Big Dark Malt PH Issue

[Mexibilly]

Using Brewer's Friend, I'm at a loss on how to manage pH in this recipe based on Kate The Great found right here on HBT.
I've changed the amounts of the darkest grains and salt additions (lye, lime, chalk, baking soda) many ways over and only gotten to around 4 without massive amounts of sodium or calcium.
I've written a whole new recipe to get to 5.19 pH, but that's a little lower than I'd like and I'm afraid the recipe isn't a solid representation of what I'm trying to achieve.
Any gurus out there wanna lend their expertise/experience???

Grist - Lbs - Lovibond
Marris Otter 10 – 3L
Breiss 2 Row 7 – 2L
Flaked Barley .75 – 1.5L
Special B .75 – 180L
Wheat .75 – 2L
Carafa 3 .625 - 525L
Aromatic .5 – 24L
Roasted .5 – 500L
Crystal 40 .5 – 40L
Caramel 120 .25 – 120L
Chocolate .25 – 350L
Black Patent .25 – 550L

Water
Calcium 113
Magnesium 33
Sodium 23
Chloride 38
Sulfate 44
Total Alkalinity (CaCO3) 344
pH 8.16

Target
Ca 100
Mg 5
Na 35
Cl 60
SO4 50
HCO 265

 

[philipCT]

I'd be happy to run this through Bru'nwater for you when I get home tonight.

When I'm brewing IPAs or PAs with my city reservoir water, I usually need some Lactic to get the right pH. But I just brewed a Baltic Porter and, because of the dark malt profile, needed to go the opposite way (slaked lime) to get to 5.4 pH.

I'm working off of a water analysis from Ward's Lab and using Bru'nwater. It's been pretty dependable.

 

[Mexibilly]

What's your starting water profile?

Posted under the Grist
Edit: Just edited to include the target

 

[Mexibilly]

My numbers hit pretty good with no additions except for pH.
I did add 2.25g CaCl to up the ratio a little toward malty

 

[philipCT]

working with Bru'nwater, the water profile you shared wasn't adding up properly. Are there some other numbers from your water analysis you could share? See warning message in red below.

Values that would help are ones I zeroed out because you didn't provide them:
-Potassium (K)
-Iron (Fe)
-Carbonate (CO3)
-Nitrate (NO3)

 

[Mexibilly]

working with Bru'nwater, the water profile you shared wasn't adding up properly. Are there some other numbers from your water analysis you could share? See warning message in red below.

Values that would help are ones I zeroed out because you didn't provide them:
-Potassium (K)
-Iron (Fe)
-Carbonate (CO3)
-Nitrate (NO3)

Thank you for the help.

K=1.51
Fe= .000106
CaCO3= 344
NO3= .1169
NO2= 0
F= Not Listed

Don't have CO3 listed individually among the 44 reported constituents.
I did update my original tap water and target to correct a mistake and to clarify.
I downloaded Brun Water, but find it far less user friendly than Brewer's Friend. I do need to take the time to figure it out and then purchase the official version, as many swear by it...

 

[Mexibilly]

working with Bru'nwater, the water profile you shared wasn't adding up properly. Are there some other numbers from your water analysis you could share? See warning message in red below.

Values that would help are ones I zeroed out because you didn't provide them:
-Potassium (K)
-Iron (Fe)
-Carbonate (CO3)
-Nitrate (NO3)

This is a 4 gallon batch, 6.5 gallons mash, 4 gallons sparge.
Here's the full report. Thank you

Bicarbonate (CaCO3) 344.05 340 mg/L
Phenolphthalein Alkalinity (CaCO3) 0 <10 mg/L
Total Alkalinity (CaCO3) 344.05 340 mg/L
Chlorate (ClO3) 0 <0.20 mg/L
Chlorite (ClO2) 0 <0.20 mg/L
Conductivity (@ 25°C) 807.6 810 µS/cm
Bromide (Br) 0 <0.20 mg/L
Chloride (CaCO3) 53.253 53 mg/L
Chloride (Cl) 37.82173 38 mg/L
Nitrate (CaCO3) 9.42E-02 <0.16 mg/L
Nitrate (NO3) 0.116906 <0.20 mg/L
Nitrite (NO2) 0 <0.20 mg/L
Sulfate (CaCO3) 46.21504 46 mg/L
Sulfate (SO4) 44.35225 44 mg/L
Aluminum (Al) 0.003498 <0.03 mg/L
Barium (Ba) 0.281642 0.282 mg/L
Boron (B) 0.034874 0.03 mg/L
Cadmium (Cd) 0.000106 <0.005 mg/L
Calcium (Ca) 113.102 110 mg/L
Calcium (CaCO3) 282.4157 280 mg/L
Chromium (Cr) 0.000742 <0.016 mg/L
Copper (Cu) -0.00382 <0.03 mg/L
Iron (Fe) 0.000106 <0.02 mg/L
Lead (Pb) -0.00901 <0.11 mg/L
Lithium (Li) 0.008798 0.009 mg/L
Magnesium (CaCO3) 135.0556 140 mg/L
Magnesium (Mg) 32.7964 33 mg/L
Manganese (Mn) -0.00032 <0.005 mg/L
Molybdenum (Mo) 0.015052 <0.04 mg/L
Nickel (Ni) 0.002862 <0.01 mg/L
Phosphorus (P) 0.010494 <0.03 mg/L
Potassium (K) 1.5105 1.5 mg/L
Silica (SiO2) 17.80996 18 mg/L
Silicon (Si) 8.3263 8.3 mg/L
Sodium (CaCO3) 49.56666 50 mg/L
Sodium (Na) 22.737 23 mg/L
Strontium (Sr) 0.86178 0.862 mg/L
Total Hardness (CaCO3) 420 420 mg/L
Vanadium (V) 0.000742 <0.01 mg/L
Zinc (Zn) -0.00933 <0.01 mg/L
Ammonia (CaCO3) <0.1175382783 <0.12 mg/L
Ammonia (NH3) -0.0245 <0.04 mg/L
Ortho Phosphate (PO4) 0.055 <0.1 mg/L
pH @ 25°C 8.16 8.2 Units

 

[Yooper]

Thank you for the help.

K=1.51
Fe= .000106
CaCO3= 344
NO3= .1169
NO2= 0
F= Not Listed

Don't have CO3 listed individually among the 44 reported constituents.
I did update my original tap water and target to correct a mistake and to clarify.
I downloaded Brun Water, but find it far less user friendly than Brewer's Friend. I do need to take the time to figure it out and then purchase the official version, as many swear by it...

With a CaCo3 level of 344, I can't imagine you needing alkalinity, even for Kate the Great. What was the mash pH predicted? Or did you brew it already? If you did, what was the mash pH?

 

[ajdelange]

Assuming you want to mash with about 1.25 qts/lb using that water you'll have a total proton deficit of about 184 mEq to meet if you want mash pH of 5.4. Of that, 154 is necessary to drag the water from pH 8.16 to 5.4 so what does that tell you? You'd better do something about that water alkalinity. The obvious thing here is to heat it or treat it with lime to drop some of the carbonate and calcium. If you could drop 4.5 mmol/L CaCO3 your alkalinity would be down to about 137 and your total proton deficit would be reduced to 106 which could be handled by a 3.2% sauermalz addition. You might be able to get the alkalinity down even further with some additional trickery e.g I've left your calcium at 1 mEq/L so you could add more before the boiling or lime treatment, potentially drop more carbonate and require less sauermalz.

The real message here is that you'll have to get rid of alkalinity.

 

[ajdelange]

Don't have CO3 listed individually among the 44 reported constituents.

That's because it really isn't useful informaton (nor is bicarbonate for that matter). Alkalinity and pH suffice. If you are curious about it, however, (and that's why it's in some reports) carbonate is at 3.6 mg/L and bicarbonate at 418.

 

[Mexibilly]

With a CaCo3 level of 344, I can't imagine you needing alkalinity, even for Kate the Great. What was the mash pH predicted? Or did you brew it already? If you did, what was the mash pH?

Predicted at 3.53.

 

[Mexibilly]

That's because it really isn't useful informaton (nor is bicarbonate for that matter). Alkalinity and pH suffice. If you are curious about it, however, (and that's why it's in some reports) carbonate is at 3.6 mg/L and bicarbonate at 418.

Thank AJ.
My issue is low mash pH. Would lowering alkalinity not decrease my pH, already predicted to be 3.53?
I've run this recipe, starting fresh, twice now and get the same 3.53 result.
I'll run it again tomorrow and triple check all my entries for accuracy.

 

[Mexibilly]

That's because it really isn't useful informaton (nor is bicarbonate for that matter). Alkalinity and pH suffice. If you are curious about it, however, (and that's why it's in some reports) carbonate is at 3.6 mg/L and bicarbonate at 418.

Thank AJ.
My issue is low mash pH. Would lowering alkalinity not further decrease my pH, already predicted to be 3.53?
I've run this recipe, starting fresh, twice now and get the same 3.53 result.
I'll run it again tomorrow and triple check all my entries for accuracy.

 

[ajdelange]

Thank AJ.
My issue is low mash pH. Would lowering alkalinity not further decrease my pH, already predicted to be 3.53?
I've run this recipe, starting fresh, twice now and get the same 3.53 result.
I'll run it again tomorrow and triple check all my entries for accuracy.

Yes, I think you must be doing something wrong. Without reducing the alkalinity of the water or adding acid to overcome it the estimated mash pH (based on the assemblage of grain types I used to approximate your grist) would be more like 5.75. To get pH 5.4 without reducing alkalinity you would need 5.5% sauermalz.

 

[Mexibilly]

Yes, I think you must be doing something wrong. Without reducing the alkalinity of the water or adding acid to overcome it the estimated mash pH (based on the assemblage of grain types I used to approximate your grist) would be more like 5.75. To get pH 5.4 without reducing alkalinity you would need 5.5% sauermalz.

Thanks again. I'll run it again when I get home for the day. I'll try Brun' Water again too

 

[Mexibilly]

Yes, I think you must be doing something wrong. Without reducing the alkalinity of the water or adding acid to overcome it the estimated mash pH (based on the assemblage of grain types I used to approximate your grist) would be more like 5.75. To get pH 5.4 without reducing alkalinity you would need 5.5% sauermalz.

I tried Martin's spreadsheet again. I don't have the purchased version and have far too much on my agenda to spend a lot of time going back over multiple times to figure it out. At this point it will remain a mystery. I added my grist and tap water and chose the 'dark malty' profile. I still come out to a -12 pH.
For one who understands water chemistry, especially as it applies to brewing, and has all the available information and time to review and correct, I'm sure it eventually becomes a great tool.
For someone who is just learning brewing chemistry and would like to brew a big stout with some buddies as a base to work from, it's far more complicated than the Brewer's Friend calculator.
Regardless, they both show me at a low pH.
I'll either postpone this stout until I have time to find a solution to my low pH issue or I'll brew it anyway and see what happens.
Thank you all for your assistance.

 

[Mexibilly]

(based on the assemblage of grain types I used to approximate your grist)

Thought I'd mention that my exact grist, supply water profile and target profile are all in the the 1st post. My full analysis by ECOLAB/NALCO is a few posts further down.
I tried Brewer's Friend and Brun' Water both again.
Brun' Water leaves me at a negative pH, and with a slight grist adjustment I got Brewer's Friend to 3.94.
Guess I'll brew a cream ale and continue to study...

 

[Mexibilly]

working with Bru'nwater, the water profile you shared wasn't adding up properly. Are there some other numbers from your water analysis you could share? See warning message in red below.

Values that would help are ones I zeroed out because you didn't provide them:
-Potassium (K)
-Iron (Fe)
-Carbonate (CO3)
-Nitrate (NO3)

I ran this through Bru'n Water, adding the carbonate and bicarbonate numbers AJ supplied, 3.6 & 418. I get -12pH. I'm not even sure how to quantify -12. Brewer's Friend gives me 3.94 with my exact water report and a slight grist adjustment (to fit the grist into the 10 available entry fields).
I'll either find a new recipe or brew it regardless. Either way, I'll post the results.

 

[ajdelange]

I get -12pH. I'm not even sure how to quantify -12.

Well it means that the hydrogen ion activity is 10^12 ( 10,000,000,000) As the molar concentration of pure water is about 55 mol per liter that means
each water molecule is protonated 1.81818e+08 times or the activity coefficient is really, really big. In plain English that means that something is broke real bad.

Brewer's Friend gives me 3.94 with my exact water report and a slight grist adjustment (to fit the grist into the 10 available entry fields).

As I've indicated a couple of times it is impossible for you to have such a low pH because you have an appreciable proton deficit in your grain bill and a larger one in your water. Unless you are adding acid somehow your mash pH is going to be around 5.7.

When I say I have to approximate your grain bill I mean I have not measured each malt you use (I am not sure I have measured as many malts as you used) and as such when doing proton flow calculations have to use something similar for which I do have data.

 

[Mexibilly]

Gotcha.
Thank you for your diligence in assisting me.
The fact that I enter exact grist and exact water, but get results that differ considerably from what you and others get leaves me 100% befuddled.
I'll brew lighter grain bills and revisit this recipe one of these days.

 

[mabrungard]

Since there is no such thing as -12 pH, I'm guessing that you haven't entered something correctly. Unfortunately, if you aren't the type of person that can read directions, Bru'n Water isn't for you. While it may not be immediately intuitive for a brand new user, everyone that uses it regularly tells me that it is intuitive once they understand how it works. Sorry for your troubles.

RTFI if you ever would like to understand the program.

 

[philipCT]

So, dude, you have the both of the masters of water chemistry chimed in here, AND Yooper as if that wasn't enough so I'm not sure I can add much value, but I wanted to follow through and run this into Martin's model, Bru'nwater, the way I do all my beers to see if I could help.

Caveat: I am but a humble homebrewer with little grasp of formal chemistry. I've been walked through Bru'nwater by Matt Crispen (http://accidentalis.com/), who very kindly spent enough time with me so that I now rely on Bru'nwater for all my brewing and the pH predictions are very reliable.

I'll walk you through what I did with the info you provided. This will show you how I use Bru'nwater.

Image 1. I entered your entire water profile

Image 2. I entered you malt profile and water qtys for this beer on the "Mash Acidification" tab. Note that without adjustments, your pH is 5.8.

Image 3. I shifted to the Adjustment tab and selected the "Black Malty" profile as you indicated. Image 3 shows this tab before any adjustments. What's I notice right away is that it's going to be tough to adjust some of these to be closer to your target because salting is an additive process. So adding salts will increase but not decrease some of these characteristics. For example, you want to bring down Calcium, but there's no way to do that by adding salts. Ditto Magnesium and sodium. Note that the red color of the cells in row 10 "Target Water Adjustments" is a dead giveaway here. Hover over A10 to get the skinny on that, but basically, you will need to dilute your brewing water with distilled in order to bring these down.

Image 4. So diluting with distilled I'll look at next, but in the meantime, if you just wanted to brew with this water, you could either add sauermaltz as AJ suggested or add 0.50 mL/gallon of Lactic Acid. That brings your pH to 5.5. That seems like a lot of Lactic to me so I'd be interested to hear what others think of this. This amount of Lactic may adversely affect the flavor.

Image 5. Finally, I altered the dilution percentage on row 8 to 50% distilled water. This improves the picture dramatically, and even backing out the Lactic, your pH goes to 5.3. You could run with that, but because I'm a tweaker, I tweak Baking Soda and Calcium Chloride to bring your numbers into the "close enough for TV" range. This gives you a pH of 5.3. I would call that good but again, would love to hear opinions of others on that adjustment strategy.

Image 6. The Adjustment Summary tab. I print this out and take it into the brewery with me. This seems to show a pretty nice profile, falling pretty close to the "Vienna" water profile in the historic section below. I always find this interesting to see but I don't do anything about it.

BTW - where do you live and how much do you know about your water source (mine is all city water from a local reservoir).



Hope this helps!

 

[Mexibilly]

Thank you philip!
I appreciate your help so much. I'll run this back thru and refer to your images and explanations. I must be entering something to do with bicarbonate incorrectly.
I'm in New Castle, Indiana. I had my Ecolab Rep run a sample of my tap water from home. I'm confident that it's very accurate for that moment in time. I'm not sure about the supply or whether it's a single and relatively unchanging source.
Again, thank you for your effort to help me get this straight.

 

[Mexibilly]

Since there is no such thing as -12 pH, I'm guessing that you haven't entered something correctly. Unfortunately, if you aren't the type of person that can read directions, Bru'n Water isn't for you. While it may not be immediately intuitive for a brand new user, everyone that uses it regularly tells me that it is intuitive once they understand how it works. Sorry for your troubles.

RFI if you ever would like to understand the program.

I believe I just figured out that acronym. YRPY...

 

[Mexibilly]

So, dude, you have the both of the masters of water chemistry chimed in here, AND Yooper as if that wasn't enough so I'm not sure I can add much value, but I wanted to follow through and run this into Martin's model, Bru'nwater, the way I do all my beers to see if I could help.

Caveat: I am but a humble homebrewer with little grasp of formal chemistry. I've been walked through Bru'nwater by Matt Crispen (http://accidentalis.com/), who very kindly spent enough time with me so that I now rely on Bru'nwater for all my brewing and the pH predictions are very reliable.

I'll walk you through what I did with the info you provided. This will show you how I use Bru'nwater.

Hope this helps!

Thanks again buddy. Based on your very good tutorial I have succeeded in a profile that seems to get me where I need to be on all levels.
My only question is the Batch Volume you have listed at 4.0. My understanding has always been that that batch volume is volume to fermentor, allowing for trub loss.
I set my batch volume at 4.5 and succeeded in building a solid profile using dilution and salt additions, not to Black and Malty, but to the profile I was shooting for in the first place.
Imagine how quickly we'd all progress if everyone shared your patient, cooperative and constructive manner.
If you're near I'll be glad to share the result of this first attempt at a complex dark grain bill. Otherwise I'd be glad to ship.

 

[philipCT]

Thanks again buddy. Based on your very good tutorial I have succeeded in a profile that seems to get me where I need to be on all levels.
My only question is the Batch Volume you have listed at 4.0. My understanding has always been that that batch volume is volume to fermentor, allowing for trub loss.
I set my batch volume at 4.5 and succeeded in building a solid profile using dilution and salt additions, not to Black and Malty, but to the profile I was shooting for in the first place.....

I'm glad that worked out for you. It will be interesting to see how close your prediction hits. Are you using a good pH meter?

As for your thanks, I do appreciate it. I consider this just paying it forward like Matt Crispen did with me. So you're it

I'm in Connecticut, so probably not a drive-by for you But I'd love to sample the results if you're up for shipping!

 

[Gavin C]

The above tutorial has you using ~6.8 gallons of mash water and 12 gallons of sparge water for a 4 gallon batch size.

Can't see how this is going to be accurate unless your planning on boiling for hours and hours.

You need to input correct mineral, grist and volume data if the spreadsheet is to serve you well.
Batch size is the volume into the fermentor regardless of trub volume in he kettle or FV after ferment.



There is no way you need 12 gallons of sparge water.

 

[philipCT]

The above tutorial has you using ~6.8 gallons of mash water and 12 gallons of sparge water for a 4 gallon batch size.

Can't see how this is going to be accurate unless your planning on boiling for hours and hours.

You need to input correct mineral, grist and volume data if the spreadsheet is to serve you well.
Batch size is the volume into the fermentor regardless of trub volume in he kettle or FV after ferment.

There is no way you need 12 gallons of sparge water.

I knew someone with sharp eyes would catch this

The mash water is at a rate of 1.25qts per pound of grain, so I don't see a problem there. Let me know if you do.

The 12 gallons of sparge water is simply an artifact of my brewing system. I do continuous/fly sparging. In my HERMS system I fill the HLT with 12 gallons of water regardless of how much I'm actually going to use. This way the HERMS coils that run thru the HLT are completely covered with water of the correct temperature during the mash. For a 4 gallon batch, I would only sparge long enough to collect the correct amount of wort, which would leave a LOT of sparge water unused in the HLT. I usually brew 10g batches so it's not an issue for me.

Having said all that, I still need to salt the sparge water proportionally, so I need the spreadsheet to calculate correct salting volumes for 12 gallons of water. That's why I put 12 gallons in on the sparge line.

If anyone sees any issues with this, I'm all ears, but I believe this gives me the right results.

And I do take your point about batch size being volume in the fermenter, so I stand corrected there. I note though, that even after correcting that, there was no substantial change in the finished water profile. It may be that the "Batch Wort Volume" entry on the Mash Acidification tab is used solely for calculating beer color, as indicated by the cell comment that is visible if you hover over that cell.

 

[Mexibilly]

The above tutorial has you using ~6.8 gallons of mash water and 12 gallons of sparge water for a 4 gallon batch size.

Can't see how this is going to be accurate unless your planning on boiling for hours and hours.

You need to input correct mineral, grist and volume data if the spreadsheet is to serve you well.
Batch size is the volume into the fermentor regardless of trub volume in he kettle or FV after ferment.



There is no way you need 12 gallons of sparge water.

I skipped the massive sparge you refer to. I built the entire recipe from scratch, entering every detail. I didn't simply copy philip's.
My Ecolab report and Bru'n Water had some slightly different numbers, resulting in the imbalance. Once I got those straightened out it was relatively smooth.
I'm mashing with 7.5 for 1.36 qt/lb and sparging with 3.
Everything appears to be in line now and the order is in my shopping cart. Just waiting to verify my schedule for next weekend.
I truly appreciate everyone's input.

 

[Gavin C]

I knew someone with sharp eyes would catch this

The mash water is at a rate of 1.25qts per pound of grain, so I don't see a problem there. Let me know if you do.

The 12 gallons of sparge water is simply an artifact of my brewing system.

One of the easiest ways to adjust mash pH upward is to simply mash thinner. Super easy adjustment in the system. Just up the mash volume. A useful tool for dark beers for sure. 1.25 is not a problem but is not necessarily the best for a dark beer if pH issues are being considered.

With 12 gallons entered as sparge volume the spreadsheet assumes all that volume is being used so will give you the final water profile accordingly. You can of course enter a different profile for the sparge water if you are not treating it the same way but the software doesn't know the exact sparge amount unless you tell it. This will impact the final water profile it spits out.

Don't get me wrong, I think you have gone to great lengths to provide excellent help in the thread. I'm not trying to shoot you down at all. Just wanted to stick my oar in, so to speak. No disrespect intended. #waternerdsmatter

 

[Mexibilly]

I'm glad that worked out for you. It will be interesting to see how close your prediction hits. Are you using a good pH meter?

As for your thanks, I do appreciate it. I consider this just paying it forward like Matt Crispen did with me. So you're it

I'm in Connecticut, so probably not a drive-by for you But I'd love to sample the results if you're up for shipping!

I've used the environmental technician's meter before, including my last brew, and I'm afraid it goes through enough abuse to render it questionable.
That said, I'll either use that meter and calibrate it to 4 and 7, or figure something else out by next weekend when I hope to brew this.
PM me your address at some point in the next 6 months and I'll shoot you some samples.

 

[ajdelange]

...add 0.50 mL/gallon of Lactic Acid. That brings your pH to 5.5.That seems like a lot of Lactic to me so I'd be interested to hear what others think of this. This amount of Lactic may adversely affect the flavor.

I tweak Baking Soda and Calcium Chloride to bring your numbers into the "close enough for TV" range. This gives you a pH of 5.3. I would call that good but again, would love to hear opinions of others on that adjustment strategy.

The problem here is actually with the profile you are all trying to hit. I used to yell a lot on here about how you can't duplicate a profile that is not electrically balanced and eventually the spread sheet makers started putting in electrical balance checks and also adding, in this case, apparently, bicarbonate, to make their profiles balance. This is a good thing, of course, but not quite sufficient as if a brewer is expected to be able to synthesize the profile he needs to be able to do it with available salts. The Black Malty profile can't be assembled from the salts available on the Water Additions Sheet (at least I can't do it). Starting with OP's water we see that his Mg is 33 and the target is 5 and that his calcium is 113 while the target is 60. Clearly we are going to need some dilution to match this profile. Recall that I said in an earlier post that we want to match at mash pH at which there is essentially no bicarbonate so we can ignore the bicarbonate requirement. Doing that and asking how much of each of the salts available on the Water Additions Sheet and how much dilution water should we add we find that the best we can do is pretty good (the largest error is -0.33% on calcium) if we use 5.58 L of DI dilution water with each liter of the tap water. That's enough to dilute the magnesium down and also take a big chunk out of the alkalinity. The catch is that we'd need 319 mg of lactic acid per liter of the blend and that amounts to 1.17 mL of 88% acid per gallon. That aside the notion that we are going to need 5.6 L of DI water to dilute suggests that we might as well go whole hog and use 100% DI water. Doing that we can, of course, better see what the problem with the profile itself it. Just using the salts we can't do very well at all and looking at the profile it is clear why. It want's more calcium and sodium than the available salts can provide without exceeding the sulfate and chloride limits. We need calcium and sodium salts that where the metals aren't paired with chloride or sulfate. What can they be paired with? It has to be anion which is, ostensibly, a "don't care" ion. Lactate is what we used in the first synthesis and we can do that here too by adding calcium and sodium lactate which we do, in effect, by adding calcium hydroxide and sodium bicarbonate (on the available list) and neutralizing them with lactic acid to pH 5.3. Doing this we can hit all the ion specifications (except bicarbonate - if anyone cares, and no one should, it is 2.2 mg/L) to 0.0001% or better. We require more lactic acid, in this case: 1.78 mL/gal because we don't have any of the real water to dilute the unreal target. Of course phosphoric acid could be used if it was thought that the lactic was above flavor threshold or a combination of lactic and phosphoric acids or indeed any other safe, obtainable acid whose anion is indeed a "don't care".

I haven't checked any of the other profiles to see if they suffer from this problem but if the philosophy was to just specify what seems reasonable for a particular style and then add bicarbonate to balance I expect at least some would.

 

[ajdelange]

Massively edited:

Further thinking on the profile question: Given that one cannot duplicate the Black Malty profile should it not be replaced with something that one can duplicate? I'd say so but what should it be replaced with? Clearly there was some reason for picking the ion concentrations that were picked (and I assume that bicarbonate was then added to bring about balance) so that it would seem reasonable that the replacement profile should have all the ion concentrations as close to the current ones as possible given that they can be realized with the salts available. Bicarbonate will have to go where it wants to go as sodium bicarbonate is the only source of sodium other than NaCl and using even enough of magnesium chloride and sulfate to not quite reach the magnesium requirement busts both chloride and sulfate. Again, because of the limitations on sulfate and chloride we have to get calcium from lime. In both cases there are, of course, have implications with respect to the alkalinity of the synthesized water.

The following synthesis is based on ignoring the bicarbonate and trying to get the other ions aligned as best we can. Using this approach we can, in fact, get a perfect match to all the other ions but the pH is would be 12.75 (so high that the added lime is only 1/4 dissociated) and the alkalinity 1965! In the synthesis we have limited the alkalinity to 100 and the pH wound up at 10.81

Salt mg/L Synth
CaCl2.0H2O 58.57
NaCl 0.00
MgCl2.6H2O 22.35
CaSO4.2H20 39.56
MgSO4.7H20 21.76
Liters/Liter 0.00
CaCO3 0.00
NaHCO3 74.01
CO2 0.00
HCl 0.00
Ca(OH)2 25.27
Na2CO3.H2O 0.00
Sodium Phosphate 0.00
Potassium Phosphate 0.00
Phosphoric 0.00
Sulfuric 0.00


Weights Errors, % Errors, mg/L Target Realized
1 -26.6200% -15.97 Calcium 60 44.0280
1 -3.6579% -0.18 Magnesium 5 4.8171
0 -66.2733% -1.73 mmol Carbo 2.61200 0.8809
0 -66.2733% -28.31 Bicarbonate 42.71 14.4055
1 5.3674% 1.56 Sulfate 29 30.5565
1 10.2814% 4.22 Chloride 41.00 45.2154
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrate 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrite 0 0.0000
1 1.2641% 0.25 Sodium 20.0000 20.2528
0 0.0000% 0.00 Potassium 0.00 0.0000
Wt'd RMSE Wt'd RMSE,% RMSE, mg/L
0.06431653 13.1005% 9.1133 Target pH 10.8121
Wts &#8800; 0 RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0) RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0)
5 13.1005% 7.4215
Alk, as CaCO3 Max (Wt &#8800; 0) %
100.00 26.6200%

If we allow the alkalinity to rise as high as 200 the pH becomes 11.51 but the peak error, in calcium again, goes down to 16% in magnitude (50.3 mg/L realized out of a desired 60). The salt amounts are similar but as you might expect the amounts of NaHCO3 and Ca(OH)2 both go up. This is, as you might expect, to push the calcium level up but here are the error data on this synthesis:

Weights Errors, % Errors, mg/L Target Realized
1 -16.1063% -9.66 Calcium 60 50.3362
1 -2.2132% -0.11 Magnesium 5 4.8893
0 -65.2151% -1.70 mmol Carbo 2.61200 0.9086
0 -65.2151% -7.10 Bicarbonate 10.89 3.7868
1 3.2476% 0.94 Sulfate 29 29.9418
1 6.2208% 2.55 Chloride 41.00 43.5505
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrate 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrite 0 0.0000
1 4.4413% 0.89 Sodium 20.0000 20.8883
0 0.0000% 0.00 Potassium 0.00 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Fe(II) 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Fe(III) 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Ammon.
Wt'd RMSE Wt'd RMSE,% RMSE, mg/L
0.037808513 8.1643% 3.4517 Target pH 11.5105
Wts &#8800; 0 RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0) RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0)
5 8.1643% 4.5074
Alk, as CaCO3 Max (Wt &#8800; 0) %
200.00 16.1063%

The sodium is now 4.4% over whereas in the first synthesis it was only 1.3% over. What is happening here is that the bicarbonate is now acting as an acid supplying protons to neutralize hydroxyl ions from lime allowing us to get more calcium that way.

We certainly don't want a synthesis that comes out with alkalinity of 100 to 200 as we will just have to supply acid to neutralize that acidity in order to get this water to mash pH. It makes more sense to add the acid as part of the synthesis and let that acid neutralize the lime. In this next example we synthesize to pH 5.4, which we take as a reasonable mash pH, using lactic acid:

CaCl2.0H2O 33.15
NaCl 17.69
MgCl2.6H2O 26.06
CaSO4.2H20 38.62
MgSO4.7H20 19.11
Liters/Liter 0.00
CaCO3 0.00
NaHCO3 47.65
CO2 0.00
HCl 0.00
Ca(OH)2 72.17
Na2CO3.H2O 0.00
Sodium Lactate 0.00
Potassium Lactate 0.00
Lactic 228.49 mg/l (0.83 mL 88% acid per gal)
Sulfuric 0.00

The ion match is essentially perfect:

Weights Errors, % Errors, mg/L Target Realized
1 -0.0001% 0.00 Calcium 60 60.0000
1 0.0000% 0.00 Magnesium 5 5.0000
0 -78.2849% -2.04 mmol Carbo 2.61200 0.5672
0 -78.2849% -11.79 Bicarbonate 15.06 3.2696
1 0.0000% 0.00 Sulfate 29 29.0000
1 0.0000% 0.00 Chloride 41.00 41.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrate 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrite 0 0.0000
1 0.0000% 0.00 Sodium 20.0000 20.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Potassium 0.00 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Fe(II) 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Fe(III) 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Ammon.
Wt'd RMSE Wt'd RMSE,% RMSE, mg/L
1.19049E-07 0.0000% 3.3180 Target pH 5.4000
Wts &#8800; 0 RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0) RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0)
5 0.0000% 0.0000
Alk, as CaCO3 Max (Wt &#8800; 0) %
4.18 0.0001%

The concern here is with the lactic acid required to make the synthesis:
228.49 mg/l (0.83 mL 88% acid per gal). Someone else here was concerned about 0.5 mL/gal and this is over that. Now it is possible here that an 80/ grist might have a proton surfeit at pH 5.4 which surfeit can be subtracted directly from the acid required for the water.

All this is very interesting (to some) but does not answer the question as to how to fix the Water Profile Adjustment Page. The water profile under study, Black Malty, was apparently put together choosing a set of desired ion concentrations and then adding bicarbonate to balance at pH 8. That makes it balanced at pH 8 but that doesn't mean we can synthesize it at pH 8 as we have seen here. Trying to force a solution at pH 8 without acid gives a poor result:
Weights Errors, % Errors, mg/L Target Realized
1 -55.1780% -33.11 Calcium 60 26.8932
1 -7.5822% -0.38 Magnesium 5 4.6209
0 -88.2266% -2.30 mmol Carbo 2.61200 0.3075
0 -88.2266% -137.82 Bicarbonate 156.21 18.3915
1 11.1250% 3.23 Sulfate 29 32.2263
1 21.3119% 8.74 Chloride 41.00 49.7379
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrate 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Nitrite 0 0.0000
1 -16.0318% -3.21 Sodium 20.0000 16.7936
0 0.0000% 0.00 Potassium 0.00 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Fe(II) 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Fe(III) 0 0.0000
0 0.0000% 0.00 Ammon.
Wt'd RMSE Wt'd RMSE,% RMSE, mg/L
0.165848327 28.0610% 39.4122 Target pH 8.3000
Wts &#8800; 0 RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0) RMSE, (Wt &#8800; 0)
5 28.0610% 15.4483
Alk, as CaCO3 Max (Wt &#8800; 0) %
17.22 55.1780%

as we can't use Ca(OH)2. We had suggested in the original version of this post that this poorly fitting profile be used instead of the given profile because we can synthesize that but this seems, within the perspective of this edited version, a foolish suggestion. The simplest fix is doubtless to add another column to the table in which the amount of acid required to achieve the desired synthesis is stated. It could easily replace the bicarbonate column as that contains replicate information given that alkalinity and pH are known. I am assuming that pH is 8 for all the profiles but this should be clearly stated in big letters somewhere on the page.

ClaudiusB: hope you still like it!

 

[Mexibilly]

I truly appreciate your hard work in running these numbers.
The Black and Malty profile doesn't represent my chemistry goal, it was though a place to start.
I did dilute with RO and adjust salts to achieve a profile, including pH, that satisfies what I hope to accomplish with this first attempt at a big, complex stout. I don't have my Bru'n Water profile available to share, but I'll trust it this time and base future dark grain bills on the experience.
That said, I also borrowed another HBT stout recipe, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=238807
This is less complex and I'm betting much easier to build a water profile for.
This might be a better place to start as I work to learn water chemistry as it applies to dark grain bills.
SWMBO and I are on a low carb diet which cuts my normal beer intake hugely = Miller 64
So I'll have plenty to share along the way...

 

[ajdelange]

I truly appreciate your hard work in running these numbers.

Thank you but this coming along has been very timely. I've just done a major reorganization of the spreadsheet I use to solve problems like this and was itching for a good test case. This was it. If it was some help to you that's frosting on the cake!

 

[philipCT]

One of the easiest ways to adjust mash pH upward is to simply mash thinner. Super easy adjustment in the system. Just up the mash volume. A useful tool for dark beers for sure. 1.25 is not a problem but is not necessarily the best for a dark beer if pH issues are being considered.

With 12 gallons entered as sparge volume the spreadsheet assumes all that volume is being used so will give you the final water profile accordingly. You can of course enter a different profile for the sparge water if you are not treating it the same way but the software doesn't know the exact sparge amount unless you tell it. This will impact the final water profile it spits out.

Don't get me wrong, I think you have gone to great lengths to provide excellent help in the thread. I'm not trying to shoot you down at all. Just wanted to stick my oar in, so to speak. No disrespect intended. #waternerdsmatter

Okay, no worries because I totally learned something...

I guess I should have realized this earlier but that thing about mash water volume affecting the pH. Duh! That had never occurred to me. I will totally use that in the future.

I've messed with different values in the sparge and I think what I'm doing is fine because I'm correcting the entire volume of mash water. So even if I only use half of it, the chemistry is correct. Let me know if I'm wrong about that.