Sparge water salts: why?

[Jubilee]

Been using Bru'n Water for 5 brews on a HERMS system now. I'm currently in week 1 at Siebel's on site concise course.

I understand and am on board with salt additions as necessary in the mash, of course. But having a difficult time understanding why we'd add salts to sparge water....by this time, mash-out has happened and enzymes are denatured.

Acid addition as needed in the sparge water makes sense, but why the salt additions?

 

[Yooper]

Been using Bru'n Water for 5 brews on a HERMS system now. I'm currently in week 1 at Siebel's on site concise course.

I understand and am on board with salt additions as necessary in the mash, of course. But having a difficult time understanding why we'd add salts to sparge water....by this time, mash-out has happened and enzymes are denatured.

Acid addition as needed in the sparge water makes sense, but why the salt additions?

The extra salts are used to get to a certain concentration in the entire batch of wort. It doesn't matter if it's in the sparge or in the kettle, or even in the mash- but in the mash, sometimes a ton of gypsum could drive the mash pH too low so it's added later via the sparge or to the kettle.

kettle pH is still important, of course, but the salts generally used won't drive the entire kettle pH done too much.

 

[Jubilee]

Makes perfect sense. I guess I'm asking from a practical commercial perspective. It's easy to add salts/acid to my HLT now, but can't think of a practical way to add salts to a large (20BBL, for example) HLT.
It seems like a waste of time and water to rinse/flush the HLT after every brew.

Thinking out loud here...perhaps throwing the sparge salts in the LT is the answer. My boss (head brewer) does mash water additions, but doesn't add salts or acid while sparging.

 

[douglasbarbin]

Makes perfect sense. I guess I'm asking from a practical commercial perspective. It's easy to add salts/acid to my HLT now, but can't think of a practical way to add salts to a large (20BBL, for example) HLT.
It seems like a waste of time and water to rinse/flush the HLT after every brew.

Thinking out loud here...perhaps throwing the sparge salts in the LT is the answer. My boss (head brewer) does mash water additions, but doesn't add salts or acid while sparging.

Commercial brewing and homebrewing are apples and kittens. What makes sense in one enviroment doesn't always in the other.

 

[Jubilee]

True to an extent, but chemistry is chemistry. If you can explain the "why" of your reply I'd be grateful!

 

[ajdelange]

Ask the instructors!

Salts of calcium are added to the mash in order control its pH. They precipitate with phosphates. Additional calcium in the kettle will precipitate additional phosphate and also protein. Both reactions lower pH. Thus brewers that want a lower kettle pH than what they would get without, sometimes add extra brewing salts.

 

[Jubilee]

Oh, I have! Many opinions...Mike Babb seems to be the biggest water geek. He left yesterday so I'll email him.

 

[douglasbarbin]

My guess is that it's easy for homebrewers to just add salts to the sparge water in the HLT, and doing so usually has the added bonus of bringing sparge water pH down a bit so that tannins are less likely to be extracted from the grain husks. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the water that most homebrewers use (i.e., tap water) has a higher pH before treatment than the water that most commercial breweries use. But really this is just conjecture.

 

[Jubilee]

Agree on the convenience front. So much freedom in home brewing. I know some pro brewers in-line inject acid when sparging, but haven't talked to anyone yet who's adding salts to sparge water.
Our brewery water is city water that's simply carbon filtered (removes chlorine and turbidity only, so far as I know), with a pH of about 7.2.

 

[ajdelange]

Remember that the pH of the water itself is pretty much totally immaterial. What does count is its alkalinity. I wouldn't for a minute think that the water used by home brewers is less or more alkaline than that used by commercial operators before or after treatment. Home brewers tend to pay more attention to their water but a commercial operator may have called in a consultant when he set up shop. He may have installed an RO system and he may not. But then same can be said for the home brewer.