Basic Water Additions BIAB

[John Kimble]

Team,
I know there have been many lengthy posts about this and that there are many tools online to assists...
But I am hoping I can get a simplified answer with regards to lactic acid addition.
Full BIAB system with 100% RO water used.
So far this is what I have come up with for mineral additions (I brew 5.5 gallon batches).
Typically I start with 8 gallons of water
1tsp Calcium chloride per 5g of water used (so about 1.3tsp Calcium Chloride)
**What I really need is a base addition of Lactic Acid acid per gallon of water for an RO profile.
Others***
For IPA/NEIPA 1tsp gypsum per 6g of water used (so about 1.3tsp gypsum)

Thanks for the simplification and help!

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I don't use RO so I cannot give you any baseline numbers.

The amount of acid needed will vary a lot depending on your grain bill. This is where software is handy. A recipe with lots of dark malts (Porter, Stouts, etc.) might drive your pH too low, vs light grains where you probably need to lower your pH with acid. There is not a base addition that works for all beers, and the amount of mineral additions also impacts mash pH.

The latest version of Mash Made Easy (@Silver_Is_Money) has a page that offers suggested mineral additions to hit a profile when starting with RO water. Since I don't use RO, I have not used this enough to really evaluate the functionality, but it seems useful.

I would think that, when starting with RO, you pretty much always will want to add Calcium Chloride and Calcium Sulfate (Gypsum) but in different amounts for different styles. A typical IPA water profile will have much more Gypsum (to drive up the Sulfate level) where a lighter beer will have less minerals and a Porter may have higher minerals but a more balanced Chloride to Sulfate ratio (the same for NEIPA...they are more balanced or even higher in Chloride).

 

[hottpeper13]

The book Modern Homebrew Recipes by Gordan Strong has all the info your looking for if you don't use a scale. My I suggest a 100 gram scale and The Water book by Palmer and Kaminski. I use RO water and use different amounts of acidulated malt depending on the SRM for pH adjustments after the salt additions.

 

[Redpappy]

I started brewing BIAB style a little over a year ago. the first few brews that I did, I didn't care for. I did an inquire and asked HBT what my issue was... responses were water profile and acidie. Since then I had my water tested and started using Brew'nWater. I do not use a PH meter and my beers are tasting a lot better ( I would not say great, but a lot better). So my suggestion is to grab some software that will help you with salts and acid adds and go from there.
I use BrewNWater with a Mac, so it took some adjustments to learn to use the program(database) and I would not change a thing... I have enjoyed brew since I started using it and doing the adds. It has an option of straight RO water, or using every Distilled water. I tend to do a 50/50 Distilled/Tap water.

On average I would say that i use about 3ML of Lactic Acid for 8.5 Gal of water ( my profile so it would change with your set up). That is for my pale ales that are about 12# of grain ( the brew i did this morning was 10# 2 row, .5# carpels, 1.8# Carmel 20, roughly). As stated above that is with a 50/50 mix. not sure what it would be with straight RO, or distilled water.