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Is there no temperature probe??? If there isn’t, there’s very little chance of success. The valve setting and pump capability don’t matter. It’s the flow capacity of the mash bed that matters. Assigning a power percentage isn’t likely to match what the resulting element temperature will be. A...

I've run my tube at a slight incline for years, with the element base at the low end and the temperature probe at the high end. Vertical is fine too, but I have my tube under my bench and there isn't enough room to run it in that orientation. I'd say its at about 5 degrees from horizontal. So...

Sorry, no. Calcium is consumed in the mash due to several reactions, but the chloride is not. If you add calcium chloride to the mashing water and raise the chloride content to some value, the resulting wort will have that chloride content. Chloride is very mobile and isn't significantly tied...

There should be no problem in using RO with LODO. However, building a water with only calcium chloride may not produce the best effect in the beer. The 'no sulfate' in German beers or with Noble hops is a thoroughly disproven myth. Better results will include some sulfate in the brewing water.

I’m not an advocate of adding a lot of calcium to brewing water, but I’m also not concerned if my salt additions elevate calcium. As long as sodium is kept under about 100 ppm, it’s not going to matter very much for beer flavor and it can actually be a positive. Sodium is not salty tasting...

I’m guessing that the 28 ppm result is a total dissolved solids (TDS) measurement. With that little content, any of the various ions of concern in brewing are even lower than that value and can probably be considered insignificant. I’m assuming the OP lives in a mountainous or hard rock area...

Appears to be a poor design. The temp probe for the PID element controller has to be immediately downstream of the element so that it can immediately sense wort temp and shut down the element power without overheating the wort. With regarding to your temperature step, the only thing that...

The water profiles in Bru'n Water include a bicarbonate concentration that only serves to balance the cations and anions. The reason that I recommend that anyone using a given water profile ignore the bicarbonate content, is that you should rely on hitting an appropriate mashing pH and not...

As the comment text said, its only used for beer color estimating. Don't read too much into that volume. Regarding the OP's original question; Yes, excessive boil off can be a serious issue for small batch brewers. You definitely don't want to produce that excessive boil off since it...

I don't believe that St James Gate brewery ever used soured wort for their Guinness Flavor Extract (the roasty stuff). With the very low alkalinity Wicklow water that brewery normally receives, just steeping the roast barley in the water results in an extract that has a pH in the low 4 range...

I would be surprised if Guinness uses a flaked barley. I am more inclined to believe that they would use a raw or chit barley that they manipulate in their brewing process. What is fairly sure is that they do use a raw barley product to provide the beta glucan content that boosts the overall...

Distilled or RO water can be helpful in brewing, if your tap water is a train wreck. But including some ionic content to those waters is helpful in improving beer flavor. As mentioned, some combination of gypsum and calcium chloride is the easiest approach to mineralizing the water. Adding...

Yep, pretty much rain or snow fall. Great starting point. In my opinion, the bicarbonate or alkalinity values presented in ANY water profile should be considered to be placeholders only. The true bicarbonate content that will be needed in your mashing water should be that which produces an...

That water is a great starting point for brewing. The sodium content is a non-issue and won't be detected in any beer. As pointed out, the water's alkalinity might be too high for some styles, but its low enough to easily to acidified with many different acids without a flavor effect. Brew on!

Well, carbonating your RO water will depress its pH somewhat and the alkalizing addition would help counter that. But since most beverages rely on acidity to provide a pleasant taste character and perception, I'm not sure that you'd be happy with the result. But maybe the resulting mineral...

A schwartzbier is essentially a black pils and color is the desired contribution from any roast additions. Both flavor and aroma contributions are not really desirable from the roast. Adding the dose of roast grain at the end of the mashing period can be a decent way to extract the color while...

Um, NO! There is NO requirement for calcium in brewing water, but there are a couple of good reasons to have it in there. The malt provides ALL the calcium that the yeast need for their nutrition, but having ionic calcium in the water can provide a couple of duties. The first is to react and...

You didn't mention how alkaline your raw water is and the overall amount of lactate ion might be in that finished beer. If the beer pH is in the 4.2 to 4.5 range, then its probably acidified enough. If you perceive that it's still a bit flabby and not crisp enough, then you could try a drop or...

Totally agree! You can brew with distilled water with nothing in it and there is plenty of the nutrients the yeast need in an all-malt wort. But there are plenty of beer styles that can be made better with judicious water adjustments to make them taste better. I do recommend that all brewers...

pH strips are useless in brewing, so it's not a surprise that you didn't see a difference on the strips. Moving to RO water could be a very good start for brewing, if your tap water is too mineralized. But RO water isn't a panacea. There is still likely to be a need to adjust that water to...