This suggests it is close to RO:
The Northern Brewer Homebrew Forum • View topic - Primo Water Corp
The Northern Brewer Homebrew Forum • View topic - Primo Water Corp
say i started out with the 7.5 gallons in my kettle, i would add 1.5 tsp of calcium chloride, correct?
... now, is the sauermalz addition 2% per 5 gallons also? would i up it to 3% to treat the entire 7.5 gallons, or would one be better off started at 2%, mash, check ph and add more if needed?
A liter of water to which 100 mg of chalk has been added and through which CO2 has been bubbled to dissolve the chalk and bring the pH to 7 has an alkalinity of 102. If the chalk has been dissolved by and the pH adjusted to 7 with a strong acid such as HCl the alkalinity is 40.5. If phosphoric acid is used to do the same thing the alkalinity will be 57. So yes, it is a bit tricky to calculate the alkalinity due to a chalk addition accurately except when CO2 is used i.e. the method of nature but hardly the method of choice for home brewers. With CO2 the alkalinity is the number of mg/L CaCO3 plus a small number like 2. pH dependence isn't that great. With the other acids the alkalinity is more strongly dependent on the pH and is about half the amount of chalk per liter. Hence this approximation in the spreadsheets which:
1) Do not allow the use of CO2 as an acid
2) Do not ask about the pH's of the source and treated water.
(AFAIK)
If one does not use any acid then nearly all the chalk will remain in suspension. But chalk in suspension does contribute to the alkalinity and does have a pH raising effect on mash.
CorrectYour Baseline Water is defined to be of low mineral content (< 20 ppm Ca, Cl, SO4, Na) and low alkalinity (<35 HCO3 as CaCO3) acquired via RO, distilled, and/or dilution. To this one adds CaCl2 to increase both the Ca and Cl and sauermalz to reduce alkalinity. Depending on style of beer brewed the amount of added CaCl2 and sauermalz increases. And, again depending on style, CaSO4 (gypsum) may also be added. Principally, the goal of these salt and malt additions is to create a mash pH, measured at RT, ranging from 5.1 to 5.5. But ideally, 5.3 to 5.4. The secondary effects of the added Cl and SO4 are to move the water profiles to accent malt or hops respectively. Correct?
My puzzlement is that the Baseline water alkalinity is already very low and the sauermalz along with the Ca reduce its influence further. It appears you are seeking to hammer alkalinity. I dont fully understand the reasoning.
I agree with your view that since correct mash pH is the principle goal of all this water chemistry lets measurement it directly with a meter instead of inferring it with dogma augmented with mathematics of uncertain accuracy. The math is needed to get one into the right general regime, but the measurement provides the necessary tuning and confirmation.
I read your two Alkalinity papers of a number of years ago. It was/is excellent work in both scope and depth. Im sure in the intervening years your knowledge has increased. In those papers you addressed Residual Alkalinity (RA) so it must have been important, at least at the time.
You made no linkage then to SRM and allowable/desired RA as is done today. In your current view, is such a linkage needed or even exist with mathematical certitude?
No, because as noted earlier, it is seldom required and I don't know how to predict that it is using a process anywhere near as simple as taking a pH measurement of the mash. So that's what I advocate doing. Measure mash pH. If it is too low, add alkali until it isn't.Your baseline water and its plused-up variations never have the brewer adding alkalinity (via say CaCO3) as SRM increases with the style brewed.
It appears that the baseline water, and its variations, will have negative RA.
Thus would only be appropriate to styles of low SRM.
It seems rational that if one sought a style of high SRM, say 20 or greater, the darker/roasted malts would drop the mash pH below 5.1 (measured at RT).
Do you have an unstated view that this doesnt happen?
Or are you indirectly stating lets make the mash, measure its pH, and add CaCO3 based on results?
Separately, much is made of distilled water mash pH of light colored base malt. In your second Alkalinity paper you indicated this should result in a pH around 5.7 to 5.8 (measured at RT I assume). I have seen this number reported elsewhere. Yet we seek a mash pH of around 5.3 to 5.4. As there is no Alkalinity in distilled water to buffer the pH drop, is the lack of a drop due to a lack of Ca? As a test, I did a distilled water mini-mash (only German Pils malt, 1.5 qt mash water to 1 lb grain, 155F). Using a pH meter well calibrated at RT I measured the pH at RT to be 5.6. Close to a 5.75 mid-point, yet low and well above the desired 5.3.
Amen.I'm hearing the message. Measure Measure Measure Therein lies truth.
I too saw the RA straw, and being mathematically inclined latched on to it. That and chemical equilibrium equations and solubility constants are kinda fun to play with.
Yet my instinct was nagging me, how is 4 oz of black patent and say 3 lbs of crystal equivalent in Alkalinity reduction. A 12 fold increase in acidity on a per weight basis just due to higher kiln temperature didn't seem right.
I'm also hearing something else in your reply, something I have not heard elsewhere (or at least have not been able to internalize). That is one should meaningfully bias the mash water downward from neutrality (pH=7). I don't use sauermalz, I add acid to mash and sparge water pryer to the addition of grain. Thus in this case, one is seeking to not only drive Alkalinity to zero (on a log scale it never really gets there), but to also purposefully drive pH below 7 before grains are added.
As a distilled water mash truly has zero Alkalinity and a pH=7,
I was troubled by its mash pH being higher than the desired 5.3. I never thought in terms of moving/aiding pH on its journey to 5.3. I had always thought in terms of stepping on HCO3.
So I not longer see the inconsistency between a distilled water mash of 5.7/5.8 and a desired mash pH of 5.3/5.4. The distilled water mash is just a convenient reproducible measurement in the lab. Its result is a number, not a mash that makes good beer.
For that one seeks a pH of 5.3 and water (prior to grain addition) that initially may have a pH much lower then 7. Measurement of actual mash pH will aid me in how low that pH should be.
While the graduated syringes used to add the titratant are marked at these intervals, quantization error exists. The quanta is droplet size of the titratant. So I generally count drops, look at the reading on the syringe, and then divide. Example: With an as provided syringe 10 drops of titratant reads 250 ppm (of the ion measured) on the syringe. So each drop is equivalent to 25ppm. If the sample changed color on the 10th drop, I would call the measurement 237.7ppm +/- 12.5ppm (I included the extra significant figures just to show the math).
If one adds a separately obtained hypodermic needle to the syringe droplet size is significantly reduced. Now 10 drops reads 60 ppm on the syringe. Precision now becomes +/- 3ppm.
I have thought of doubling the water sample size to bring precision to +/- 1.5 ppm.
I'm not a chemist,
but my experience is that once one refines one aspect of an experiment another source of error pops out of the mud.
You have identified one (interference ions). So I'm doubting the ability to achieve precision of +/- 1.5 ppm. But does +/-3ppm seem reasonable (which I would also like to state as accuracy)? I have eliminated the static offset (was the syringe really zeroed at the start or was it -4ppm or +3ppm) by counting observable drops.
Separately... To your knowledge, is the rule of thumb that Ca and Mg are generally in a 4:1 ratio a reasonably accurate assumption? Let's assume that we are only addressing water samples of Total Hardness <100 ppm (as CaCO3).
just wanted to say thanks for this thread again, we brewed a cream ale a few days ago, and measured mash ph at 5.25 with the 2% sauermalz and 1 tsp of calcium chloride. this was with brew in a bag method, about 7.5 gallons of water total. this was all from distilled water, i hope it turns out?
we plan to brew an american brown ale today, (northern brewer caribou slobber) do you have any pointers for this one? i have distilled water, and of course my michigan tap water that has a faint sulfery smell to it...should we use the di water with 1tsp of calcium chloride, skip the sauermalz? we have gypsum on hand, along with other salts, etc. should we be adding anything else? any help would be appreciated, thanks!
measured with a ph meter. is 5.3 the magic number? interesting bit about the copper wire...will try this.
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