Water Profile Help

[mrwizard0]

The water that I have has an odd taste to it which carries over to my beer. I cant place the odd flavor, but I want to do something about it. I have decided to get distilled water for my next brew and see if that helps. If so, I will be getting an RO system and do water adjustments from now on. I am working my way through the Water book, but it taking some time to get through it. Anyways, I was curious if I could get some assistance with the water profile for my next brew, I would appreciate it. Here is the recipe, it is a Fullers London Porter Clone from BYO

8 lbs 4 oz Pale Ale Malt
1 lb Crystal 80L
1 lb 8 oz Brown Malt
12 oz Chocolate Malt
1.3 oz Fuggles (60 min)
.7 oz Fuggles (15 min)
London ESB Ale Yeast (Wyeast 1968)

Based on some of the profiles that I have found online for London here is my first hack at water additions:

Gypsom: 0.15 g/gal
Epsom Salt: 0.25 g/gal
Baking Soda 0.30 g/gal
Calcium Chloride 0.50 g/gal
Chalk .25 g/gal

Using Bru'n Water I get a pH of 5.4 and finished water profile of
Calcium: 71.5
Magnesium: 6.5
Sodium: 21.7
Sulfate: 47.9
Chloride: 63.8
Bicarbonate: 138.1

I know that Chalk will be hard to get into the mix, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Thanks for any help, I hope that at some point I will be able to get most of the water chemistry figured out.

 

[JonM]

You are totally on the right track reading the Palmer's Water and using Bru'n Water! My $0.02 is:

The chalk won't work like you expect, so you'd be better off getting the calcium from another source.

You might want to try using other water profiles like the Bru'n Water "Amber balanced" or "amber hoppy" rather than trying to replicate the London profile.

 

[Yooper]

If you're starting with RO water, you may need some alkalinity. you won't get it from chalk, so get rid of that right away.

A pH of 5.4-5.5 is perfect, and should work out great.

I'd not use the mag sulfate at all- you don't need magesium at all (malt has plenty) and you definitely don't need the sulfate so you can drop that as well.

The profile without chalk and epsom salts should be about perfect.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

If you are looking to the chalk for to help bump up your pH, scrap it and try pickling lime instead. Just be sure to add it to the mash after dough-in, NOT directly to the water beforehand. Your CaCl will give you enough calcium.

 

[mrwizard0]

I appreciate all the input. as always, you guys rock!

One other small question. Bru'n water talks about calcium chloride needing to be stored in air tight containers. Does a Tupperware container work well enough?

 

[mabrungard]

Forget the chalk. You aren't boosting the sodium content very high, so you can add more baking soda to get the pH up as needed. I would go that route. In fact, London Porters were always brewed with fairly high sodium water historically. So having high sodium is OK and it improves flavor. 100 ppm Na is OK. But since you only add baking soda to the mash, you don't end up adding that much Na to the overall beer. The free version of Bru'n Water doesn't correct for this factor, but the supporter's version does.

You do want to use to smallest container for your calcium chloride. You want very little air space in the container since the more air in the container, the more water is in that air that ends up ruining your mineral. If there are teeny tupperware containers, then yes, its OK.

 

[mrwizard0]

I brewed this up today, following the suggestions above. Ended with a 5.3 for the ph so I'm pretty happy with that. My scale didn't read very well with the low weights of the salts so I have to buy a scale that will work better. It was a good brew day, except for the grain that got past the false bottom and got clogged in my tubing which was a pain to clean out. Anyways, I got 85% eff so that's not too bad, but I will have to lessen the gap on my mill so I dot have as much get past the false bottom. Once again, I appreciate the help!