EZ Water Calculator ?

I used the EZ Calc 2.0 for the first time on my last brew because my water was off quite a bit and seems to be affecting my efficiency. I was wondering if someone would mind going over my #'s and let me know if this is correct. The beer I made was awful and tasted like paint thinner. I think I may have just gotten a bug, but I want to make sure it wasn't the water additions before I make another beer.

I added the mash and sparge additions for a total of: 5g Gypsum, 18g Calcium Chloride, 13g Epsom salt. I split up the grams for 10gallons and 7gallons.

I think you went way overboard with the salts. My water is similar to yours, and for beers that light, unless their hop bombs, I would just leave it. Or just get the calcium up to 50ppm or so. Also 8 ozs of saurermalz is a lot imo, that will really add a lot of tartness. I believe you should have dropped your ph with mostly lactic acid.

Take this with a grain of salt as i'm somewhat new with water salts and ph. I do know that my stock water makes very good light colored beers and it's even softer than yours.

_

I am assuming I am using the spreadsheet incorrectly then since I know others use it with good results. Any other pointers to what I am doing wrong would be appreciated. I am planning on brewing this same beer on Friday and don't want to #$@! it up again.

wildwest450 - I may take your advice and just leave the tap water alone except for a chlorine removal.

Did you add the salts to the boil kettle, too? If you did, that's a LOT of salts!

Edit- I see you did. That's a ton of CaCl2, and MgS04. I'd leave out the MgS04, and just try getting a nice balanced profile. Actually, looking at your water, I"m jealous! You have nice water to start with. I wouldn't mess with it except maybe a tiny bit of CaCl2 if you need it.

smuth10 said:

wildwest450 - I may take your advice and just leave the tap water alone except for a chlorine removal.

Click to expand...

What type of beer is it?

_

Ok, take this with a grain of salt because I'm fairly new at adjusting water myself. I believe EZ water calculator assumes room temperature for the mash pH estimate. So, the way I've been using the calculator was to shoot for an estimated mash PH of "5.4-5.5" as recommended to me by ajdelange.

Your calculator is showing an estimated mash pH of 5.28 which when at mash temperature would fall even lower. I believe that when the mash pH falls outside of the ideal range (5.2-5.4?), the enzymes take longer to perform conversion. It could be that you mashed for the standard 60 minutes when your actual pH levels would have required longer to perform conversion thus potentially explaining the hit on efficiency.

Curt

(It appears you live right by me, we should swap some brews sometime)

wildwest450 - It is an Oberon clone. 10 gal batch. 21lbs of grain, SRM 3.8

My efficiency was low prior to adding the water additions. After the additions you see in the pic I hit 104% into the boiler according to BS. Not sure how that is possible, but...

Anyway, if I take out all of my additions in EZ 2.0 it said my mash PH will be 5.6 & the calcium, Magnesium and sulfate are all really low. I am pretty confused. Should I not be using this thing at all??? I know it is just a reference and the problem is me not knowing enough about water profiles. I guess I just need to learn more about what additions will do what to the flavors. I am starting to think it was definitely the additions that messed up my beer and not bacteria.

My intent is to use 100% RO water, so I would really like to get this figured out.

smuth10 said:

My intent is to use 100% RO water, so I would really like to get this figured out.

Click to expand...

In that case it's pretty simple. Forget about spreadsheets (for now) and follow the guidelines in the Primer in the Stickies section here. This will get you a good beer first time out. On subsequent brews vary the amounts of gypsum and calcium chloride you add. Doing this is how you learn what ions have which effects. Plug what you do into the spreadsheet(s) as you go to see what they tell you. You will then know what ion profiles do well by a particular beer. At this point you can compare to the published profiles if you like.

My water in flint is very close to yours. I can mash pale beers with no mash adjustment at all. I tweak the CL/SO4 ratio in the boil. Un check the box in between the mash salt additions and the sparge additions for calculating. Also, you probably don't need any saurmalz or lactic to hit mash range with that water for beer that light.

a_potter said:

Also, you probably don't need any saurmalz or lactic to hit mash range with that water for beer that light.

Click to expand...

Actually, you probably do. I would vastly prefer that you make sauermalz (or lactic acid) additions based on mash pH readings (made with a meter). In most cases you will find 2 - 3% sauermalz will be required for mash pH ~ 5.4 in a beer with little dark malt content especially if the base malt is a pilsner malt. This is why I recommend it if you don't use a pH meter.

I have almost identical water and I hit pH 5.4 on the nose with no saumalz for light colored beer but I'm going to try your method on my next batch. I've seen several other posts that you recommended this and I 'm very curious to see the results.

If it isn't broken it doesn't need fixing. If you are indeed getting 5.4 then adding 2% sauermalz would probably drop it to 5.2 and while that wouldn't be disastrous I really think 5.4 is a better target. So that gets us to the question of how you are measuring 5.4. If it is with a properly calibrated meter then it's not broken - don't mess with it but if it is with pH strips then the actual pH is probably closer to 5.7 (which is about where most pilsner base mashes come in) and 2 - 3% sauermalz would be required to get to 5.4.

Yeah I kind of figured that. I do have a really nice pH meter (I'm a drinking water plant operator). I just chimed in because I live in Flint and have almost identical hardness/alkalinity as smuth10. I'll keep the saurmalz in mind though on a couple pilsner based beers I have on deck. Sounds alot easier than an acid rest.

ajdelange - I will definitely do that for my next brew. I thought I was doing that for the last one. All of the numbers seemed right in line on the spreadsheet and it turned out awful. I guess that was the confusing part. I wish there was some more explanation with the calculator for people that don't have the experience.

I will be sure to use sauermalz to bring the PH down, but other than that I may just use the tap water as is next time and then try the RO after that. I just bought the Hanna 98128 PH meter, so I am curious to compare my results with what I usually get with the strips.

I am in the process of brewing another batch of the same beer I ruined last time and I was hoping someone could give me some advice. I mashed in and tested the mash PH about 15min in and my meter said I was at 5.78. I decided to add 5oz of Sauermalz and I am now at 5.61 with 25 minutes left in the mash. Should I bother adding any more SM or is it too late. I decided to use tap water today with no other additives.

5.6 isn't too bad though 5.4 would be better. Next time use RO water or a greater dilution with RO water (as I recall you were planning to use plain tap water) or add more sauermalz. If you can do a test mash (pull out about a pound of grist and add the treated water) that will let you know what the full mash is likely to do.

OK, thank you. I didn't have time to collect 17gal of RO today so I just used tap. I am worried about using my RO water because it is stripped of everything. I know I will need to add to the RO water and I obviously don't know how to use the spreadsheet correctly. I will go back and read the sticky for the water primer, but I think my RO water will need additional adjustments as my efficiency was way low when I used it before with no additives.

RO water isn't stripped of everything - rejections usually run in the mid 90's (percent) and malt itself contains a lot of minerals. This isn't to say that an additional 20 - 50 mg/L won't make your beer better - it probably will.

The reason you get bad efficiency with RO water is that pH is too high if you don't add acid. Also remember that mash pH isn't the whole story when it comes to efficiency.

I see what you mean about the PH. The PH of my RO water is 6.4, but the PH of my tap water is even higher at 7.2. The RO water is pretty much nill of anything.

Here is the Ward Lab report for the RO water:

Sample ID : #2 RO WATER
pH 6.4
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est 11
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.02
Cations / Anions, me/L < 0.1 / < 0.1
ppm
Sodium, Na < 1
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca < 1
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 < 1
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S < 1
Chloride, Cl < 1
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 3
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 3
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

My efficiency was usually around 80-85% before I started using RO water. It then dropped to about 60-65%

I should have said "mash pH" the pH of the water itself is not significant if it is less than 8.3. With low mineral content (in the limit, DI) water the mash pH will be the "distilled water mash pH" which is about 5.75 for Pilsner malts and 5.6 for pale ale malts. This is higher than is desired so acid must be added in some form. Calcium in water reacts with phosphate to release some acid but this is usually not enough as calcium in water is almost always accompanied by bicarbonate which consumes the acid released by calcium. The extra acid has to be in the form of lactic acid, sauermalz, sauergut, bottled sulfuric, lactic, phosphoric, citric or hydrochloric acid.

That makes sense. I have been taking samples of wort out of the mash and testing that. Should I be sticking the meter right into the mash?

No. Take a small amount of mash into a separate container and then cool the contents to room temperature as by immersing the container into cold water. Then stick the meter electrode into that. The cooler temperature subjects the thin glass of the electrode bulb to less stress and stated pH values in the literature and in the various fora are all as measured at room temperature.

Ajdelange, can't thank you enough for all of your help. Much appreciated!