Adding Brew Salts to Keg of Finished Beer

[micraftbeer]

I recently noticed a trend on 3 different beers I brewed, all having this slightly chalky taste to them. Not enough to spoil the beer, but distinct enough of a bite that it annoys/distracts me. I then realized that all 3 were brewed to the same target water profile. Two were British Bitters, and one was an Irish Red.

I've tested my house water (after a simple 3-pass whole house filter system) and have that profile logged into Brewfather as my Source water. For these 3 brews with this taste, I've been selecting Brewfather's "English Ale" profile as a target and then adding brewing salts to match that, adding K-meta, and Lactic Acid to hit mash pH. This is the resulting profile:

I thought I remembered reading somewhere about a Sulfate:Chloride ratio, but my Google searches have not produced what I thought I read at some point. As an experiment, I added a little ball of CaCl to a pint glass of my Irish Red and it knocked that chalky bite out of the beer. I tried it on another pint with "2 balls" of CaCl and it took the taste to a different place than I wanted. So I know next time, I'm not going to use this profile, or I'll modify it to increase the target Cl ions for a lower SO4:Cl ratio.

But this gets me to my question. Whether you agree with my taste buds or my little CaCl ball experiment, set that aside. If I wanted to add CaCl to a keg of finished beer, can I do that? Would I just change the target profile in Brewfather and see how much CaCl I would've added and then chuck that into the keg?

Do I need to sterilize it? If so, how- boil it in a small amount of distilled water?

Will I have trouble getting this mixed into the keg evenly after I add it? The keg is already carbonated and chilled to 35F. Seems like cold temperature won't be friendly to mixing. And the thought of shaking a carbonated keg of beer sounds like a really bad idea.

 

[hottpeper13]

You make a solution of it to 100 ppm (because it's easy to multiply) take a 50 ml beaker with the beer and add one ml at a time and taste it. When you get what you want. Then a 5 gal keg is ~20,000 ml/50=400/ the ml used in the sample= the ml's to add to the keg. I think my math is wright,if not maybe Dougz can chime in.

 

[micraftbeer]

And what about sanitizing? So I need to sanitize brewing salts? I've only ever added them pre boil.

 

[jerrylotto]

I have always assumed that brewing salts do not need to be sanitized, but if you want to measure things accurately, many of them are hydroscopic and form multi-hydrates. Unless you store then in anhydrous conditions (like a bell jar with silica gel packets), they may need to be heated to dry them out before weighing or weights adjusted to accommodate for the additional water. Different salts require different temperatures and times to properly desiccate. Alternatively, you can make up fixed molar salt solutions in advance and use volume to measure your additions.

 

[micraftbeer]

I figured that rather than try to recreate what Brewfather would have me add to the mash water with a different target profile and just chuck that in, I went with my experimentation results from the glass of beer that "one ball" of CaCl salt in a 12 oz glass of beer was sufficient. So I calculated I had about 41 beers left in the keg, and tediously counted out 41 CaCl crystals (didn't even register on my jeweler's scale). I added these to 4 oz of carbon-filtered water in a microwave-safe silicone cup.

Heated it for 30 seconds in microwave, saw the crystals had nearly disappeared. heated for another 45 seconds until boil. Opened my keg, poured it all in, then purged the head space 4x with CO2 + lifting the PRV.

I decided I didn't feel like lifting the keg out of the keezer to "shake it up", so hopefully the cold beer and hot CaCl water will perfectly intermix. I'll post to share how this turned out.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

From what I've read (and actually did when dosing in the glass), people make a concentrated solution (easier to weigh salts this way), then add measured amounts of the solution. Yes, there are limits to how concentrated the solution can be - but the anecdotal experiences seem to have accounted for this possibility.