Water profile / Brewer's Friend question

[Hoochin'Fool]

Plugged a recipe for a nice chocolatey stout (1.064 og, 35 srm) into Brewers Friend, and noticed that it's recommending that my water should have a lot more alkalinity than I do (in fact, to get predicted mash pH somewhere reasonable, I'm adding 5 grams per gallon of Phosphoric 10%). If I skip the Phosphoric acid, my mash pH goes up to 5.71 and residual alkalinity goes up to 259ppm. Anyways, I'm just not quite sure which advice to follow -- get mash pH in decent range, or go with Brewers Friend recommendation for residual alkalinity...

Doing a full volume no sparge mash / BIAB (and I squeeze the hell out of the bag), if that matters.

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, my imperial chocolate stout recipe (1.107 OG) never "asks" for PA or any other acid in the mash because the black and chocolate malts and the roasty grains drive the mash pH well down into the 5.2-5.3 region all on their own...

Cheers!

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

fwiw, my stout recipe never "asks" for PA or any other acid in the mash because the black and chocolate malts and the roasty grains drive the mash pH well down into the 5.2-5.3 region all on their own...

Yeah, my tap water has a lot of alkalinity: 259 HCO3- per Ward Labs.

 

[day_trippr]

That reminds me I should have mentioned I use 100% RO water for brewing as my well runs around 200ppm alkalinity
I wonder if that 259 number is confusing one program but not the other?

Cheers!

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Just noticed that the BrewersFriend is recommending water profile of 300 - 350 Residual Alkalinity as CaCO3 in ppm, and there's an equation to relate it to alkalinity as HCO3 ... (HCO3 / 1.22) = CaCO3
So looks like my tap water @ 259 HCO3 is roughly equal to 212 CaCO3 I should be adding some baking soda?!? I don't see how that is going to do anything other than put my pH up over 7 or something crazy!

 

[doug293cz]

Just noticed that the BrewersFriend is recommending water profile of 300 - 350 Residual Alkalinity as CaCO3 in ppm, and there's an equation to relate it to alkalinity as HCO3 ... (HCO3 / 1.22) = CaCO3
So looks like my tap water @ 259 HCO3 is roughly equal to 212 CaCO3 I should be adding some baking soda?!? I don't see how that is going to do anything other than put my pH up over 7 or something crazy!

I would ignore residual alkalinity in any water calculations. What is important is making sure your starting water profile is correct, and that the predicted mash pH is within the range you want. You do want to make sure you have more than 50 ppm calcium, and chloride and sulfate are important for taste.

Brew on

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Thanks @doug293cz, that was what I thought I should do. I'd fire off a question to the folks at Brewer's Friend asking for why it's recommending such a high RA, but I'm still a free-loading "trial" user

 

[JAReeves]

I just made my first Porter/stout with my RO system. For a 5G batch it gave me these #’s:
2g Gypsum, 1g Epsom, 1g CaCl, 10g Chalk, 2g Baking Soda, and 1ml Acid in Sparge. Worked out to be about 5.4 mash calculated, but didn’t actually use my ph meter to verify.

 

[doug293cz]

I just made my first Porter/stout with my RO system. For a 5G batch it gave me these #’s:
2g Gypsum, 1g Epsom, 1g CaCl, 10g Chalk, 2g Baking Soda, and 1ml Acid in Sparge. Worked out to be about 5.4 mash calculated, but didn’t actually use my ph meter to verify.

Chalk should stay in the "Don't Use" category, as it doesn't dissolve well. I imagine that most of your chalk addition just laid on the bottom of the MLT during the mash. If you need to add a base to raise pH, and you want to limit sodium, then pickling lime (Ca[OH]2) is a good choice.

Brew on