Brew salts to mash vs kettle - for realz

I am really struggling here. Once and for all, can mash salts be added to the kettle at a 1 to 1 ratio?

I brew from RO, and the high gypsum content I want to use in my APA is pushing the mash pH too low. If I add those salts to the kettle instead of the mash (to get the flavor effect but not the pH influence), can I do that at 1 to 1? Or do I need to account for some loss that normally occurs going from mash to kettle? Or is any loss so negligible or unimportant that we just don't care?

Thanks for your help!

You can do it no problem. I wouldn't sweat the loss, but if you want to, add a bit more.

Alternatively, you could add some pickling lime to offset the pH in the mash, but this will also raise Ca.

How low is your mash pH going? How are you measuring?

Barley_Bob said:

I am really struggling here. Once and for all, can mash salts be added to the kettle at a 1 to 1 ratio?

I brew from RO, and the high gypsum content I want to use in my APA is pushing the mash pH too low.

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That's unlikely unless you have a lot of high colored malt.

Barley_Bob said:

If I add those salts to the kettle instead of the mash (to get the flavor effect but not the pH influence), can I do that at 1 to 1?

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The first thing to remember is that the calculators use Kohlbach's knockout result to predict mash pH so that the calculated mash pH is likely to be higher than Kohlbach's estimate. The second thing to remember is that there will be additional pH reduction in the boil and that that reduction can be influenced by calcium salts added in the kettle. Also keep in mind that additional pH reduction in the kettle is desirable.

I don't measure my mash pH. I brew from 100% RO and use Brunwater to project my pH. I looked all over the sheet for an error and couldn't spot one, although I can check again. I'm at work now and don't have the sheet in front of me.

The bottom line is that the recipe called for 3oz black malt and 0oz crystal. So the rest is all base malt, and there's 4gal of strike water in the mash. To get my chloride to ~55 and my sulfate to ~250, I had to add about 1g CaCl and 7g SO4. And that pushes my pH down to 5.2. I'd like to have it at 5.4.


As for adjusting a kettle addition - I would think you would have to adjust it down instead of up. In a mash, you're surely losing some of your salts to the grain. My thinking was that if you had a 25% loss on a gram of gypsum, you'd only want to add 75% of that to the kettle for a kettle addition. But again, maybe the difference really is negligible. I just can't find a thread where someone says, "Yes, 1 to 1 is fine and will produce the same beer."

Barley_Bob said:

...In a mash, you're surely losing some of your salts to the grain...

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Can you elaborate on what this means?

agrazela said:

Can you elaborate on what this means?

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Sure. When you mash, you don't get all of your strike water back. It's like The Thunderdome. 2 gallons enter - only 1 gallons leaves... Or whatever. It stands to reason that some of the salts in the water are staying behind as well.

Barley_Bob said:

I don't measure my mash pH. I brew from 100% RO and use Brunwater to project my pH. I looked all over the sheet for an error and couldn't spot one, although I can check again. I'm at work now and don't have the sheet in front of me.

The bottom line is that the recipe called for 3oz black malt and 0oz crystal. So the rest is all base malt, and there's 4gal of strike water in the mash. To get my chloride to ~55 and my sulfate to ~250, I had to add about 1g CaCl and 7g SO4. And that pushes my pH down to 5.2. I'd like to have it at 5.4.


As for adjusting a kettle addition - I would think you would have to adjust it down instead of up. In a mash, you're surely losing some of your salts to the grain. My thinking was that if you had a 25% loss on a gram of gypsum, you'd only want to add 75% of that to the kettle for a kettle addition. But again, maybe the difference really is negligible. I just can't find a thread where someone says, "Yes, 1 to 1 is fine and will produce the same beer."

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I use Bru'N Water too. When I need to bump my ph up, I add baking soda to the mash (Bru'N Water automatically adds it to the mash and not the sparge.)

I put the sparge portion of the minerals into the boil kettle and batch sparge with unadjusted spring water (which is pretty close to RO)

Barley_Bob said:

I don't measure my mash pH. I brew from 100% RO and use Brunwater to project my pH. I looked all over the sheet for an error and couldn't spot one, although I can check again. I'm at work now and don't have the sheet in front of me.

Click to expand...

Unless you measure mash pH you are flying blind. You can rely on the programs to give you a pretty good answer much of the time but sometimes they can be off quite a bit.

Barley_Bob said:

The bottom line is that the recipe called for 3oz black malt and 0oz crystal. So the rest is all base malt, and there's 4gal of strike water in the mash.

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With just that small amount of black you could expect a mash pH of about 5.7 (depending on whose ale malt you use).

Barley_Bob said:

To get my chloride to ~55 and my sulfate to ~250, I had to add about 1g CaCl and 7g SO4. And that pushes my pH down to 5.2. I'd like to have it at 5.4.

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Adding those amounts of those salts will indeed result in about those levels of chloride and sulfate but would result in a pH reduction, if you got 100% of Kohlbach's knockout shift, to only 5.66. To get to 5.2 you'd need another 120 mEq of acid, equivalent to 0.85 pounds of sauermalz or 7 lbs 600L black malt so clearly something is way off in your calculations.

Barley_Bob said:

As for adjusting a kettle addition - I would think you would have to adjust it down instead of up. In a mash, you're surely losing some of your salts to the grain.

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Just the other way round. The malt adds quite a lot of minerals to the mash.

Barley_Bob said:

My thinking was that if you had a 25% loss on a gram of gypsum, you'd only want to add 75% of that to the kettle for a kettle addition. But again, maybe the difference really is negligible. I just can't find a thread where someone says, "Yes, 1 to 1 is fine and will produce the same beer."

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You won't find that because it isn't true. Holding back half the calcium salts would, in this case, result in a pH shift from calcium of about 0.03 as opposed to 0.06 and that, while not a lot, is enough to make at least a subtle difference in the difference in the beer.

Until you properly measure your pH with a calibrated meter that has an acceptable resolution and accuracy the spreadsheet doesn't mean too much. It will help you with relationships such as I added gypsum so I should expect a drop in pH. I add all my salts to the mash on my pale colored hoppy beers and it works for me. I know that it works for me because I measured it, tasted it and reproduced it with acceptable results.

Alright, I will go back and look for an error. I have an idea where it might be.

But are we all in agreement that 1 to 1 to the kettle is totally legit?

ajdelange said:

With just that small amount of black you could expect a mash pH of about 5.7 (depending on whose ale malt you use).

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With 100% RO, I'm getting a pH of 5.5 in Brun water using the base recipe and no mineral additions. About a gram each of CaCl and SO4 puts me at 5.4. I have scoured the sheet for errors and find none. At this point, I would plan to add the extra 6g of SO4 to the kettle.

Barley_Bob said:

With 100% RO, I'm getting a pH of 5.5 in Brun water using the base recipe and no mineral additions.

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Then you have not correctly informed us of what you have done as that is impossible and common sense tells us so. The amount of black malt you have specified is just about enough to offset the base malt pH at 5.65 and that's where your pH is going to fall. For 5.5 you would need to getting another 36 mEq protons from somewhere and all you list is the black malt.

Is this a clue?

Barley_Bob said:

The bottom line is that the recipe called for 3oz black malt and 0oz crystal.

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Is the 0 a typo? Adding 24 Oz of 80L crystal would provide the missing 36 mEq and give a pH of around 5.5.