). I'd say that the ratio is applicable when the chloride concentration falls in the range of say 25 to 100 ppm. This is a guess on my part, but I want to try and get brewers to focus less on the ratio and more on keeping the concentrations of these ions in proper prospective.

I recently finished a study of chloride and sulfate effects in aquatic environments and presented to the Indiana Water Environment Association. A number of states and EPA have found that aquatic organisms like fish and mussels are quite sensitive to excess chloride and to a lesser degree to sulfate. Its the osmotic stress placed on these freshwater organisms that causes the problem. In most stream environments, its the chloride concentration that is the ion that causes the problem. I bring this up just to provide a weak argument that it is appropriate to keep an eye on chloride concentration first. We know from hoppy brewing practice, that there is no problem when dealing with sulfate concentrations in the hundreds of ppm, but I suggest that chloride will help create antagonistic effects as its concentration rises. In addition, those state and EPA results also show that toxicity effects of those ions are additive. So having both ions at high levels is bad. But reducing either of those concentrations while keeping the other high still reduces the toxicity of these ions.

Yeast is a freshwater aquatic organism and those results above could have some validity in brewing water chemistry. We don't typically brew with Cl or SO4 concentrations that would be toxic, but I want to point out that we should be aware of chloride concentrations first and sulfate second (except when dealing with noble hops as AJ points out).

Enjoy!

mabrungard said:

This is a guess on my part, but I want to try and get brewers to focus less on the ratio and more on keeping the concentrations of these ions in proper prospective.

I recently finished a study of chloride and sulfate effects in aquatic environments and presented to the Indiana Water Environment Association.

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I don't condone ratios of 500:250 for every beer style. But the main point is still valid...the ratio of the two is much more important than staying within the <500 and <150 chloride ranges with no caution to how they affect one another. So don't try to make it seem like I was condoning going that high in general, everytime, for every beer. I was merely taking certain styles into account that may possibly reach those limits. I've won 4 first place IPA homebrew awards with the typical 150:75 and 125:60ish ratios. Have you ever won an award for your beer Martin or Afro?... Or do you just "guess" and perform "studies" non-related to actual brewing? Lastly, you can get the same knowledge provided by Bru'n water almost anywhere else. Most of it is fairly accurate, but it is not the holy grail of brewing water knowledge, nor was it the originator of all brewing water knowledge. So stop taking all the credit.

bobbrews said:

I don't condone ratios of 500:250. But the main point is still valid...the ratio is much more important than anything else. I've won 4 IPA homebrew awards with the typical 150:75 and 125:60ish ratios. Have you ever won an award for your beer Martin or Afro?... Or do you just guess and perform studies non-related to actual brewing?

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If you don't condone a ratio of 500:250, then why would you say it's the ratio that's important? Obviously you must not condone those levels for some reason. Clearly, if you don't condone those levels, the ratio is only relevant at certain levels of each mineral, and therefore it's not just the ratio that's important. Also, I never said there's anything wrong with sulfate to chloride ratios of 150:75 or 125:60 (for IPAs at least), so I don't know why you're mentioning them.

As far as awards, I've never bothered to enter my beers in competitions, so no I don't have any. I'm pretty sure Martin has won awards, though. My information, and opinions, come from my efforts to achieve a proper mash pH (5.3-5.5 or 5.4-5.6 at room temperature, depending on who you ask), which, for me, has had the biggest effect on the flavor of my own beer. It's also what commercial breweries do. I check my mash pH with a calibrated pH meter, do you? I do, however, favor sulfate for hoppier beers and chloride for maltier beers. However, I disagree that there's one specific profile you must hit for a hoppy beer or a malty beer.

Because I was trying to get a basic point across (probably in poor fashion) that the ratio matters more than the numbers on their own (to an extent). Whether you're driving 100mph or 85mph in a 60mph zone, you're still probably going to get pulled over. However, you might not be pulled over you were going 70 in a 60mph zone.

bobbrews said:

Because I was trying to get a basic point across (probably in poor fashion) that the ratio matters more than the numbers on their own (to an extent). Whether you're driving 100mph or 85mph in a 60mph zone, you're still probably going to get pulled over. However, you might not be pulled over you were going 70 in a 60mph zone.

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Well, then, you probably should have mentioned that you were only talking about a certain range of values. What you said before just wasn't true.

The notion that chloride and sulfate represent not 2 but a single degree of freedom is very appealing to the starting brewer who is totally bewildered by the dozens of degrees of freedom that he must in fact deal with. Sulfate isn't something you can do much about short of RO, distillation or ion exchange. Wouldn't it be nice if you could compensate for extra sulfate by simply adding more chloride? Or if you have gypseous water wouldn't it be great if you could reduce the effect of that by simply increasing chloride? Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Nevertheless the appeal is so great that somebody took 1 paragraph out of a British brewing text which doesn't even say that chloride sulfate ratio defines the beer, even in part and the next thing you know everyone (not everyone - some of us know better) thinks there's a single parameter 'chloride sulfate ratio' that moves one along a 'malty-hoppy' axis. But as I noted in an earlier post any statement to the effect that the ratio is more important than the individual levels must add 'except in continental brewing' where low sulfate is sought.

To demonstrate that the concept of a ratio is valid one would have to do principal components analysis on lots and lots of beers and demonstrate that log[Cl-] and log[SO4--] lie close to the same principal component but on opposite sides of the origin which is the statisticians way of saying adding more of one cancels the effects of the other. One can do simple experiments with finished beer by adding salt and gypsum and tasting. It shouldn't take too many experiments to convince the curious that the idea is fallacious.