Bru'n Water - Starting PH seems to not matter

[MockY]

After getting some harsh bitterness out of my IPAs and Pale Ales as of late (guessing the PH is way too high), I sent in a sample to Ward Labs.
Sure enough, my water Ph has increased to 8.3.

So with that in mind, I'm now starting to take water profiles seriously as I don't want to just brew Stouts for the rest of my life.

I'm tinkering around with Bru'n Water which overall seems fairly simple for novices as myself. Enter your water report, your grain bill, and then choose a preset water profile (gotta say, the names of the pre-set profiles are a bit confusing to say the least), and then potentially some Gypsum and/or Calcium Chloride.

However, no matter where I enter the water PH, it does not seem to affect the resulting mash PH. I would think that in order to get a fairly accurate calculation, this should probably be a variable. Or is the PH determined automatically by entering all the numbers on the Water Report Input tab?

This is the water I'm dealing with:
PH................................ 8.3
Calcium, Ca................... 12
Magnesium, Mg.............. 5
Sodium, Na................... 10
Bicarbonate, HCO 3........ 77
Sulfate, SO 4 -S............. 2
Chloride, Cl................... 6
Potassium, K................. 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3... 51
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3... 65

So for this example, I'm using simple grainbill for an American Amber Ale and choose the Pale Ale profile. I've added a little Gypsum and Calcium Chloride to lower the PH a bit and to closer match the Calcium and Sulfate levels of that profile. Amber Full may be a better option, but this is a fairly hoppy beer.

But since I don't know whether the water input is determining the PH of my water and there is no input for the PH that directly affects the resulting mash PH, I'm hesitant to fully trust the output before knowing a little more about where/how the source PH comes into play.

So a little guidance there would be appreciated.

Furthermore, I mainly brew IPA, Pale Ale, and belgian beers (Saison and Pale Ale), so with the preset water profiles in Bru'n Water, would the Pale Ale profile suffice for the IPA and Pale Ale, and the Yellow Balanced for the saison and an occasional Helles? Is there a chart somewhere for these profiles to what styles of beer would be appropriate?

 

[mabrungard]

Water pH is overwhelmed by the buffers in the malt. Therefore, water pH is not used in estimating mashing pH. It is only used in assessing the amount of acid needed for sparging water. As you will see by playing with that water pH setting on the sparge acidification sheet, pH doesn't really affect the acid amount much either.

 

[ajdelange]

This is what alkalinity is all about. Alkalinity is the amount of acid you must add to a liter of your water to bring its pH to 4.4 (or 4.5 or 4.3 depending on the lab). The reason the particular end point pH doesn't matter that much is because the acid amount determined is sufficient to render nearly all the bicarbonate in the water into carbon dioxide.

Your report shows alkalinity of 65 ppm as CaCO3. Divide by 50 to get the required acid. This is 1.3 mEq/L. What this means is that Ward Labs took a liter of your water and added acid incrementally to it while checking the pH along the way. When the total acid added was 1.3 mEq the pH was 4.4 (the end point Ward Labs uses). Your water, whatever its starting pH, needs 1.3 mEq to move each litre to pH 4.4. But you don't want pH 4.4. You want pH 5.4 (or some other number close to that) as a mash pH. To calculate the amount of acid required to reach that pH you do need to know the sample pH because you use the sample pH and the alkalinity to calculate the amount of carbonic/bicarbonate/carbonate in the sample and then use that amount to calculate the acid required for the pH shift from sample pH to mash pH. All the formulas for doing this are in a sticky at the top of this forum. The amount of acid required for each liter of your water is about 90% of the reported alkalinity and while the exact number depends on sample pH the dependence is weak. This is because whereas at the pH defining alkalnity (4.4 or so) nearly all the carbo has been converted to carbonic at mash pH about 90% of it has. Thus the spreadsheets and calculators do not need to do the detailed calculations. They can calculate the buffering of your water at about 90% of the alkalinity irrespective of water pH as long as water pH isn't too unreasonable (lets say 6.5 - 10) without being too far in error.

The buffering of the malt relative to the buffering of the water depends on the malt and the water. Some malts are more alkaline than others and some waters are more alkaline than others. Sometimes the buffering of the mash is dominated by the buffering of the water and other times by the buffering of the malt. The program, if it is to come up with accurate mash pH predictions, must calculate the buffering of the water. This is easy to do, as the formulae in the sticky show. It is even easier to just WAG it at 90% of the alkalinity but this is sloppy given that it is so easy to do it properly. But you can't ignore it. I suppose one can argue that given the uncertainties in malt buffering (alkalinity to mash pH) with most of the spreadsheets and calculators effort in determining the water's buffering (alkalinity to mash pH) to high accuracy is not necessary or justified.

To put this in perspective here are the amounts of acid in mEq/L required to bring a sample of water with alkalinity 1.0 mEq/L (50 ppm as CaCO3) to pH 5.4 (typical mash pH)

pH Acid
6.0 0.71
6.5 0.85
7.0 0.91
7.5 0.91
8.0 0.92
9.0 0.92
10.0 0.94

All around 90 % for 6.5 < pH < 10

 

[MockY]

Thanks so much for the responses. I've taken the information given and went on to do some additional research since first posting. Low and behold, I now understand the Bru'n Water instruction tab a bit better, but there are still some basics I don't fully comprehend.

If I understand correctly, no matter what the PH was in the mash and what grains that were used (regardless of what kind of additions), the sparge water always have to be acidified if the source water has high alkalinity. I assume this is because anything the grains would change already has happened and won't continue to sparge. Seeing as my water currently has an alkalinity of 65 (which is a bit higher than the 25 threshold), I will have to add either Phosphoric or Lactic Acid to a point where the ph is 6.0 and the alkalinity is between 15 and 20 (I prefer to add as little as possible) every time I brew.

If this is indeed true, it bring up two follow up questions:

1. I batch sparge and dump the entire amount of sparge water all at once and drain it 5 minutes later. Should the sparge water be treated differently in terms of acid additions from fly sparging (which takes much longer), or it does not matter what sparge method you use?
2. When adding salts (I will probably only use Gypsum and/or Calcium Chloride), the program splits it up into both mash and sparge water. If some of this salts are added to the sparge water and not all of it to the mash, won't that take away from the drop in ph of the mash? Also, won't that affect the alkalinity and/or Ph of the sparge water in some way? Will I still need to acidify the water after salt addition have been added?

 

[mabrungard]

The sparging method will not change the requirements for the sparging water chemistry.

Yes, increasing or reducing the calcium salts in the mashing water will have an effect on the resulting pH. It will require adjustment to the mash acid amount to achieve a proper pH. I typically distribute my salts proportionally to my mashing and sparging water, but sometimes I add all the salts to the mashing water. It all depends on what I'm trying to achieve.

 

[MockY]

So to summarize: due to the alkalinity of my water (65), will I always have to acidify my sparge water no matter what kind of beer I make?

 

[ajdelange]

Realizing a desired kettle pH requires that you neutralize the grain alkalinity and the alkalinity of all the water to that pH. Thus if you have neutralized all the grain and all the mash water to a desired mash pH you must now supply additional acid to neutralize the sparge water to that pH under the assumption that kettle reactions will drop the pH further to the desired knockout pH. If you cannot make that assumption then even more acid will be required.

Thus you should acidify your sparge water not to pH 6 but rather to pH 5.4 or 5.5 or whatever mash pH you are shooting for. This will, as noted above, require acid in the amount of about 90% of the alkalinity (expressed in mEq/L) and the alkalinity of the treated water (as measured by a laboratory to pH 4.4) will thus be 10% of its original value or about 6.5 ppm as CaCO3. It is easiest to simply acidify the entire volume of water to be used to mash pH at the outset (if you have a container big enough to hold it).

Now suppose you ignore my advice and don't do anything to your sparge water. What are the consequences of this? That depends on how much you sparge. If you monitor your runoff pH and extract you may well find that cutting off collection when the runoff pH reaches 6 will not leave that much extract behind e.g. the runoff may be at 4 °P or even lower. Each liter of additional runoff would then only bring you 40 grams of additional extract and the loss isn't worth worrying about. But is is pretty simple to treat all the water to mash pH at the outset. Not only does this relieve you of care about this aspect of the process but also gives you a bit of margin with respect to the dreaded phenol extraction as less phenol will be extracted at pH 5.4 than will be extracted at pH 6.

 

[HomeDrewBrew]

Is acidifying and diluting the sparge water the same?
If my alkalinity is high and want to bring it down and gave no Lactic acid on hand can i just use ro?.
Thanks

 

[MockY]

I typically distribute my salts proportionally to my mashing and sparging water, but sometimes I add all the salts to the mashing water. It all depends on what I'm trying to achieve.

What I'm trying to figure out is the relation between the sparge additions and the amount of acid in said sparge. They are independent of each other in the Bru'n Water. In other words, it does not matter how much Gypsum or Calcium Chloride I add to the sparge water, the acid calculations will still be the same. If the pH IS affected by these mineral additions in the sparge water (which I'm not sure you answered since you mentioned mash), one would think that the amount of suggested acid would change as well. For the mash additions, they do have a relation, and I understand that since we are dealing with grains and their role in the mash.
BUT, if the pH does not change at all after the additions in the sparge water due to the high alkalinity and the grain bill already done its thing since it went through a mash, then I can understand that they are independent.

If I were to add all additions to the mash water...how would one achieve this in Bru'n Water (in case I do a no-sparge batch)? I assume what was distributed to the sparge water now should be added to the mash water, or is the sparge addition simply there to be included in the kettle volume and it could be added before boil if so desired?

Thus you should acidify your sparge water not to pH 6 but rather to pH 5.4 or 5.5 or whatever mash pH you are shooting for.

So whatever pH the mash was (let's say 5.3), the sparge water should preferably match that before using it?

It is easiest to simply acidify the entire volume of water to be used to mash pH at the outset (if you have a container big enough to hold it).

I batch sparge when I do 6.5 gallon batches, so this volume is usually around 5 gallons. Container size is no issue.

 

[ajdelange]

Is acidifying and diluting the sparge water the same?

As far as the alkalinity is concerned: yes, it is eliminated. As far as the overall chemistry of the treated water, no.

Alkaline water is, in the simplest case alkaline because it contains bicarbonate ion. Alkalinity is a measure of how much acid you must add to a liter of the water to convert the bicarbonate to carbonic acid which separates into water and CO2 gas thus getting rid of the bicarbonate:

HCO3- + HA --> A- + H2CO3 --> H2O + CO2 + A-

Thus each HCO3- ion is replaced by an A- ion. All the candidates for A- (HPO4-, Lac-, SO4--,CL-) are much weaker bases than HCO3- thus the alkalinity is removed. All the other ions are untouched.

If, OTOH, you simply dilute n-1:1 with deionized water the concentration of all ions, including the alkalinity causing HCO3- ion, goes down by a factor of n. Alkalinity is reduced by a factor of n but so is everything else.

If my alkalinity is high and want to bring it down and gave no Lactic acid on hand can i just use ro?.
Thanks

Yes but you might want to supplement Ca++, Cl-, SO4-- to offset their dilutions.

 

[ajdelange]

So whatever pH the mash was (let's say 5.3), the sparge water should preferably match that before using it?

Yes, but this is a fine point. If you only acidify sparge water to 6 it will not make a profound difference.

I batch sparge when I do 6.5 gallon batches, so this volume is usually around 5 gallons. Container size is no issue.

In that case I would acidify it to mash pH.

 

[HomeDrewBrew]

So if i just dilute the sparge water without acidifying but add the minerals will my PH be out of whack again then what my predicted mash ph of 5.45 said at Mash.

 

[HomeDrewBrew]

Sorry i havent got anyway to check yet.Im just going by Bru n waters Mash and sparge and dilution calculations.

 

[ajdelange]

So if i just dilute the sparge water without acidifying but add the minerals will my PH be out of whack again then what my predicted mash ph of 5.45 said at Mash.

No. If you remove the alkalinity you have removed the thing that causes pH shift (calcium will have a very small effect however).