Brewing water mineral concentrations after boil?

[mario_silent]

Hi everyone,

I've been reading a lot about water chemistry and I'm interested in making some slight adjustments to my water (RO) since I found I have very low mineral content. So, I started using

Brewer's Friend​

water calculator and first, though I noticed some calculations to be off. The ppm after adding let's say 1g of gypsum to 3 lts of water gives me a different concentration there than in the Beersmith calculator and the EZ water calculator. The latter give me veeery close numbers.

Anyway, the point of the question is, in the water calculators, you either treat mash water and/or sparge water. Let's say I make a 1 gallon batch. So I treat 0.79 gal with salts and the other half (0.79 gal) is left untreated. With some additions, the calculator will give me this:

Ca - 127 ppm
Mg - 11 ppm
Na - 40 ppm
Chloride - 161 ppm
Sulfate - 113 ppm

Now, that

concentration​

is for my mash water + sparge water as per EZ water calculator last 2 rows. Buuut, there will be some loss to the grain (I've read salts don't stick to the grain) and then when I boil, I'm gonna get a higher concentration of minerals because they don't boil off, correct?

Am I supposed to compensate for the increase in concentration since the salt additions? Let's say I lose 15% water to the boil, so, do I add 15% less of each salt to compensate for that or how do you guys do it? I don't wanna go beyond the recommended ranges and this thing just got me worried right now.

Thanks!

 

[RM-MN]

The water salts additions are to create the conditions needed for the mash enzymes to work properly. Once the mash is done, the concentration of the salts doesn't matter much unless you really go overboard with them to alter the beer flavor.

Adjusting the salts for sparge water is a good idea as it may keep the pH from going too high. That pH shift may be more likely in fly sparging than in batch sparging.

 

[The_Bishop]

That's not entirely accurate. The salts in the water are predominantly for beer flavor. The effect on mash pH is secondary, and mash pH should be adjusted via acid or base additions to target a mash pH that works for the style of beer and flavor profile you're looking for.

 

[raysmithtx]

Similar question here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=591681

 

[mabrungard]

Yes, boiling does increase the concentrations of the ions in your water. It's not really a problem if you limit the boil off volume loss to less than about 10 percent. Most professional systems are covered and typically lose less than 10 percent. However, there are plenty of brewing systems that loose more than that. This seems to be particularly true when brewing small batches. A lot of homebrewers are brewing batches in the 1 to 2 gal range to suit their needs and their brewing equipment.

If your system tends to boil off more than 10 percent, then you might consider planning your mineral additions based on the ending wort volumes instead of the starting volumes. Or you could plan on restoring the wort volume to make up for the excessive losses with a RO or DI water addition.

This issue is not really an issue if your brewing with a lightly mineralized water, but if you have highly mineralized water or add a lot of minerals to your water, then its more of a concern.