Brew water question

[Senior Monkey]

We're about to do our 3rd brew: a clone of Russian River's Blind Pig IPA. After reading Mr. Palmer's chapter on water chemistry we checked our local water. Here are some of the results in PPM.
Alkalinity 23
Calcium 4.2
Chloride 2.2
Hardness 18
Magnesium 1.8
Sodium 5.9
Sulfate 4.1
We would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions

 

[Jag75]

Have you checked out the brew science section. Theres a few guys that hang there that will be able to tell you what your looking for .

 

[balrog]

It is soft, great for lighter styles. I suggest you take a quick look at the sticky and follow the simple suggestions before diving into trying to do too much with water.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Yep, that's quite soft water, so (as per Balrog's response) you can follow the guidelines in the water primer sticky. The main thing you need to do is add some Calcium to your water.
For an IPA (not NEIPA) with not much crystal malt, something like 1/2 grams per gallon of Calcium chloride and 2g per gallon of Gypsum would be a good starting point. Using 2% saurmalz (acid malt/sour malt) in the grist will help get the pH into an ideal range.

 

[Senior Monkey]

Have you checked out the brew science section. Theres a few guys that hang there that will be able to tell you what your looking for .

Thanks for the tip about the Brew Science section. Lots of help there for us. Just read the primer on water chemistry.

 

[IslandLizard]

Don't forget if your brewing water contains chlorine or chloramines (most municipal water does), to eliminate it with a crushed quarter Campden tablet or an equivalent amount (~1/16-1/8 tsp) of K-Meta per 5 gallons.

 

[Jordan Logo]

I’d suggest downloading Bru’n Water. I just did a brew day today and for the first time used RO water while adjusting my mash profile and saw massive gains on efficiency. Just download Bru’n Water then YouTube tutorials on how to use it. I promise you won’t regret it.

 

[Liam569]

I’d suggest downloading Bru’n Water. I just did a brew day today and for the first time used RO water while adjusting my mash profile and saw massive gains on efficiency. Just download Bru’n Water then YouTube tutorials on how to use it. I promise you won’t regret it.

Thanks, it sounds interesting, I'll take care of it.

 

[Jag75]

To add to the Brun water I would bypass the free version. It's ok but you get more with the paid version. Most who have the free version upgrade . It's really cheap for what you get . It makes my recipe building a cinch. It was a little overwhelming at first but the more I played around on it it became very user friendly and I'm not a computer literate person by any stretch.

 

[IslandLizard]

To add to the Brun water I would bypass the free version.

At least if you find it useful. There are other water calculators, I use them too, merely for cross reference in trickier situations.

I think the magic number to obtain the full version of Bru'nWater is 10. Higher numbers work well too.

 

[balrog]

There are myriad calcs, and they all model only as well as the input data.
They all fairly well model the ions by salt additions, some better with CaCl solution differences, but for the mash pH modelling, unless you're doing pH titration of the batch of malts you have in hand, the models will be estimates and they will vary by spreadsheet model. Furthermore, until you actually buy a decent pH meter and learn to correctly use it, you'll not really *KNOW* how well the models model.

These are a few I've seen but there are way more out there:
BrewersFriend
EZWater
Mash Made Easy
[URL='http://homebrewingphysics.blogspot.com/2016/03/brewing-water-calculator-mph-water.html']MpH[/URL]
The Brewing Engine