Bru’n water for dunkel?

[trapae]

Need a little help. I’ve been using Bru’n water for my last four batches after I got an RO water set up in my house. This is my first one doing a darker beer. The water profile I’m shooting for is kind of like a balanced amber, but with a little higher chloride than sulfate as follows:

calcium-50, magnesium-10, sodium-35, sulfate-50, chloride-80.
I’m shooting for a mash pH of 5.5. I have the program set to add all minerals to the mash and none to the Sparge.

With my additions so far, I’m close to the correct mineral profile however the pH is 5.16. Should add some baking soda to get the pH around 5.5, but when I do that, I get a Redbox in the baking soda category at the far right at bicarbonate saying 109. Is that OK? Or is there another better way to increase the pH? Also, if anyone has opinions on my Water profile or pH I would appreciate input. Thanks so much.

 

[DBhomebrew]

I think it's silly to acidify the mash water only to bring it back into range again with baking soda. I add whatever salts I need in the mash up to the correct pH. The remaining salts ('sparge' in the software) go directly into the kettle. With RO, no adjustment to the sparge water is needed.

 

[trapae]

I think it's silly to acidify the mash water only to bring it back into range again with baking soda. I add whatever salts I need in the mash up to the correct pH. The remaining salts ('sparge' in the software) go directly into the kettle. With RO, no adjustment to the sparge water is needed.

I didn’t purposely acidify the mash. It’s got some dark malts in it and I just added the minerals to get it to my target water profile and at that point the mash was too low. Just wondering the best way to increase the pH after the profile is reached? And I was planning on only adding the additions to the mash, not the Sparge.

 

[DBhomebrew]

I didn’t purposely acidify the mash.

Purposely, inadvertently, doesn't matter. Calcium salts are acidic.

Just wondering the best way to increase the pH after the profile is reached?

The profile doesn't matter in the mash. Hitting the correct pH does. Reach the overall profile in the kettle.

 

[trapae]

OK, interesting, so if I have dark malts in my mash bill and the pH with RO water is SUB 5.2, what salts are you using to get it up to, Let’s say 5.5?

 

[DBhomebrew]

When I brew my very roasty RIS, I have no salts in the mash. Just a bit of baking soda to raise the pH. No salts. All the 125+ ppms of Ca, etc, go straight into the kettle.

 

[hottpeper13]

Regardless of pH you still should have 50 ppm's calcium in the mash and add alkalinity to get your pH. I use RO because my alkalinity is 400 ppm. When I brew a dark beer I mix house and RO to get my pH where i want it. Why are you using RO?

 

[DBhomebrew]

Regardless of pH you still should have 50 ppm's calcium in the mash

What does the calcium do in the mash?

 

[trapae]

Regardless of pH you still should have 50 ppm's calcium in the mash and add alkalinity to get your pH. I use RO because my alkalinity is 400 ppm. When I brew a dark beer I mix house and RO to get my pH where i want it. Why are you using RO?

 

[trapae]

I live in Huntington Beach and my water is horrible. The Alkalinity was higher than yours so I was always fighting it. So I installed an RO system. But very new to water chemistry. I guess I could also reserve the dark grains until the end of the mash. I’ve never done that but read that it works. Not sure how to do that in the spreadsheet. I guess I would just leave it out of the Grain bill and calculate the pH without it and then add it right before vorlauf?

 

[DBhomebrew]

Why are you set on putting all your salts in the mash?

Holding the roast malts out of the mash is a way to use the same water in any beer. An all-purpose water for pales and stouts. That makes sense if you're using a tap or well source. You're building your water from scratch, might as well build it for the beer you're brewing.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

calcium-50, magnesium-10, sodium-35, sulfate-50, chloride-80.
I’m shooting for a mash pH of 5.5. I have the program set to add all minerals to the mash and none to the Sparge.

What you are doing is similar to what I would do. You can play with moving your Calcium salts to the boil, but I doubt it will impact your mash pH much. I add all my salts to the mash, and add a little Baking Soda if needed to raise the mash pH. I am not sure if adding the Calcium into the boil will then lead to a lower post-boil pH and a lower final beer pH.

I would not call Calcium salts "acidic" but they do lower mash pH. One quote says: "Calcium reacts with phosphates, forming precipitates that involve the release of hydrogen ions, in turn lowering the pH of the mash."

 

[DBhomebrew]

Ok. Maybe not acidic, but having the effect of moving pH to the acidic end of the scale.

All I know is that when I add calcium salts to the mash water section of the software the predicted pH drops. Even with a pale beer such as a bitter, I can't put all the calcium salts to hit the profile into the mash unless I use baking soda to bring it back up. Granted, I'm usually targeting 125ppm Ca overall.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

When I brew my very roasty RIS, I have no salts in the mash. Just a bit of baking soda to raise the pH. No salts. All the 125+ ppms of Ca, etc, go straight into the kettle.

Count me among the brewers who assumed I was supposed to mash with the same water profile being "targetted"! I will admit I've been a little underwhelmed with the roast contribution I'm getting in my stouts (mashing with London profile, pH adjusted to 5.55-ish via phosphoric acid), would that be in any way related? My 60 minute boils only go from 3.5 gallons to 3.0 gallons, if that matters... (I do a full volume no sparge mash-in-a-bag)

 

[hottpeper13]

Calcium in the mash drops out calcium phosphate which causes gushing and kidney stones. Because water constituents are linear you can dilute the RO with Filtered house water to the required ppm's of alkalinity needed ie, I need 200 ppm's so I use 50/50 RO/house. I also have 375 ppm's Cal/mag so I don't need to add salts.

 

[trapae]

Truly not being belligerent or disagreeable, just wanting to learn in asking this……..
If mineral additions are not supposed to be added to the mash or the sparge for a specific water profile, why is the most popular Brewing water program written by Martin (arguably a or the expert in water chemistry) written to do just that?

 

[DBhomebrew]

I'm not saying to never add salts to mash water. My historical very roasty RIS is an extreme example. Maybe it'll give me kidney stones. Martin elsewhere on the forum suggests the phosphate stuff can happen in the kettle. I'm still reading into it. Still, extreme example, every other recipe I make uses some salts in the mash. Just enough to hit my desired pH. For my typical English-style strong bitter that's 20ppm Ca in the mash helped by a little anti-oxidative vitamin C ~=1ml 88% lactic. Another 308ppm goes in the kettle along with 12Mg/91Na/434Cl/387SO4 (calculated by the software as sparge). That's an overall of 151/5/41/207/188 which is in the range of an "English" profile.

You certainly can treat your whole water as one. That's one route. I take another route and treat mash water for mash requirements and add the rest in the kettle for flavor, yeast health, and flocculation. Two moments, two different water needs.

Mash water has to bring the mash into proper pH range. Wort needs enough Ca to help the break, precipitate phosphates & such, yeast need a certain amount of Ca, a bit of magnesium, too. Some yeasts need extra Ca to help it drop. Some beer styles benefit from high minerality for mouth feel and flavor. Others from very low minerality. These are all items that can be addressed one by one when you're building your water from scratch. When you're working with a source water you're obviously going to take different approaches. When you're dealing with the logistics of a commercial brewery I can see treating different waters as cumbersome. Much easier to treat it all as one.

Profiles aren't magic. They're what comes when a brewer adjusts a particular source water to meet the requirements of a particular beer. For my beers, nearly all British, I look at their typical overall profile and hit a few key points most importantly 100-125+ Ca. How I get there is nothing like how Brits typically get there. I'm not using British source water.