Help with my Water plan for Hefe

[bundy]

Hi guys,

Drawn to the forum with all the great info you have re Water. Its a brand new area for me but one that seems to have great info and input from regulars on here - Martin, AJ and Kai that regularly share their knowledge with us mere mortals (A Big thank you for that gents)

After all this reading I hope I am on the right track and being my first attempt to alter my Water chem I was hoping to get some feedback from those who have "been there and done that."

First up I have been BIAB AG for 2 years now having graduated from Kits. All was Ok with APA's IPA's however I could not crack a decent Hefeweizen to save myself. 4 fails from 4 attempts, with all similar results so I started to ask why.

I started to dig deeper as to why I was constantly getting poor efficiency, and a thin poor tasting Hefe.

I tracked down my local Water report and found it's considered a very hard profile. That hard profile combined with (from what I can tell) you just can not get a Hefe mash pH in the right range without using Acid or Acidulated Malt (which I had never used). The various water Calculators tell me my Mash pH ranges to date have been above 6. (I don't have access to a pH meter so am relying on calculated pH from the spreadsheets)

Anyway my Tap water analysis reads
Ca - 23ppm, Mg 8ppm, Na 125ppm Cl 180 ppm, S04 23 ppm and Alkalinity CaCO3 at 120ppm.
Based on that profile and my grain bill below my calculated pH for the brews I have completed already came out at 6.05 !


After playing with BrunWater, EZWater Calc and BrewersFriend Calcs I've come to the conclusion to get things half reasonable I need to dilute my Tap water significantly. I plan to do this with Rainwater which I read can be treated like distilled or RO water (??) and I have ready acesss to. (RO and distilled are too expensive in my neck of the woods)

Planned Grain bill is 2.5kg of Wheat Malt and 2.5kg of Pilsener Malt in a Full volume mash of 35 litres of water. (Diluted Tap with Rain water to at a ratio of 70% rainwater)

As far as additions go I plan -

3grams CaSO4
3grams CaCl2
3 Grams MgSO4

5mls of 88% Lactic Acid

Ezywater Calc (and BrunWater) tools tell me with these changes I will end up with approx

Ca - 50ppm, Mg 10ppm, Na 38ppm Cl 95 ppm, S04 88 ppm Residual Alkalinity at -173 for a mash pH of 5.53

From my reading I know I could possibly aim for lower figures than above but for my first time I just aimed to get everything in the recommended "ranges" to start wit. I think it is certainly better than where I started.

I'd greatly appreciate if anyone can take a look over to see if I have made any glaring mistakes, or should change anything from my above plan.

I am at the stage if this water chem doesn't work I am at the point to give up on brewing Wheat beers altogether. It's getting too expensive to keep throwing them down the drain!

 

[JLeuck64]

Hey Mate don't give up after only 4 failures! Someone will be along to help you crack that Hefe recipe. I too have been trying to dial in a Hefe recipe and while it hasn't been perfect yet it was still drinkable. So in the grand scheme it's not as expensive as say... trying to dial in Russian Imperial Stout LOL!

 

[mblanks2]

Hi guys,

Drawn to the forum with all the great info you have re Water. Its a brand new area for me but one that seems to have great info and input from regulars on here - Martin, AJ and Kai that regularly share their knowledge with us mere mortals (A Big thank you for that gents)

After all this reading I hope I am on the right track and being my first attempt to alter my Water chem I was hoping to get some feedback from those who have "been there and done that."

First up I have been BIAB AG for 2 years now having graduated from Kits. All was Ok with APA's IPA's however I could not crack a decent Hefeweizen to save myself. 4 fails from 4 attempts, with all similar results so I started to ask why.

I started to dig deeper as to why I was constantly getting poor efficiency, and a thin poor tasting Hefe.

I tracked down my local Water report and found it's considered a very hard profile. That hard profile combined with (from what I can tell) you just can not get a Hefe mash pH in the right range without using Acid or Acidulated Malt (which I had never used). The various water Calculators tell me my Mash pH ranges to date have been above 6. (I don't have access to a pH meter so am relying on calculated pH from the spreadsheets)

Anyway my Tap water analysis reads
Ca - 23ppm, Mg 8ppm, Na 125ppm Cl 180 ppm, S04 23 ppm and Alkalinity CaCO3 at 120ppm.
Based on that profile and my grain bill below my calculated pH for the brews I have completed already came out at 6.05 !


After playing with BrunWater, EZWater Calc and BrewersFriend Calcs I've come to the conclusion to get things half reasonable I need to dilute my Tap water significantly. I plan to do this with Rainwater which I read can be treated like distilled or RO water (??) and I have ready acesss to. (RO and distilled are too expensive in my neck of the woods)

Planned Grain bill is 2.5kg of Wheat Malt and 2.5kg of Pilsener Malt in a Full volume mash of 35 litres of water. (Diluted Tap with Rain water to at a ratio of 70% rainwater)

As far as additions go I plan -

3grams CaSO4
3grams CaCl2
3 Grams MgSO4

5mls of 88% Lactic Acid

Ezywater Calc (and BrunWater) tools tell me with these changes I will end up with approx

Ca - 50ppm, Mg 10ppm, Na 38ppm Cl 95 ppm, S04 88 ppm Residual Alkalinity at -173 for a mash pH of 5.53

From my reading I know I could possibly aim for lower figures than above but for my first time I just aimed to get everything in the recommended "ranges" to start wit. I think it is certainly better than where I started.

I'd greatly appreciate if anyone can take a look over to see if I have made any glaring mistakes, or should change anything from my above plan.

I am at the stage if this water chem doesn't work I am at the point to give up on brewing Wheat beers altogether. It's getting too expensive to keep throwing them down the drain!

Firstly, welcome aboard. Secondly, I'm not sure about the whole rain water thing but I'm sure Martin or AJ will chime in soon. What I can tell you is that when I went to temp control of my fermentation it was a big step in the quality of my brews and when I made the step up to water chemistry it was the next best thing I've done. Working with a known water profile and Bru'n water I've been able to dial in my water exactly like I wanted for each style. Hang tight and I'm sure you'll be getting more feedback soon.

 

[bundy]

Firstly, welcome aboard. Secondly, I'm not sure about the whole rain water thing but I'm sure Martin or AJ will chime in soon. What I can tell you is that when I went to temp control of my fermentation it was a big step in the quality of my brews and when I made the step up to water chemistry it was the next best thing I've done. Working with a known water profile and Bru'n water I've been able to dial in my water exactly like I wanted for each style. Hang tight and I'm sure you'll be getting more feedback soon.

Thanks Mate for the welcome

All my other basic processes I am pretty sure I am on top of (I have temp control for fermentation, sanitation is good etc. but thanks for the ideas, you never know and as they say never hurts to check everything twice.)

As for Rainwater - I believe you cant get much better than mother nature intended (Unless you live in a polluted environment then you may have issues) But thankfully the stuff that falls form the sky where I live is nice and clean coming straight in off the Indian Ocean with nothing else around for 1000's of km's (Or miles!)

Perth - the most Isolated capital city in the World apparently!

 

[mabrungard]

Unfortunately, the old adage: "If the water tastes good, you can brew with it" is not always true. The OP's tap water is somewhat high in Na and Cl, but not crazy high. It's alkalinity is certainly a concern and if no acidification had been applied to those previous 4 brews, then that would certainly be a strong contributor to the failure.

I'm assuming that beer was made, but it failed to meet expectations. That is where the adage fails. You will make beer, it may not be good or great beer.

In my experience, targeting a somewhat low pH is helpful for a Hefe. 5.2 to 5.3 seems to work well for me. I agree that if you are going to mess with the water, dilution is a good approach to reducing the elevated Na and Cl. Do target a lower pH though.

 

[ajdelange]

Water does play a role in Hefe as with any beer. I always had best luck with pretty soft water - nothing in it essentially except a modest level of chloride (~ 60 mg/L) and enough calcium to get that much chloride in. Skip the sulfate. The hops on Weizen are like the violas in the orchestra (they must be there but you don't really hear them) and are often noble or semi noble varieties. So rain water with some calcium chloride sound pretty good (unless nasty stuff blows across the Nularbor from the east and the prevailing wind should be in the other direction).

More to the point though is that the essence of a good wheat beer is the yeast. The Weihenstphan 68 (sold by Wyeast and Whitelabs) or similar strain is essential. Without those it isn't Weizen and I have been given bad Weizens in a lot of places (including Germany). Also most important is fermentation temperature. As I recall around 16-18 °C always gave me the best results.

 

[bundy]

Thanks for the input Gents. Greatly appreciated

This "Recipe" is straight from Brewing classic Styles so I am using Wyeast 3068 and Fermenting at 17' C as per your suggestions.

I look back on that book now and wonder why they didn't at least suggest Acidulated Malt in the Grain bill as it is basically a necessity not an option. Anyway not to worry - Live and learn.

With your suggestions this is my latest expected results (Using Bru'n Water Calculator) based on the following additions

MODIFICATIONS

• 70% Dilution Rainwater
• 6 gm's CaCl2
• 6 ml 88% Lactic Acid

EXPECTED PROFILE

• Calcium (ppm) 56
• Magnesium (ppm) 3
• Sodium (ppm) 39
• Sulfate (ppm) 9
• Chloride (ppm)137
• Bicarbonate (ppm) -68
  
• Estimated mash pH 5.4

I am a little hesitant to add more Lactic Acid as I need to go to approx 7 ml to get to 5.3.

??

 

[mabrungard]

Calcium is not required or desired in a Hefe. Boosting the chloride level needlessly in order to elevate the calcium content. One of the main functions of Ca is to aid flocculation and clearing, but that isn't even desired in a Hefe. I would target 20 to 30 ppm Ca and plan on adding all the calcium salts for the entire water batch directly into the mashing water and that will temporarily boost the Ca content in the mash to help remove oxalate from the wort.

Don't worry about the lactic addition at all. Even if you were neutralizing all the alkalinity in that tap water, you wouldn't get to the taste threshold for lactic acid.

You should be happier with the rain water dilution.

 

[bundy]

Thanks Martin for all your help. Caught your reply just before I started my Brewday so I altered as per your suggestion and ended up adjusting my water modifications with Brunwater predicting -

Additions

• 80% Rainwater
• 7ml Lactic Acid
• 3gram CaCl2

Expected Water profile

• Ca 30
• Mg 2
• Na 26
• SO4 6
• Cl 78
• RA -111
• Expected pH 5.3

But I'm dismayed to report it didn't help my mash efficiency, as I was hoping. Post mash I Expected 1.041 got 1.035 which is in line with all my measurements previously without adjusting my water profile.

Not to worry, I've learnt an awful lot about Water this last week. Ive decided to invest in an Omega PHH-7011 meter and I am sure that will help my brews moving forward and this batch will be better for it, but why I continue to have problems hitting my expected numbers for Wheat beers remains extremely frustrating mystery for me... :smack:

 

[ajdelange]

Calcium is not required or desired in a Hefe.

It isn't required in any beer really but, unless personal taste comes into it (I prefer all my beers made with soft water with the occasional exception) there is no reason to avoid calcium in wheat beers. They are brewed sucessfully with waters from very soft to very hard (Warner).

Boosting the chloride level needlessly in order to elevate the calcium content.

??? .....is something you shouldn't do clearly any more than you should boost the sulfate level needlessly to increase calcium content. The converse though, boosting the calcium somewhat in order to get to a decent level of chloride improves most beers.

One of the main functions of Ca is to aid flocculation and clearing, but that isn't even desired in a Hefe.

If this is the reason for concern I wouldn't worry about it. The weizen yeasts are generally considered staub hefe and upping the calcium to even the hundreds isn't going to convert them to bruch. Wheat beers will, like most beers, eventually drop all their yeast and protein (if stored cold) and become crystal clear. This won't happen significantly faster if the beer is brewed with more calcium. Significantly here refers to the fact that weizen beer is not stable and must be consumed within, say, 5 -6 months of the time it is brewed. The good news is that it matures quickly, the bad that it stales quickly even under the best of storage conditions.

I would target 20 to 30 ppm Ca and plan on adding all the calcium salts for the entire water batch directly into the mashing water and that will temporarily boost the Ca content in the mash to help remove oxalate from the wort.

That's about what I shoot for aiming for the higher end for oxalate cosiderations. As I get older more and more of my friends (including my son) have become members of the 3 AM calcium oxalate club. Avoid it. A mEq of calcium (20 mg) will give 2 mEq of chloride (assuming CaCl2 is the source of calcium) or 70 mg. 30 mg Ca corresponds, thus to 105 mg chloride. Still not unreasonable.

Don't worry about the lactic addition at all. Even if you were neutralizing all the alkalinity in that tap water, you wouldn't get to the taste threshold for lactic acid.

In checking Warner on the water I came across a statement by him supported by a paper by Narziß to the effect that one need not concern himself about even fairly high levels of alkalinity as the Weizen strains are such great acid producers. I found this hard to believe and so went back to my notebooks from before the days when I became a stickler on mah pH. Sure enough he is right on that. I had beers with mash pH's of 5.7 that finished at pH 4.1. And they were damn good beers too (when fresh). Perhaps wheat beers are an exception to our mash pH mania!

 

[ajdelange]

, but why I continue to have problems hitting my expected numbers for Wheat beers remains extremely frustrating mystery for me... :smack:

Weizens can be a little tricky. Though the HWE for wheat malts is generally a couple of percent higher than for barley malts I think home brewers sometimes have trouble realizing that extra extract. Perhaps a finer mill setting for the wheat malt would help or decoction mashing but I think you will probably have to accept slightly lower efficiency for these beers. Just use a bit more malt.