Mash PH and H20 help please

[billysparrows]

If any water geniuses could pitch in with some knowledge here I would appreciate it......

Here is my City of Chicago (lake michigan) water report from Ward Labs

Sodium 14
Potassium 1
Calcium 37
Magnesium 12
CaCo3 143
Nitrate .03
Sulfate, So4-s 10
Chloride 15
Carbonate 6
Bicarbonate 126
Total Alkalinity CaCO3 113

My understanding from reading the water primer and following many, many discussions on this forum is that this is good water for dark beers like stouts and Scottish ales. This makes sense to me as my best couple of beers have been a Robert the Bruce clone and a double chocolate stout. Problem is I really like pale dry hoppy beers and I don’t think my water is suited for this. Every time I make a pale hoppy APA, IPA, or IIPA they seem to lack a smoothness that I get from really good commercial beers of that style. I have been trying to get my mash PH where it should be for these paler hoppy beers. Some of my past failed attempts brunwater has put the PH at 5.7 - 5.9. I checked them after the fact. I have recently begun to add acid malt to the mash (about 2-3% or so) to get the ph down and a couple of grams each of Calcium Chloride and Gypsum to my mash. I’m doing 5 gallon batches. I use the brunwater calculator and this puts my in a PH range of 5.3-5.4 at room temp. I use PH strips to test the mash which aren't the greatest, but my last beer seemed to be around 5.5 or so. So, my question is are the above adjustments that I am making to my mash correct for these pale hoppy beers or am I still not getting this? Is there anything else that you would suggest? I would rather not build my water from scratch using RO water if possible.....

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kaiser]

Yes, the alkalinity of this water is a bit high, but it should not be too high for amber beers with some acidulated malt.

What kind of strips are you using?

One way to reduce the alkalinity in your water would be the use of slaked lime or boiling the water. I can see that the residual alkalinity drops from 36 (with the addition of 3 g gypsum + 3g CaCL2 to 8 gal water) to -15 ppm as CaCO3. That’s a drop of ~0.06 pH units. Add 2% acid malt to the grist and you should be able to get a 10 SRM beer to a pH of ~5.3. A pale malt only beer should get to 5.5 with this treatment: http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/?id=XM5ZJMQ

Kai

 

[billysparrows]

I use these strips...ColorpHast 9582/3 Test Strips, 4-7 pH. I took a look at the link you included and it has the slaked lime addition and says to decant. What exactly does this mean? Add the lime, calcium chloride, and gypsum to the water and let it sit for some amount of time then pour the water off after letting the minerals settle out?

Thanks a lot for the reply I appreciate the help.