Brown Ale using distilled water + salts

I made a batch of caribou slobber (brown ale from northern brewer) today using distilled water instead of my tap water. The reason for this was because our tap water around here has not been tasting so good lately. I came across the Bru'n water spreadsheet and found it to be very helpful in calculating how much of what I needed to add. My concern is after reading quite a few posts I see that some people do not like to use sodium bicarbonate in their brewing.

Here was my original setup:

I used "Brown Balanced" for a desired water profile
also used 100% distilled water

Mash (3.2 gal): 1.6 g CaSO4, 1.6 g CaCl2, and 1 g NaHCO3
Sparge (5 gal): 2.5 g CaSO4, 2.5 g CaCl2

My finished water profile looked good except the alkalinity and RA were a little low.

Right at the last minute, I decided to not use the NaHCO3. What type of effect will I have on the taste of the beer if there were no carbonates (or bicarbonates) in my mash, sparge water, or afterwards in the kettle?

Now my final water profile now has Alkalinity = 0 and RA = -48.

Thanks!

 

In all liklihood leaving out the bicarbonate would have lowered your mash pH into the desired range resulting in all the benefits that come from that. There is, however, a possibility that leaving out the bicarbonate would allow the mash pH to fall outside the desired range to the low end. This is unlikely unless you are using a lot of dark crystal malt and as I don't know the recipe I can't comment. I also can't comment on what happens when mash pH goes too low because it has never happened to me. Some say the beer will be sharp, over flavored, insipid and sour. Others say it will be just fine. It's ultimately a matter of taste. And I suppose the same is true at the high end.

It is really best to check mash pH with an electronic meter. By so doing you can see what the effects of bicarbonate on mash pH are and at the same time correlate a particular mash pH with the qualities of the beer. Most say getting the pH down into the 5.3 - 5.6 range results in better beer with 'brighter flavors' and, as noted above, some think the flavors become too bright below this range.

 

If you play with the amount of baking soda here: http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/?id=36XGNHD

you'll find that 1 g pushes your mash pH up by only 0.5 pH units. It also increases sodium to about 9 ppm, which is nothing to be concerned about.

I think you'll be fine w/o adding the baking soda to this recipe.

Do you have the ability to measure mash pH?

Kai

 

One more comment, I think you can go up to 4g baking soda until the spodium level rises to a point where it *might* impact the beer flavor. But the need of that much bicarbonate depends on the acidity of the grist.

The tool I mentioned tries to estimate this acidity with the assumptions that the beer has a color of about 20 SRM and that 25% of that color is coming from roasted malts. That's onlty a guess based on the style of this beer.

Kai

 

Thanks for the comments!

I have a pH meter to measure my mash.
Here were the results from today (all measured at ~room temp):

5 min: pH = 5.34
45 min: pH = 5.42
1st batch sparge pH: 5.45
2nd batch sparge pH: 5.51

I had the sodium bicarb with me just in case the pH dropped too much.

I guess my biggest concern was if my beer flavor was going to lack anything without any addition of the carbonates (bicarbonates), or sodium. I really haven't gotten a hold on the RA value compared with styles of beers yet. I have been doing all grain for quite a while now and just now jumped into the water chemistry. Its a very cool subject, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything since I am brewing a few more here soon.

Here was the grain bill:

9# 2 row
0.75 # 60L
0.5# 80L
0.25# Pale Chocolate
0.125 # english black malt

 

Thanks for the data. If I enter all this into the Brewer's Friend mash chemistry calculator I get a mash pH prediction of 5.44.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/?id=W8D1TWR

Based on your measurements you were fine without the baking soda.

Kai

 

Thanks, Kai.

By looking at Bru'n water, it looks like I need to have carbonate in my beer to get close to the target alkalinity and RA. Do you think this is a big concern or is it probably just fine with the CaSO4 and CaCl2? The target (for brown balanced) was Alkalinity = 74 and RA = 26 and I had 0 and -48, respectively.

Or, am I just confused and the Alkalinity and RA values are just numbers that help me achieve the correct pH of my mash only and really do not contribute to flavor??

 

I checked Brun Water too and the mash pH prediction was 5.0, which is off quite a bit. Keep in mind that these are just predictions. But you have measurements that show a mash pH that is appropriate. You can therefore disregard Brun Water's recommendation of adding more alkalinity.

This is not to say that you could explore if this beer may benefit from more alkalinity. But that's for the sake of experimentation and not for getting into the ballpark of an acceptable mash pH.

Kai

 

All perfectly normal, including the rise over 40 minutes. This is one of the things that makes accurate prediction of mash pH difficult. OTOH it improves the accuracy of spreadsheets that predict pH on the high side. Just wait a few minutes and you may get to the spreadsheet's prediction though it seems to me, as you have experienced, that they tend to estimate low.

The probability is higher that acid would have beer required so when you do a recipe for the first time you should have that on hand too.

Put some bicarbonate in a glass of water and taste it. Is that a flavor you want in your beer? This demonstration is overly dramatic as most of the biarb is converted to carbonic and in a beer with pH 4.5 carbonated to about 2 volumes there will be about 84 mg/L bicarbonate from the gas. Most of the damage from bicarbonate comes from its pH increasing effect in the mash.

There are 2 concerns with brewing water chemistry sorted into their direct and indirect effects on beer flavor. You can't completely separate them but calcium is pretty flavor neutral while it does have an effect on mash pH though a small one relative to acids. Bicarbonate, carbonate and hydroxyl ions all have an effect on mash pH and while they all have negative flavors associated with them if you do anything like a decent job at getting mash pH correct, even though it may involve adding some of those ions to do so, they will be neutralized. Correct mash pH is a sine qua non. Do it right and your beers will bloom in flavor. Botch it and they will be dull, flat, insipid if pH is too high. If pH is below the recommended 5.2 or so there is debate about the flavor effects with some apparently liking them and others not as I noted in my earlier post. The first goal in any beer is to get mash pH correct for the indirect flavor effects.

The direct flavor effects are more familiar as they are like adding salt in cooking. Chloride sweetens and rounds , sodium sours and renders things salty, potassium does the same, sulfate has a great influence on hops aroma and bitterness perception. Mgnesium influences mash pH but to a lesser extent than calcium so it is an indirect ion but it also produces a bitter, sour flavor and is thus generally to be avoided as is sodium unless you want those flavors and some beer styles call for them (Gose).

This means that salts like sodium chloride are a mixed blessing as chloride has a direct positive flavor effect while sodium has a negative one. Sodium perception kicks in later than chloride so lots of brewers add some sodium chloride to the extent they get the sweetness of the sodium but not the mawkish, sour taste that comes from sodium. Some use potassium chloride because it takes more potassium than sodium to get those saline effects.

Sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate both have powerful pH controlling effects. Sometimes you need to raise pH as when you brew a beer with lots of acid bearing malts. If you use either of these to set proper mash pH the bicarbonate and carbonate will be gone but the sodium remains. If it is below the levels where it effects taste then these can be effective means of managing mash pH. If, conversely, your starting water is high in sodium the amount added could push you over. Calcium carbonate would be preferred because calcium is generally beneficial (in ways beyond pH control). The point of all this being that it can be quite complicated so if you are really interested you'll find lots with which to occupy yourself.

Don't put too much reliance on RA. It was conceived as a means of comparing water samples in terms of their suitability for brewing the typical lagers of German brewing. You can get the story from the horse's mouth at http://www.wetnewf.org/pdfs/Brewing_articles/KolbachPaper.pdf and there is a graphic representation of the RA's of various brewing cities at http://www.wetnewf.org/pdfs/kolbach-ra.html. It's a useful concept but home brewers tend to try to make it do things it was not intended for. The main point is that there is no requisite RA for a particular beer.

 

Thanks Ajdelange!

 

Very interesting! I reviewed the results and have to say that I'm surprised with the measured results. That is a moderately acidic grist with over 11% crystal and 3% roast. With somewhere around 3.6 meq/L net acidity, there is little chance that this grist will produce a mash pH as high as rockhoundfan indicates. I'm disappointed that Kai's calculator agrees, since that means it can't produce the results I've already observed from my tests and those of my other users.

For instance, I brewed the Reapers Mild recipe that is popular on this website. It has an astounding 20% crystal malts and a touch of roast. I used the Mild water profile in Bru'n Water with its modest chloride and very modest sulfate using RO water. Bru'n Water predicted a 4.9 mash pH without any lime addition. The observed value was 5.0 when using a freshly calibrated meter. Adding the lime addition calculated to bring the pH to 5.4 showed the observed pH rose to 5.33. I plugged that water and malt bill into Kai's calculator and a 5.41 mash pH was predicted with no lime addition. 0.4 units off of the observed value is not very good. So, I don't know what to say. For those of you that don't have lime on hand, use Kai's calculator since you will apparently never need it ;-)

Rockhoundfan, I welcome a discussion with you off-line to discuss your results and more importantly, your pH measurement equipment and procedures. Your observed result of 5.34 is well outside the range of data that I have collected. PS: be aware that Bru'n Water mash pH predictions are geared to present the early pH result, since that is when I feel that you want the pH to be well targeted. The observed rise in pH with time does agree with my observations.

I love it when someone makes a wildly overblown statement like mixing a spoonful of something in a glass of water and asks you to taste it to see if you would like it, even though the amount you would be adding to your beer would amount to a couple of granules in a glass. I'm wondering if a person using calcium chloride would enjoy the taste of mixing a spoonful of that into a glass of water? Like they say for medicine and poison...the difference is dose. Trying to make an allegory using an excessive concentration is changing the game.

For those of you that have used baking soda, fear not. Neither sodium or bicarbonate will adversely affect beer flavor when dosed at low rates. Sodium is welcome in beer at low concentrations and even provides benefit to flavor, not the negative that AJ contends. However, keeping the total sodium contribution quite low is better for flavor than aiming for high levels. Briess extract brewers should be VERY careful since that extract adds a large dose of sodium to the finished beer. You would not want to add any more and if your tap water has more than 10 or 20 ppm, you may want to dilute with RO and distilled water.

Since a brewer is adding bicarb, I would have to assume that they knew the mash actually needed it. Therefore, that bicarb would be neutralized into harmless water and CO2 when combined with an acid. Adding that bicarb to water when there is no excess acidity is not a good comparison. However, AJ's comment is very applicable if a brewer adds excess bicarb and it's in excess to what the mash needs. That would be a flavor-negative result.

Rockhoundfan and AJ bring up something that I've been concerned with for some time. Too many brewers are concerned too much with that RA number. The same thing can be said for the sulfate/chloride ratio. Those numbers are NOT targets, they are indicators that provide a general and jaundiced view of water condition. Unfortunately, they are far too often miss-used. In this case, RA means nothing other than what the water condition is. Mash pH is the only thing that matters, not RA. I'm thinking that numbers like RA and sulfate/chloride ratio should be deleted from all these calculators so that brewers start to focus on the things that matter. The only reason they are in Bru'n Water is a hold-over from those former brewing methods. RA is an important factor for water and its even an important factor in predicting mash pH, but it is not something any brewer should be concerned with.

 

My calculator agrees fairly well with results from my own brewing as well as with the experiment data that I have run through the calculator so far. I have refrained from posting any competitive data between the Brewer's Friend calculator and Brun' Water since there is an apparent conflict of interest.

Kai

 

I'm finding this one really intriguing myself, as since I've been measuring pH Bru'n Water has been pretty consistent for me, within .5 prediction/actual mash pH. The caveat there being I use Martin's RO profile to build from rather than actually testing the RO water I use.

My only skin in the game is that I want a model which gives me the best predictability. I'm not in the mood to go back and enter all of my previous brews into Brewer's Friend to check measured vs. predicted, and for the one i did Bru`n Water, Brewer's Friend, and my measured value are all pretty close. My next batch is planned for 3/3 and has a pretty big discrepancy, Bru'n Water predicts 5.48, Brewer's Friend 5.66. I figure I'll measure and add some or all of my sparge salts to the mash to bring my pH down to 5.4, as I have my overall water profile/mineral concentration where I want it. I hit a bigger discrepancy there, changing concentrations so that all my salts are added to the mash Bru'n Water estimates 5.3, Brewer's Friend 5.58. It's not nearly as big as the difference OP experienced, and logarithmic math ties my brain in knots, but intuition tells me one of these models is probably more accurate FOR ME than the other. Martin's spreadsheet has been a pretty good predictor for me in the past so that is where I'm starting this batch from. Sorry if this is considered a threadjack, but I'll report back with actual pH and any adjustments I make.

13 lb 6 oz 2 row
1 lb munich
2 oz acidulated

18 qt mash

target profile
ca 70ppm
mg 0 ppm
na 5 ppm
sulfate 80 ppm
chloride 50 ppm
bicarbonate 15 ppm

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/?id=F0X5VKX

 

One other thought I have here is how can process & equipment effect our measurements. Copper manifold vs SS false bottom, SS tun vs Cooler, etc? Anybody who has tried to troubleshoot computer problems other people are having knows how difficult it can be to reproduce an error because somebody finds something in the process insignificant.

 

There are 3 possibilities
A)One is more accurate than the other
B)It is as accurate as the other
C)It is less accurate than the other

 

They can also have different sweetspots for accuracy.

Kai

 

Another aspect that is harder to account for is the variability of the raw products: malts and water. If the water source is constant, that is one less variable. The issue with malt acidity is much more variable. There has been some work in the area of finding the variables that tie better with malts and their acidity. The results aren't all that great. As Kai's original data tells, there is good correlation however the spread between maltsters and batches make it impossible to be highly accurate. This is one of the garbage inputs that we have to deal with until maltsters start assessing and reporting malt acidity on a batch to batch basis.

PS: Bru'n Water and the BF calculators are virtually identical for grists with very low acidity (both predict a mash pH around 5.75 with Pils malt in DI water). They diverge as the grists become more acidic.

 

you made one user error, you entered acid malt with a type of base malt. You need to select "acidulated malt"

I also changed the 2 row Lovibond to 3. I use 2 L for Pilsner and 3L for pale malt.

The new pH prediction is now 5.54

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/?id=59KFYVN

 

Ack, missed that, greatly diminishes the difference into an acceptable range, still gotta see what my mash comes in at.

 

Hey Martin,

The results from my caribou slobber mash came from an Accumet AP61 (portable pH meter). I calibrated it a few days ago with a pH 4, 7, and 10 buffer. The slope was ~99%. I checked the meter (not calibrate) the day
of the brew with a pH 4 and 7 buffer and they both were spot on. I removed a small amount of the mash and allowed it to cool ~18-20 C(it did have few pieces of grain floating in with it, I'm assuming that would not have any
impact). I did notice the pH increase in the tube over time before the next sample was taken. I used test tubes for the pH determination.