Brewing Water Calculator

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brian320fo

brian320fo

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I posted in another thread awhile back about a water calculator I've been working on. I've been hard at work researching and updating it. It's for the most part a simple tool to calculate a water profile for any given style and any given initial water chemistry. If you want an easy way to figure out a good water profile for your beer this is a good place to start. Read the directions completely, there's some good info in there!

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks.

https://www.phantomwingbrewing.com/
 
What does your calculator offer that would entice us to switch from whatever calculator we are currently using?

Brew on :mug:
 
brian320fo said:
What browser and what version are you using? It works on Edge and Safari for me. Also make sure that there's an "S" in HTTPS://

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Safari and Chrome
Screen Shot 2023-02-26 at 8.35.17 AM.png
 
Sorry, same result, both Safari and Chrome.

Update: after clearing my cache and waiting quite a while, it does load now with Google Chrome.
 
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quantumguy said:
Sorry, same result, both Safari and Chrome.

Update: after clearing my cache and waiting quite a while, it does load now with Google Chrome.
Click to expand...
I was having issues with the web host. I've changed hosts and security settings so hopefully this works cross platform now. Do you mind taking a look and letting me know? Thanks!
 
brian320fo said:
It calculates a water profile based on your input. No guessing as to what the profile should be or how to balance the ions.
Click to expand...
There are some features there that look useful. I really like the idea of a simple tool that can calculate the needed salt additions based on a style.

I feel like the Estimated Mash pH input field might make the tool much less useful since it requires somebody to use another water chemistry tool to calculate that value. Are people that are already using another water chemistry tool going to come back to your tool just to calculate the salt additions? I know little about pH estimation, but I wonder if your tool could estimate pH or pH adjustments based on the recipe SRM or based on the selected style.
 
CascadesBrewer said:
There are some features there that look useful. I really like the idea of a simple tool that can calculate the needed salt additions based on a style.

I feel like the Estimated Mash pH input field might make the tool much less useful since it requires somebody to use another water chemistry tool to calculate that value. Are people that are already using another water chemistry tool going to come back to your tool just to calculate the salt additions? I know little about pH estimation, but I wonder if your tool could estimate pH or pH adjustments based on the recipe SRM or based on the selected style.
Click to expand...
Agreed, estimated mash pH should be an output, not an input. Just like estimated mash and brewhouse efficiencies should be outputs, rather than inputs, in recipe calculators.

Brew on :mug:
 
There are some features there that look useful. I really like the idea of a simple tool that can calculate the needed salt additions based on a style.

I feel like the Estimated Mash pH input field might make the tool much less useful since it requires somebody to use another water chemistry tool to calculate that value. Are people that are already using another water chemistry tool going to come back to your tool just to calculate the salt additions? I know little about pH estimation, but I wonder if your tool could estimate pH or pH adjustments based on the recipe SRM or based on the selected style.
Click to expand...
Agreed, estimated mash pH should be an output, not an input. Just like estimated mash and brewhouse efficiencies should be outputs, rather than inputs, in recipe calculators.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input. It's very much appreciated.

The primary purpose of this calculator is to calculate a water profile based on inputs about your recipe. I could not find any other program that actually calculates a water profile for you. There are other programs, like BeerSmith, that will calculate the salt additions for you IF you give it a water profile, but what should that profile be? That's what my calculator determines. BeerSmith also calculates the acid needed to reach a target pH. If you use BeerSmith, the acid and salt addition calculations in my program are actually redundant. I was trying to prevent having to enter the full grain bill into the calculator since there are so many other programs out there that will predict pH based on the grain bill. Why have to enter it twice? This program is intended to be used conjunction with other programs and the tie-in to the acid prediction is the estimated pH.

Again, this program is about the water profile. It determines a good profile for your recipe but also allows you to adjust it to your specific needs by using sliders, all while keeping the ions balanced.

I've actually already written the code for pH adjustments based on SRM and style. I just need to get the time to test and implement it.

Again, I really do appreciate the input! Thank you.
 
brian320fo said:
Again, this program is about the water profile. It determines a good profile for your recipe but also allows you to adjust it to your specific needs by using sliders, all while keeping the ions balanced.
Click to expand...
Maybe an option to exclude mash pH calculations and adjustments would be useful?

brian320fo said:
I've actually already written the code for pH adjustments based on SRM and style. I just need to get the time to test and implement it.
Click to expand...
That sounds ideal. I am sure it is a challenge to get an accurate model that is simple and had limited inputs.
 
CascadesBrewer said:
Maybe an option to exclude mash pH calculations and adjustments would be useful?


That sounds ideal. I am sure it is a challenge to get an accurate model that is simple and had limited inputs.
Click to expand...
I'll work on it. In the meantime though, you can tick the "Generic Profile" box and it will exclude all the inputs. It'll give you a water profile based strictly on style. It will, however, still allow the volumes to be input optionally to calculate salt quantities.
 
Functional on my Brave browser - just had to use http instead of https. Looks great and nice touch with the Theory, Brewing Tips, and Recipe sections. Thank you.
 
So now that I've looked and played around with it a bit, my big question is exactly how do you determine the water profiles for each style? It's not like there is any strict science behind a given profile for a given style. Certainly there are general guidelines, e.g., soft vs. hard or low sulphate vs. high, but what are the calculations in your app actually based on?
 
quantumguy said:
So now that I've looked and played around with it a bit, my big question is exactly how do you determine the water profiles for each style? It's not like there is any strict science behind a given profile for a given style. Certainly there are general guidelines, e.g., soft vs. hard or low sulphate vs. high, but what are the calculations in your app actually based on?
Click to expand...
Good question. I spent about two years researching these profiles. I read every book, magazine article and periodical I could find. There are no hard and fast rules for a water profile for a given beer style but there are some generally accepted guidelines. With all that research I created a database with just about every style of beer to include what is generally accepted to be the limits for each style. The calculator attempts to keep all these parameters around the average of the high and low limits. The output is in the heart of the bell curve as long as your source water is good. However, I realize that people have different tastes and opinions which is why I included the sliders. You can adjust the output to your liking and the calculator will continually calculate the additions keeping the ions balanced. I’ve kept very detailed brew logs for the last 250 batches of beer I’ve done including Ca levels, sulfate / chloride ratio and pH. With the feedback I got from experience, friends, fellow brewers, and BJCP sanctioned competitions I have made some adjustments to the database. I’m always open to refining the database.
 
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Thanks for the explanation and frankly that is sort of what I thought you had done. Kudos for all that work to generate this tool. What would be super useful to the user would be to actually see how broad the distribution of water profiles are for a given style. How far can one push a certain addition before it comes more than 2sigma outside the mean? I think this could be a fantastic addition to a home brewer's toolbox, but I'm not particularly fond of or trust blackbox advisors.
 
The output does change colors to yellow then red when it gets outside of parameters. There’s also the water quality index which will give you an idea about pushing the limits. But 2 sigma, that’ll have to wait until I retake stats.
 
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I just updated the calculator to include an option for using SRM to estimate pH. Using SRM is really not a very good method for guessing pH but it might get you close depending on your recipe. I also updated the acid model. If anyone finds any errors, please let me know. Thanks!
 

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