Brewing salts question.

[JETDOG07]

If I want to create 6 gallons of wort should I be adding only enough salts to get my concentrations correct fornthe finished 6 gallons?

Or should I be adding enough salts to compensate for the grain absorption?

As in, if I get a gallon of absorption should I be treating my a water as if I were making 7 gallons of wort?

 

[BrewingAroundtheRrealm]

That's an interesting question. I always treat for the final volume that is going in to the fermenter. I never really thought about it beyond that.

You are boiling off water to get your final volume. If you treated for 7 gallons but the end result is 6 gallons your concentrations are going to be higher. Boiling removes water not the salts.

 

[mabrungard]

I recommend that you treat your water based on its total volume in most cases. All mashing includes a loss due to grain absorption and its just part of the game. The only time I recommend revising your mineral additions is when your system has excessive evaporation losses. Those losses might over-concentrate your mineral content in the finished beer.

 

[Rodent]

I treat total volume for brewing salts. If my water consumption requires 8.5 gallons to accommodate mash + 2x sparge + absorption + losses + etc ... I'll make and treat 9 gallons to the water profile I want to brew with. Since my boil-off rate is right at 1 gallon/hour, I make no compensation for 90-minute or less boils.

I use tap water, which is consistently between 6.25 and 6.5 pH depending on the time of year. I make initial mash pH adjustments in the mash tun between 15 and 30 minutes into the mash, and then adjust my sparge water to 5.3 pH prior to underletting into the tun.

 

[Vale71]

I agree that you should consider the total volume. For one, mash PH will be determined only by the concentration of salts and not the total amount, so that should be your only criterion as far as hitting the right PH value is concerned. Secondly, while it's true that concentration will increase with boiling, beer has been boiled for centuries so this (the increasing concentration) is just an expected side effect of the brewing process and there is no reason to treat it as an issue. Even if you have excessive evaporation (>10%) it is a secondary issue as excessive thermal loads will surely negatively impact flavor a lot more than increasing salt concentration might, so you should really be fixing the primary issue and not worrying about the secondary ones.

 

[JETDOG07]

I have been treating my mash for my 6 gallons of finished wort. That almost always has me at ph 5.2. I was just curious if not enough salts are making it into the final product from being absorbed into the grain.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I have been treating my mash for my 6 gallons of finished wort. That almost always has me at ph 5.2. I was just curious if not enough salts are making it into the final product from being absorbed into the grain.

It's more like the opposite of that. There are loads of minerals inherent within barley malt that find their way into the wort if not precipitated out. Read this:

http://nopr.niscair.res.in/bitstream/123456789/34294/1/IJTK 15(3) 500-502.pdf

Or access this research paper:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287714138_Minerals_in_beer

A quote from the research paper:

In beer most of the minerals originate from the barley. About 75% derives from the malt, while the remaining 25% originates from the water. The mineral composition of the malt depends on the variety, place where it was grown, atmospheric condition, growing techniques, harvesting, storage, and malting system.