Beer Smith Water Tool

[OrCoastBrew]

I have a couple of questions about water and the beersmith water tool.
I am starting a new all grain porter and I want to try and mimic London water. My tap water is very soft. I have read several books on water and I am still somewhat confused and I don't want to mess a brew up.

1. Is it worth messing with the water?

2. Is there any trick to using the water tool or do you just adjust the various ingredients until you come as close as possible to the target water? I.e. should you keep one ingredient lower and try to compensate with another?

3. I am assuming that you incorporate the ingredients into the mash but what I don't understand is if you just mix it into the mashtun with the grains or if you heat all water including sparge water and mix the ingredients into that water.

4. Do you calculate your total additions from your total volume of water? I.e. do I use the 5 gallon number for my batch size or do I use the 7.5 gallon number from the total water needed to make the final batch size?

5. If I am making a porter and using 75% 2 row and 25% darker additions will I mess up the ph by trying to make my harder?

Anyway I know this is a lot of questions and some may have simple answers but I would appreciate any help I can get on this subject. THANKS

 

[chode720]

1. Yes. It can make the difference between really good and great.

2. Don’t worry about mimicking a profile. The main concern is your residual alkalinity and chloride to sulfate ration. Check out http://howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-1.html and the rest of the Chapter. Lots of good info on what to adjust and why.

3. Mix the first additional of salts with your mash when you first dough in. Use the right amounts of salts for the amount of mash water. On the link above, one of the sections has a spreadsheet to calculate how much of each salt you need to get to your desired level, based on the mash volume.

4. Use the right amount of salts for each additional. Hypathetically if your mash is say 3 gallons of water and then your sparge is 4, use the spreadsheet to calculate the additions for 3 gallons and add to mash. Then, after sparging, multiply all of those salt additions by 1.3 (since there is 1.3x more sparge water in this scenario) and then add that to your boil kettle after collecting all of your runnings. Its easier to add the extra salts after sparge.

5. Hard to answer without knowing your water profile. On Palmers website, one of the pages in Chapter 15 has a nomograph that will show you your residual alkalinity. From there, you can tell if your pH will be too high or too low for a given beer style/color. Then you know what type of hardness adjustments need to be made.

PM me with any other questions

 

[OrCoastBrew]

Thanks for the tips i think i have a grasp on making water adjustments now.

 

[chode720]

No problem! It took me awhile....and finally reading Palmer's book to fully understand how and why to adjust water.