Brewfather Water Profile Questions

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Yesfan

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For those who use Brewfather, how are you making your water adjustments? I'm lost on some of this.

I'm brewing a pale ale that's going to be dry hopped. So in the water profile, I pick "Hoppy" as the target profile and it lists the salt additions as....

Hoppy: Ca2+ 110 Mg2+ 18 Na+ 16 Cl- 50 So4/2- 275 HCO3- 33

Under the style (American Pale Ale) those numbers look like their within their parameters, except for BiCarbonate (HCO3) at 33. The min/max for BiCarbonate is 40-120. So do I leave the amount at 33 or adjust to at least 40? Should that value be middle of the road (80)?

My gut tells me to trust the software, but towards the bottom I see where the beer is going to be "very dry or bitter (5.5)". Should I adjust the BiCarbonate (and/or other additions) to where the beer is more balanced, slightly dry/bitter, or dry/bitter? That kinda throws me off. I know too much salt additions and you taste it, so is there a rule of thumb for each of these additions? Do I go for the least amounts of salt additions or should each one be more centered between the minimum/maximum amounts? TIA....
 
Under the style (American Pale Ale) those numbers look like their within their parameters, except for BiCarbonate (HCO3) at 33. The min/max for BiCarbonate is 40-120. So do I leave the amount at 33 or adjust to at least 40?

I don't use BrewFather, but there should really never be a target number for bicarbonate. It's something you either have to overcome with acidity, or increase if the mash pH would otherwise be too low. But unlike the other common brewing water ions, there's no reason to assign or chase any target for it.
 
Hi Folks, Hope you are well?
I'm setting up my source water profile on Brewfather as figured it was time to move away from bottled water. Could anyone with experience check my attached - not sure if I've got it right or not so would appreciate an experienced set of eyes
 

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@Yesfan did you ever figure this out? Stumbled across this post today, and can help you out if needed. I use Brewfather, and their water adjustment feature. Their water target profiles have worked out great for me.


I just went with what Brewfather suggests, and then just tweak the salt addition amounts enough to keep the measurements in the green and not under/overshoot the ph.

What I'd like to know, is there an idea target amount to shoot for (of course, depending on style) for each addition? If a mineral addition for a given style has a min/max amount, do you shoot for the middle of the road with that addition, the minimum amount to keep everything in the green, or the max amount without going in the red? Of course when it comes to these values, the ph value trumps everything, right?

What I've been doing is trying to use the least amount of salt additions needed to keep the ph in the middle of the road around 5.3.
 
@Yesfan , it sounds like you're probably missing a very important function on Brewfather, the magic wand. Here's the water screen of a test batch I was doing for an experiment. In this photo, I have no salts added, I am starting with my house water profile (measured with brewing water test kit at home).

It has a mash pH of 5.67 without doing anything.

1700576088847.png


Next, I pick a Target Profile from Brewfather of "Hoppy". And then I click on the magic wand "Auto" button, and it does this:
1700576274208.png


Automatically calculates the brewing salt additions to best meet the Target water profile. You can see my mash pH dropped to 5.5. At that point, I leave the water salts alone. The job is to get the right flavor profile. Acid addition is what gets me the right pH.

1700576496055.png

You can see that by adding 3 ml of 88% Lactic Acid, my mash pH has now dropped to 5.33. My brewing salts additions remain unchanged, and you can see I'm in the green for all of the beer style target ranges.
1700576681646.png



This is what I do all the time. I have it default to my house water supply as the Source. I then pick my Target profile, hit the magic wand button so it auto-calculates the mineral additions, then figure out how much acid I need to add to get the pH the rest of the way to where I want it. And of course at the end click the button at the bottom to Save Adjustments to Recipe. I find that for 90% of my profiles it just uses Gypsum, CaCl, and Epsom Salt to hit the target profile. I can turn on options as to whether or not I want to also allow it to use Salt, Baking Soda, and Chalk (my water profile for my Dusseldorf Alt uses some of those).

But the magic wand is your friend.
 
@Yesfan , it sounds like you're probably missing a very important function on Brewfather, the magic wand. Here's the water screen of a test batch I was doing for an experiment. In this photo, I have no salts added, I am starting with my house water profile (measured with brewing water test kit at home).

It has a mash pH of 5.67 without doing anything.

View attachment 834450

Next, I pick a Target Profile from Brewfather of "Hoppy". And then I click on the magic wand "Auto" button, and it does this:
View attachment 834451

Automatically calculates the brewing salt additions to best meet the Target water profile. You can see my mash pH dropped to 5.5. At that point, I leave the water salts alone. The job is to get the right flavor profile. Acid addition is what gets me the right pH.

View attachment 834452
You can see that by adding 3 ml of 88% Lactic Acid, my mash pH has now dropped to 5.33. My brewing salts additions remain unchanged, and you can see I'm in the green for all of the beer style target ranges.
View attachment 834455


This is what I do all the time. I have it default to my house water supply as the Source. I then pick my Target profile, hit the magic wand button so it auto-calculates the mineral additions, then figure out how much acid I need to add to get the pH the rest of the way to where I want it. And of course at the end click the button at the bottom to Save Adjustments to Recipe. I find that for 90% of my profiles it just uses Gypsum, CaCl, and Epsom Salt to hit the target profile. I can turn on options as to whether or not I want to also allow it to use Salt, Baking Soda, and Chalk (my water profile for my Dusseldorf Alt uses some of those).

But the magic wand is your friend.



So basically, you leave the salt additions as is and don't tweak them after BF has calculated them? The only thing you're adjusting is the ph by adding lactic acid?

I had been doing it backwards. I do use the auto button (magic wand) and sometimes there is a value that's still in the red. I adjust that addition to get it in the green, then adjust the lactic acid amount as a last result to get the ph near 5.2-5.4 range.

I'm going to try it your way on the next brew. Thanks!
 
I guess the thing to keep in mind is the magic wand can only auto calculate to one thing, and that's the water target profile, not the beer style range.

I guess supposedly those two things overlap. But I'd just pick the target water profile you want and stick with that.
 
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