American IPA Water Profile

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eagle23

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Hello all, I'm working on my American IPA recipe and I'm starting to seriously look at my water chemistry. I use water from an artisan spring near where I live. The water tastes great, and is free, and I figure if there is anything living in the water, it gets killed off in the boil. This is the water profile:

_______________________________________________________________
Existing Water Profile:
Calcium=13ppm
Magnesium=9ppm
Sodium=899m
Potassium=3ppm
Bicarbonate=94ppm
Sulfate=4ppm
Chloride=3ppm
Nitrate=0.6ppm
Fluoride=0.2ppm
Total Alkilinity=79
PH=8.2

I used Brun' Water to make my adjustments to the water. I used the Pale Ale number because i figured that it would be the closest thing to what the IPA should be. The water profile i got was this:

_______________________________________________________________

Profile being used:
Calcium=137ppm
Magnesium=18
Sodium=25
Sulfate=300
Chloride=55
Bicarbonate=42
PH=5.3(Through an addition of lactic acid)

_______________________________________________________________

Now I am actually reading through my cope of the Ray Daniels book Designing Great Beers. Specifically the Section on Bitters and Pale Ales and it suggests that the water profile for Burton should be used to Pale Ales, Bitters, and IPA's However, the Burton profiles on Burn' Water and Daniel's book are pretty different. They are
_______________________________________________________________

Brun' Water Daniels
Calcium: 275ppm 294ppm
Magnesium: 40ppm 24ppm
Sodium: 25ppm 24ppm
Sulfate: 610ppm 801ppm
Chloride: 35ppm 36ppm
Bicarbonate: 270ppm 0ppm
_______________________________________________________________

If I use Brun' Water's Profile. I can hit the Burton profile exactly, but the mash PH will be 5.6, and with an acid addition I can bring the PH down to 5.3 which I remember reading is where the mash PH should be.

If I choose to go with the profile from the book the Bicarbonate will be high, and I don't know of a good way to remove it.

I am curious about is what would be the best profile to use for an American IPA. Do I need to worry about a high mash PH, or is better to bring it down to 5.3. And what is the best way, if need be to remove bicarbonate? Thanks everyone for their help.
 
I think there is a typo in your water report- you mean 8 ppm of sodium?

I wouldn't go any higher than 300 ppm of sulfate as the "burton profile" isn't a target to shoot for, but instead what the water may have had before the brewer's treated it.

A mash pH of 5.4 or so is perfect for an IPA.
 
I just brewed a IIPA and used that Pale Ale profile. This was my first time treating the water so I have no idea how it will turn out. I targeted a 5.4 mash pH.

I am no expert, but I have read that the bicarbonate is not something to worry about. Get the other things where you want them, then adjust the mash pH with acid and/or acidulated malt.
 
If I use Brun' Water's Profile. I can hit the Burton profile exactly, but the mash PH will be 5.6, and with an acid addition I can bring the PH down to 5.3 which I remember reading is where the mash PH should be.

If I choose to go with the profile from the book the Bicarbonate will be high, and I don't know of a good way to remove it.
Don't worry about adjusting the bicarb amount. Just aim for a good mash pH (5.2-5.5). If you raise the bicarb then add acid its like pouring a glass of water then dumping it down the drain. Pointless and wasteful.

The Pale Ale profile in Bru N Water is a great profile for a "west coast" American IPA. The NEIPA use ~100ppm SO4 and ~150-200ppm Cl. Seems odd but it works to give the beer a different character than the dry, bitter west coast style
 
If you raise the bicarb then add acid its like pouring a glass of water then dumping it down the drain. Pointless and wasteful.

It's really more like digging a ditch and then filling it up again but with something other than the soil you dug out. If, for example, you put in 1 mEq/L sodium bicarbonate and then add 1 mEq/L of sulfuric acid you wind up with 1 mEq/L sodium sulfate. If you used hydrochloric acid you would wind up with 1 mEq/L sodium chloride etc. Now there might be times when you would want to do this. Suppose you want some sodium sulfate and don't have any but you do have sodium bicarbonate and sulfuric acid. Adding the bicarb and acid will get you the same effect as adding sodium sulfate. Taking the same approach to get sodium chloride with hydrochloric acid (called 'salt acid') would be silly because everyone has access to sodium chloride. But suppose all the sodium chloride you had was iodized?

The problem with the Bru'n water profiles is that they reflect what the wells or rivers in the geographical areas we associate with the different styles offer - not how that water looks before going into the mash tun i.e. after treatment by the brewery. The author learned that the Finkelbrau beers were made with water from the Finkel River which has so much calcium, so much magnesium, so much sulfate etc and that to make Finkelbrau like beers we should use water with those ions in those amounts. But the reporting from which those city's water info is derived usually omits info on pH and alkalinity so what was he to do when he added up the ions he knew about and they didn't balance electrically? He took the approach of adding bicarbonate until they do and as bicarbonate comes out of the jar at pH 8.3 declared the pH of all the profile to be 8.3. I used to just raise the pH until the OH- ion concentration was high enough to balance things. This is equally, or actually, doubtless more silly. In any case what should one do when confronted with such a report? I think the answer is to recognize the imbalance doubtless came from unaccounted for bicarbonate and carbonate and understand that the breweries in question would doubtless have decarbonated the water by one means or another. My suggestion, therefore, is, when using one of these profiles, that the user calculate the balance without the bicarbonate, reduce calcium until the profile balances (because decarbonation by traditional means involves removing equivalent amounts of alkalinity and calcium) and construct that profile using only salts of chloride and sulfate.

On top of that goes the recommendation that one not take the profiles thing too seriously. Yes, understand the basic qualities of the water(s) that originated the styles you are interested in and match those approximately. This means don't brew Czech Pils with water with 6 mEq/L permanent hardness and don't brew northern English ales with vert soft water but the absolute amounts of ions can vary quite a bit without effecting flavor perceptibly. Do pay attention to the pH shifting effect of calcium if you are using lots of it though.
 
It's really more like digging a ditch and then filling it up again but with something other than the soil you dug out. If, for example, you put in 1 mEq/L sodium bicarbonate and then add 1 mEq/L of sulfuric acid you wind up with 1 mEq/L sodium sulfate.

The problem with the Bru'n water profiles is that they reflect what the wells or rivers in the geographical areas we associate with the different styles offer - not how that water looks before going into the mash tun i.e. after treatment by the brewery.

You're right that's a better analogy. I was speaking in terms of just the gain/loss of bicarbonate, but yea you'll build up sodium and lactate (I use lactic acid). I use so little of each with my water that's inconsequential, but if you wanted to burtonize it and then go back that would be significant

I don't use the Bru N Water geographic profiles at all. I do like the pale ale profile and all of the "amber malty" types though. I find its most useful to get your mash pH and an easy calculator for ion concentrations.

The mash pH calculator has been getting my pH wrong (overestimating by about .2-.3) ever since I upgraded to the new spreadsheet a few months back though. I inputted the same water numbers so maybe my water company started using harder water? Now I add my salts and mash in, check pH and adjust it with acid/bicarb from there. Works well enough
 
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