Brown Ale Water Profile

[briggssteel]

Hello all. I'm brewing a brown ale this weekend and had some questions regarding the water adjustments. I plugged the information into Bru n Water adding 4 grams of calcium chloride and it's telling me my mash PH will come it at 4.7 which seems low to me for not having tons of roasted grain. I have a lot of specialty grains at 31% though so maybe that's what's causing it. Here's the recipe for:

6 gallons- 12.25lbs total grain

Est OG: 1.054

Mash at 156 at 1.4 quarts/pound for 60 minutes. This comes out to 4.3 gallons of mash water.

8.5lbs of Marris Otter
1lb Crystal 80
.5lbs Special Roast 50L
.5lbs Victory 28L
.75lbs Brown Malt 60-70L
.5lbs Pale Chocolate 200-250L
.5lbs Carapils

As I said, 4.7 seems like a low ph as pale chocolate is the most roasted malt I'm using at only a half a pound. I plugged in 3 grams of pickling lime and it calculated that would raise the ph to 5.3. My issue is that I'm a little leary about adding 3 grams of pickling lime right off the bat without first measuring my ph. I'd like to just put in the 4 grams of calcium chloride and measure it with my Colorphast strips but I know I'll have to wait 10 minutes to take a sample, let it cool down, and then take a reading. I'm afraid most of conversion will be completed by then. Any advice on the issue would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mabrungard]

That is a lot of crystal and darker grains. I can only assume you are starting with a very low alkalinity water like RO or distilled???? I don't know what your recipe will actually do, but I can tell you that the acidic end of the Bru'n Water calculation was verified using the Reapers Mild recipe that is on HBT. That recipe has a huge amount of darker crystal and a modest dose of chocolate malt. I seem to remember that the mash pH was 4.9 with all the mineral additions excepting the lime. Fortunately, Bru'n Water did predict the proper lime dose needed to raise the mash to a more desirable 5.3 pH.

In the absence of a good pH meter, I am confident that the amount of lime is correct and would add it. However, I do have a good meter and often add about 3/4 the calculated lime amount to the mash and check pH. I have always found that the program was correct and I had to add the remainder of the lime.

 

[MollyHatchet]

Subscribed. I am interested in the responses, I am about to do my tenth all grain after ten years of extract brewing. I found with my tap water which I have not tested yet makes great lighter and hoppy beers but when I do darker beers my efficiency drops to the low sixties. All other beers are in the eights to low nineties. Not trying to jump your thread, just trying to learn.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[mabrungard]

Oh, by the way. If you are only adding chloride to the water and no sulfate, I'm betting that the beer finish won't dry out very well. A modest sulfate level in a brown is welcome.

 

[briggssteel]

Yes, I'm using RO water. Left out a pretty important detail there. So you're saying you're confident that the ph will be below 5 with that grain bill and the 3 grams of lime will be needed to get it to at least 5.3? I know you wrote the bru n water software and are an expert in water so I certainly trust your opinion on that.

I'm going for a stronger version of a southern English brown. I've based it off of Jamil's recipe in terms of grain percentages. I believe he uses something like 36% Crystal and roasted grains in his so I wanted to go for something similar. I definitely want it to finish on the malty sweet side. If I did add some sulfates I'm thinking I would need to back off on the calcium chloride and add some gypsum in it's place. I don't want to go overboard on the calcium if I'm adding that much lime.