Water Profile Suggestion for Brown Ale

[CarolinaMatt]

Good Morning All!

Brewing Caribou Slobber from Northern Brewer tomorrow. A brown ale with pretty good hop profile.

This will be my first time adding and working on my water profile. Usually I just use bottled spring water, but ready to take the next step. Would love if anyone could point me in the right direction of a good water profile to aim towards. Plan to go to the LHBS on lunch today.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Live in Charlotte, NC and water profile is:

Calcium = 9.8 ppm*
Magnesium = 1.800 ppm*
Alkalinity as CaCO3 = 18.6 ppm*
Sulfate = 9.9 ppm*
Chloride = 8.1 ppm*
Sodium = 4.00 ppm*
pH = 8.68

I use brewers friend to calculate things.

OG: 1.051
ABV: 4.83%
IBU: 43
SRM 18.47

MASH INGREDIENTS -
9 lbs. Rahr 2-row pale -
.75 lbs. Briess Caramel 60L -
.5 lbs. Briess Caramel 80L -
.25 lbs. Fawcett Pale Chocolate -
.125 lbs. English Black Malt

Brew in a Bag
SINGLE INFUSION Mash: 153° F for 60 minutes -- using 60% of total water
Dunk Sparge: 170° F for 10 minutes -- using 40% of total water
Mash PH will be around 5.6

BOIL ADDITIONS & TIMES
1 oz. Goldings (60 min)
1 oz. Liberty (30 min)
1 oz. Willamette (15 min)

YEAST: Danstar Windsor Ale Yeast Optimum temperature: 64–70°F.

 

[DonGavlar]

I brewed my brown with:
50ppm cal
0ppm mag
15ppm sodium
45ppm sulfate
60ppm Chloride

Came out very nice, nice rounded malt flavour. You may want to up the sulfate and reduce the chloride slightly if you want a more hop forward character.

Remember that the darker malts used in a brown will give you a lower pH and I find i like my darker beers to be at the higher end of the ph range, think mine ended up at 5.45 in the end. You may need to add a bit of baking soda if the ph is too low. I added about a gram of baking soda to my mash on my last brew. I think the ph without the baking soda was 5.2 which is too low for me for a brown.