Calcium Chloride kettle addition?

[JJFlash]

Looking for more information on calcium chloride additions to brew kettle.
I have heard and read this enhances "palate fullness and rounds out a beer".
Jennifer Talley in her Session Beers book mentions these additions.
However, no one gives a suggested quantity or beer style guidelines.
Only reference I can find is one brewer uses the Bru'n Water sparge additions to the brew kettle rather than to sparge water.
Anyone have insight into how to dose kettle salts?

 

[Peebee]

There's many "calculator" ways of adding Calcium Chloride to the kettle, not the mash. Bru'n Water has "add hardness minerals to kettle" ... not specifically what you want but could be manipulated? The reason for these options is due to Calcium (a "hardness" mineral, of which Magnesium is usually the only significant other unless you have very exotic water - that you wouldn't be wanting to brew with, drinking as is, or even washing your pet pig in - can influence the pH of your mash - indirectly, it isn't itself an acid!).

You don't have to use calcium chloride, you are only interested in the "chloride", so you could just use table salt (sodium chloride).

By far the easiest way is add it to your sparge water. You don't have to worry about it influencing the mash, the mash is finished and everything "liquid" is heading for the kettle.

And remember the advice: "Enhances palate fullness and rounds out a beer". "Enhances", not "tastes full and round", the latter is what you hope your beer will "taste" after it has been enhanced. I say that because so many people think "sulphate" (that "other" beer enhancer) makes your beer "bitter" ... hops do that! The "enhancer" improves your perception of it. That is not the same. (The common parallel is table salt, a little improves how you taste your food ... too much and the food tastes "salty").

 

[JJFlash]

Remember this is recommendations of kettle salts additions for flavor enhancement discussion.
Mash salts additions are undisputed.
Sparge salts additions used instead in the kettle are not recommended.

Martin Brungard in his Bru'n Water has this information:
---------
Add Minerals to Sparging Water or the Kettle?

A popular question regarding brewing water mineral adjustments is whether to add those minerals to the sparging water or reserve them and add them to the kettle.

As most brewers know, if you want a certain water profile, you will need to add minerals in proportion to the total water amount used in your brewing session. The question is when to add those minerals? For the mashing water, we generally will add minerals to that water since they often have an effect on pH. For sparging water, some brewers reserve the mineral additions calculated for that sparging volume and add them directly to the kettle. Here is why that may not be the best approach.

For brewers using water with little mineralization, there is a clear advantage to adding calcium salts to the sparging water. The extra mineralization added to the sparging water provides a couple of benefits. The first is that the increased osmotic stress on the cells of the grain from the higher mineralization should help reduce the extraction of undesirable components like tannins and silicate from the grain. Another benefit is that extra calcium in the sparging water helps complex with oxalates from the grain and helps keep them out of the kettle. So, these are benefits from increasing the sparging water mineralization.

Now there is a drawback to adding calcium salts to the sparging water. The calcium ends up complexing with phytins from the malt. Some of that calcium is lost in the mash, but that is a minor price to pay for the benefits mentioned above. If the overall calcium content of the wort is going to be lower than desired, it’s a simple thing to add more calcium salts to make up for that loss.

So, the message is clear...add the minerals calculated for the sparging water volume to the sparging water and not into the kettle.
-----------

Sodium chloride affects flavor. Charles Bamforth is his paper "Inorganic Ions in Beer--A Survey", notes sodium levels of 10-75ppm in a study of 25 commercial beers. Seems it is generally recommended not to exceed 100ppm sodium.

My takeaway so far:

Calcium chloride as a kettle salt is not needed for flavor enhancement. It does aid in hot break and trub development if too low levels of calcium in the mash and sparge water were used. Only about 40% of the mash calcium carries over to the kettle.

Sodium chloride may be a better choice if less than 100ppm in kettle.

This is a work is progress....

 

[Peebee]

My takeaway so far:

Calcium chloride as a kettle salt is not needed for flavor enhancement. It does aid in hot break and trub development if too low levels of calcium in the mash and sparge water were used. Only about 40% of the mash calcium carries over to the kettle.

As "brewers" we don't mix up what the individual ions get up to, and the compound containing those ions. So, "Calcium Chloride" consists of "chloride" for flavour enhancement and, independently, "calcium" for its "mechanical" attributes (although I'm sure it might have flavour enhancement as a "secondary" role?). So; "calcium chloride" is used by some as a kettle addition if the think "hot break" isn't forming well. "Chloride" is the flavour enhancer, whether from sodium or calcium chloride, and which I'd add to the sparge for convenience (my convenience!), not the kettle.

So, "only about 40% of the mash calcium carries over to the kettle" I'd treat as immaterial. Hmm, actually, it was a hazardous thing to say: Tens of brewers have now gone away with that "fact" embedded in their heads ... to be passed on to as many more folk as possible. It'll be allowed for, but no-one will know why they do it. Becomes a myth, homebrewing has loads of 'em. Try to reference such statements (like you did for sodium) (though I'm not perfect!). Throw-aways are fine conversationally, just as long as there is no confusion that it's being offered as fact.

 

[hottpeper13]

For reference, a class I took at Siebel, they stressed that 50 ppm's of calcium was the minimum because 30 is consumed in the mash for phosphate reduction and 20 carry over for the yeast.

 

[JJFlash]

Bru'n Water
Martin Brungard
Water Knowledge

Major Ions Affecting Brewing:
Cations
Calcium
Magnesium
Sodium

Anions
Chloride
Sulfate
Bicarbonate

Ions Effects in Brewing:
Affects Hardness or Alkalinity
Calcium
Magnesium
Bicarbonate

Affects Flavor
Sodium
Chloride
Sulfate
Magnesium

I note that calcium is in the "Affects Hardness or Alkalinity" column.
Sodium, Chloride, Sulfate and Magnesium are in the "Affects Flavor".
Not hard fast rule but certainly predominant effect at our dosage levels.

My takeaway so far:

Sodium chloride may be a better choice if less than 100ppm in kettle.

Appreciate your constructive input.
As always, a work in progress.

 

[Peebee]

... Appreciate your constructive input ...

And I for one appreciate you digging up the subject!

Three weeks on, and I'm still busy grinding the subjects discussed here into my "water treatment" mechanisms. For too long I've forgotten about these "add 'hardness' minerals to kettle" options (did I ever have an opinion?). Instead, I'm on the same "water treatment travelator" as everyone else (it seems), weighing out salts to ludicrous accuracy to attain concentrations to fractions of a part-per-million ... and I'm still getting mash pHs of less than pH5.0!

Your post has triggered a long overdue reset of how I go about water treatment.

Out (of the mash) is going treatment salts. They'll just go in the sparge water ... or the kettle! I "full-boil-length" mash when using AIO systems ... no sparge water to add treatment salts to. Except for alkalinity salts in the mash which regulate the mash pH, and a minimal addition of calcium salt to get the mash water up to about 30parts-per-million Calcium (I have water with a very low TDS): Using your "only about 40% of the mash calcium carries over to the kettle" (50ppm seems to be the minimum accepted total concentration, hence "30ppm" above), which I whinged about 'cos it wasn't quantitative remark (i.e. 40% of what), but 40% might well refer to a representative amount, and any "error" will be so small as nothing to give a fig about.

With the remaining salts going to the sparge water or direct to the kettle, measuring them to "ludicrous accuracy" becomes ... ludicrous? ±0.1g should be close enough, or nearest ½g, or even nearest whole gram. Heck, why not use a teaspoon! Alkalinity salts will still need more careful weighing depending on the pH accuracy trying to attain for the mash, be it pH5.2-5.6 will be close enough or a more specific mash pH is sought. With low Calcium (and Magnesium) the amount of alkalinity salt should fall dramatically (not depending on it to counter the acidity sparked of by those salts)?

A knock on might be mash water quantity. Fixed quantities should allow more accurate prediction of mash pH. And pH is considered as having most impact over efficiency than water/grain ratio? Not really an argument for me, I've already stated: I Full-boil-length mash (i.e. no sparge) which should indicate what I think of regarding "water/grain ratio".

Fixed mash water quantities? And ... Other than alkalinity the other water salts (added to the boiler) can be worked out in respect of the batch size*. It had always bothered me that I was weighing out salts to two decimal places, then boiled the wort, concentrating those salt to an undetermined quantity. Strange behaviour.


Well, if any of this is dodgy, I'll be shouted down soon enough. (Can I hear people shouting me down already? ... And I haven't posted it yet!).


* Batch Size plus unrecoverable boiler losses, including hop absorption, if trying to be spot on. Same with mash water; if "no-sparge" any additions it contributes shouldn't include any mashtun losses, including grain absorption.

 

[Bassman2003]

One of those areas where you just need to experiment. The main takeaway is that a lot of what you add to the mash stays in the mash. So a kettle addition is a "makeup" addition. I think a lot of what we might do as homebrewers are just things we do. Not necessary and just because others' do them does not mean we need to do them. Yeast like calcium and it also helps clarify. And chloride does add to the perception of mouthfeel. So I think 'sprinkle to taste' is in order here.