How to Balance a Water Profile between HLT and Mash Tun?

[TeflonTom]

I've been winging most of my water adjustments for the better part of a year now. My brewhouse setup is 3 1/2bbl kettles each respective to the HLT, mash tun, and boil kettle. I'm getting tired of scratching my head when calculating water profiles since when I need to get it right, I haven't found a way to distinguish the total water volume from HLT and the mash. For a brew I typically fill my HLT with 12.5gal and my mash with however much I need depending on the grist. When brewing a 6gal batch I typically sparge 4.5-5gal of water from my HLT. So this is where it gets tricky: should I only put the mineral additions in the mash and count the sparge as dilution? Or what other way could I calculate the minerals additions I need and where to put them?

Any feedback is appreciated, thanks.

 

[Deadalus]

What I do is In Beersmith you can check a box that says to hold sparge salts until boil. So then I have mineral additions for the mash that go into the mash tun at the begining of mashing and mineral additions that go in to the boil kettle after fly sparging and transferring to the BK. I do it that way since my sparge water is coming out of my HLT and I don't draw it down to the exact amount of sparge water that is calculated plus I am fly sparging. Beersmith knows how much water is going into the BK because I have set up my equipment profile and I am sparging to a set preboil volume. I am not familiar with other programs to provide advice on those but I suspect it is usually an option somewhere. I am also not exactly sure of the considerations needed if you don't check that box off.
Now, if you wanted to know how much water is being used while sparging out of the HLT, you need to know how much is in there right before you take out the sparge water. So you would need a sight glass with measurements or a measuring stick for the kettle or volumes marked on the kettle itself. Than subtract the amount of sparge water to know what the volume of the HLT should be when you are doing removing sparge water. I am not sure this was what you were finding tricky. I think you may be winging your sparge volumes. These are calculated exactly in Beersmith as well and would differ based on the recipe.

 

[TeflonTom]

>What I do is In Beersmith you can check a box that says to hold sparge salts until boil. So then I have mineral additions for the mash that go into the mash tun at the begining of mashing and mineral additions that go in to the boil kettle after fly sparging and transferring to the BK.
>Now, if you wanted to know how much water is being used while sparging out of the HLT, you need to know how much is in there right before you take out the sparge water. So you would need a sight glass with measurements or a measuring stick for the kettle or volumes marked on the kettle itself.

I might have to check out Beersmith just to give that a try. I've just been using the Brewersfriend water chemistry calculator since it is quite basic and I can get a good range on what to measure, but I would say that it's not giving me the numbers I want to be able to rely and write down.

The last bit about knowing how much I'm sparging is no issue; I know my volumes as they are graduated on the kettle.

 

[Bobby_M]

Reason #19 why no sparge brewing is a delight.

Are you starting with tap water or RO?

Depending on the software/calculation method, you can decide to just treat all the water equally for simplicity.

The more sophisticated version is tailoring the strike water additions (salts and acids) to do exactly what you want in the mash and then adding more to the boil if necessary.

For example, maybe you want a generally soft water profile in the finished beer but you want to give the enzymes the ideal 50ppm of calcium in the mash. Well, you pound in the CaS04 and CaCl only on the strike water and then the sparge dilutes it down to like 20ppm Ca in the total beer.

On the other hand, one reason you might want to distribute the additions between strike and boil kettle is that most salts reduce the mash PH the more you add and if you're already brewing a beer with a lot of dark malts, you don't really need that acidification. While I'm not suggesting EZwatercalculator is the most accurate tool to predict mash pH, it does illustrate the concept of mash/boil additions pretty well so you can get a handle on what I mean.

Backing up to a pragmatic approach, you could just add salts and acid to the strike water (when it gets into the mash tun) and only acidify the sparge water. Most software understands what the final profile will look like by adding the strike and sparge volumes together and considering the dilution.

 

[hottpeper13]

In the Water Book on page 156-159 has water profiles for different styles. On pages 152 and 153 is a chart for the salts concentrations in ppm's per gal. I choose a style and add the salts per gal of brewing liquor. Since I use RO I don't salt the HLT. I measure out 2 portions and put the mash salts in the MLT and add the other to the boil. I do agree that making a Pils with soft water using enough salt to get above 50 ppm's in the mash then not adding more so it dilutes.