Calcium sulphate?

[polehammer]

G'day guys,



I hope I'm posting this correctly? I'm as good with the internet as I am with homebrewing.



So I had some calcium sulphate turn up in the post today and looked at it and wondered why I'd bought it? (I'm old).

What (I think) I thought I was buying was either something to clear mead or beer? Or possibly to end fermentation in the mead so it remains sweet?

On reading a bit about this stuff it seems to not really do either of these things, but is something to do with making water hard (whatever that means?) and it can be bad for you and mess you up in a not pleasant way if you add too much.

I've had a run of brewing disasters of late so this is possibly just another potential one in waiting.

If you can tell me what I can use this for but explain like you're talking to someone who has zero idea what he's doing with a complete lack of technical knowledge (accurate) it'd be much appreciated?



Hope you're all doing great.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

its also called gypsum and is used to enhance hop flavor as well as add calcium, too much will give a bitter flavor

 

[DBhomebrew]

It'll acidify a mash. Presence of calcium can help yeast health, especially flocculation and clearing.

Flavor-wise, I think it's more drying than bitter. A lot will taste minerally, flinty.

 

[mabrungard]

Flavor-wise, I think it's more drying than bitter.

Exactly! Sulfate dries the palate and that enables the drinker to perceive more bitterness. Sulfate, at the levels we use in brewing, is not bitter.

 

[polehammer]

Okay so I could potentially add it after fermentation in my beer (23l plastic barrel) to get a better flavour and to my 5g of mead to clear it?
What amount would you suggest I add please?

 

[tracer bullet]

For 5 gallon beer batches, additions would be measured in grams. 1 or 2 could be a starting point.

Note that it's adding minerals and changing your water (more dissolved minerals = "harder" water). You'll want an idea of your current water supply. If it's "soft", such as reverse osmosis, distilled, or naturally soft from the source (rain water from a river) then a little bit of additional minerals may help. However if your water is already very hard, then you might make things worse. So - before you use it, you might want to find out if it's needed at all because your water might already have a load of it in it to start with.

Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as say adding a little salt to your food, where you might know there is none to start with and then just add a little bit until it tastes good. In this dumb example your food may already be very salty and you'd only make things worse to go even further.

 

[polehammer]

For 5 gallon beer batches, additions would be measured in grams. 1 or 2 could be a starting point.

Note that it's adding minerals and changing your water (more dissolved minerals = "harder" water). You'll want an idea of your current water supply. If it's "soft", such as reverse osmosis, distilled, or naturally soft from the source (rain water from a river) then a little bit of additional minerals may help. However if your water is already very hard, then you might make things worse. So - before you use it, you might want to find out if it's needed at all because your water might already have a load of it in it to start with.

Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as say adding a little salt to your food, where you might know there is none to start with and then just add a little bit until it tastes good. In this dumb example your food may already be very salty and you'd only make things worse to go even further.

Sorry I meant 23 litres of beer and 5 gallons of mead.

 

[polehammer]

For 5 gallon beer batches, additions would be measured in grams. 1 or 2 could be a starting point.

Note that it's adding minerals and changing your water (more dissolved minerals = "harder" water). You'll want an idea of your current water supply. If it's "soft", such as reverse osmosis, distilled, or naturally soft from the source (rain water from a river) then a little bit of additional minerals may help. However if your water is already very hard, then you might make things worse. So - before you use it, you might want to find out if it's needed at all because your water might already have a load of it in it to start with.

Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as say adding a little salt to your food, where you might know there is none to start with and then just add a little bit until it tastes good. In this dumb example your food may already be very salty and you'd only make things worse to go even further.

And it's all rain water

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

Soft water has very few salts dissolved in it. It soaps up easily so you don't need so much soap in the shower, no residue in the kettle. In brewing, soft water tends not to be used so much, though it's easy to manipulate by salts addition. Rain water would be "soft".

Temporary hard water has calcium carbonate dissolved in it. It feels soapy to the touch and has quite a soft feel in the mouth. Boiling temporary hard water makes the carbonate come out of solution which makes a thick fur on a kettle over time. Temporary hard water is alkaline and is good for stouts, it offsets the acidity of roasted malt.

Permanent hard water has salts like calcium sulfate in it. Permanent hard water can taste metallic. It doesn't create a sediment when boiled. In the shower you need to use a lot of soap to get a foam. Permanent hard water is generally good for pale beers.

There are other things minerals in water contribute, such as yeast health, beer clarity, bitterness perception.

I have no idea what minerals would be helpful for mead but if you use rain water an addition of a tenth of a gram or so per litre (in total, not each) of calcium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium sulphate plus a little yeast nutrient would probably help. Unless there's a already a good amount of magnesium in honey (I don't know), yeast needs magnesium for good health.

If you want sweeter mead you have difficult options...

You can make the mead strong enough that the alcohol content kills the yeast before the sugars are fully fermented, you can look for yeast strains with low alcohol tolerance.

You can filter yeast out (there are kits, it's a bit messy) or kill the yeast by heating (Pasteurisation - complicated), before sugars are fully fermented out or after fermentation ends then add sweetening.

A method used by amateur winemakers for a long time is to allow fermentation to end, add potassium sorbate, which prevents yeat re-fermenting and then add sugar to sweeten.

 

[polehammer]

Soft water has very few salts dissolved in it. It soaps up easily so you don't need so much soap in the shower, no residue in the kettle. In brewing, soft water tends not to be used so much, though it's easy to manipulate by salts addition. Rain water would be "soft".

Temporary hard water has calcium carbonate dissolved in it. It feels soapy to the touch and has quite a soft feel in the mouth. Boiling temporary hard water makes the carbonate come out of solution which makes a thick fur on a kettle over time. Temporary hard water is alkaline and is good for stouts, it offsets the acidity of roasted malt.

Permanent hard water has salts like calcium sulfate in it. Permanent hard water can taste metallic. It doesn't create a sediment when boiled. In the shower you need to use a lot of soap to get a foam. Permanent hard water is generally good for pale beers.

There are other things minerals in water contribute, such as yeast health, beer clarity, bitterness perception.

I have no idea what minerals would be helpful for mead but if you use rain water an addition of a tenth of a gram or so per litre (in total, not each) of calcium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium sulphate plus a little yeast nutrient would probably help. Unless there's a already a good amount of magnesium in honey (I don't know), yeast needs magnesium for good health.

If you want sweeter mead you have difficult options...

You can make the mead strong enough that the alcohol content kills the yeast before the sugars are fully fermented, you can look for yeast strains with low alcohol tolerance.

You can filter yeast out (there are kits, it's a bit messy) or kill the yeast by heating (Pasteurisation - complicated), before sugars are fully fermented out or after fermentation ends then add sweetening.

A method used by amateur winemakers for a long time is to allow fermentation to end, add potassium sorbate, which prevents yeat re-fermenting and then add sugar to sweeten.

Thankyou for explaining it, that helps a lot.

 

[Jim R]

I think you have 2 choices. The first is just throw the gypsum out and don't worry about it. You can make beer without messing with the water.

The second choice is to take the time to educate yourself on water chemistry and water adjustments for homebrewing. It isn't that difficult to learn and understand. Here would be a good place to start for very little expense. For me, learning about water made home brewing more interesting and more fun although I like to learn new things.

https://www.amazon.com/Water-Comprehensive-Brewers-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381993

 

[polehammer]

I think you have 2 choices. The first is just throw the gypsum out and don't worry about it. You can make beer without messing with the water.

The second choice is to take the time to educate yourself on water chemistry and water adjustments for homebrewing. It isn't that difficult to learn and understand. Here would be a good place to start for very little expense. For me, learning about water made home brewing more interesting and more fun although I like to learn new things.

https://www.amazon.com/Water-Comprehensive-Brewers-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381993

I think I'll take the first path and not mess with it. I think what I thought I was buying was finings to clear the beer/mead. This does have finings written on it but it's definitely not what I thought it was
.
Thanks

 

[polehammer]

I think you have 2 choices. The first is just throw the gypsum out and don't worry about it. You can make beer without messing with the water.

The second choice is to take the time to educate yourself on water chemistry and water adjustments for homebrewing. It isn't that difficult to learn and understand. Here would be a good place to start for very little expense. For me, learning about water made home brewing more interesting and more fun although I like to learn new things.

https://www.amazon.com/Water-Comprehensive-Brewers-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381993

I think I'll take the first path and not mess with it. I think what I thought I was buying was finings to clear the beer/mead. This does have finings written on it but it's definitely not what I thought it was
.
Thanks

 

[mabrungard]

Soft water has very few salts dissolved in it. It soaps up easily so you don't need so much soap in the shower, no residue in the kettle. In brewing, soft water tends not to be used so much, though it's easy to manipulate by salts addition. Rain water would be "soft".

Temporary hard water has calcium carbonate dissolved in it. It feels soapy to the touch and has quite a soft feel in the mouth. Boiling temporary hard water makes the carbonate come out of solution which makes a thick fur on a kettle over time. Temporary hard water is alkaline and is good for stouts, it offsets the acidity of roasted malt.

Permanent hard water has salts like calcium sulfate in it. Permanent hard water can taste metallic. It doesn't create a sediment when boiled. In the shower you need to use a lot of soap to get a foam. Permanent hard water is generally good for pale beers.

There are other things minerals in water contribute, such as yeast health, beer clarity, bitterness perception.

I have no idea what minerals would be helpful for mead but if you use rain water an addition of a tenth of a gram or so per litre (in total, not each) of calcium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium sulphate plus a little yeast nutrient would probably help. Unless there's a already a good amount of magnesium in honey (I don't know), yeast needs magnesium for good health.

If you want sweeter mead you have difficult options...

You can make the mead strong enough that the alcohol content kills the yeast before the sugars are fully fermented, you can look for yeast strains with low alcohol tolerance.

You can filter yeast out (there are kits, it's a bit messy) or kill the yeast by heating (Pasteurisation - complicated), before sugars are fully fermented out or after fermentation ends then add sweetening.

A method used by amateur winemakers for a long time is to allow fermentation to end, add potassium sorbate, which prevents yeat re-fermenting and then add sugar to sweeten.

Oh boy! A lot of misunderstanding of water chemistry and terminologies in that post.

Soft water can be full of salts. What it's not full of is divalent metal ions such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and manganese. Water with very little salt content is probably soft, but I can tell you that my zero-grain hardness water out of my ion-exchange water softener has over 600 ppm of dissolved salts in it. Extremely soft, but full of salts!

Temporary hardness in water means there are calcium, magnesium, iron, or manganese in the water along with carbonate or bicarbonate ions. Permanent hardness means that the water doesn't have enough carbonate or bicarbonate ions to pair with the calcium, magnesium, iron, or manganese ions and those hardness ions are likely paired with sulfate or chloride in the water.

While the comments about water with temporary hardness being better for dark beer brewing and water with permanent hardness being better for pale beer brewing are slightly correct, it's not appropriate to use these hardness terms to characterize if a water is good for brewing one style or another. The real decider of whether a water is more suited for pale or dark beer brewing is its alkalinity (bicarbonate content).

I recommend that anyone wanting a better understanding of brewing water chemistry should visit the Water Knowledge page: Water Knowledge

 

[MaxStout]

For a quick-and-dirty primer on water chem, this is a good thread to get you started.

 

[Peebee]

Oh boy! A lot of misunderstanding of water chemistry and terminologies in that post. …

Oh yes … and the key subject underpinning all that misunderstanding is plain to see (pick out?) from Martin's post.

"Hardness"! Forget you ever heard of it. Forget ever thinking you needed to know it. Just forget it! It's out-dated and confusing, just what you'd expect from a technology cobbled together when things were much simpler (only four elements … water, earth, fire and air).

Some people can go remarkable things with "Hardness". Some people can tight-rope walk across the length of Niagara Falls. Neither activity do you need to imitate … so don't!

Next on list of "don'ts": "Residual Alkalinity". And any book on water that wastes more time than just a brief mention of it. "Residual Alkalinity" is a "thing", but it isn't the thing many will attempt to force down your throat. (I've only recently dropped that nonsense from my own list of personal misunderstandings! I need a good thrashing for ever having believed it was of any value).

There. That should move me up the popularity ratings. Ha!

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

Oh boy! A lot of misunderstanding of water chemistry and terminologies in that post.

Soft water can be full of salts. What it's not full of is divalent metal ions such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and manganese. Water with very little salt content is probably soft, but I can tell you that my zero-grain hardness water out of my ion-exchange water softener has over 600 ppm of dissolved salts in it. Extremely soft, but full of salts!

Temporary hardness in water means there are calcium, magnesium, iron, or manganese in the water along with carbonate or bicarbonate ions. Permanent hardness means that the water doesn't have enough carbonate or bicarbonate ions to pair with the calcium, magnesium, iron, or manganese ions and those hardness ions are likely paired with sulfate or chloride in the water.

While the comments about water with temporary hardness being better for dark beer brewing and water with permanent hardness being better for pale beer brewing are slightly correct, it's not appropriate to use these hardness terms to characterize if a water is good for brewing one style or another. The real decider of whether a water is more suited for pale or dark beer brewing is its alkalinity (bicarbonate content).

I recommend that anyone wanting a better understanding of brewing water chemistry should visit the Water Knowledge page: Water Knowledge

It was very much simplified for a beginner.
Just about everything I learned about water hardness I learned from you, so perhaps you need to re-read the articles you wrote and re-write them.
Since I have your attention, what is the latest version number for your supporter's spreadsheet? It's a while since I had an update and I think I may have missed some. I'm happy to make another donation for a new version but I don't want to donate and find I already had the latest version. Can I also say, I really like using it, it's a great help!

 

[AlexKay]

Obviously, I am not going to contribute something new about water chemistry to this thread, but here is my accumulated wisdom (hah!) on what to do about water when you’re starting out, and want to maximize success and minimize problems without taking on too much work right at the start:

• Always use water without chlorine, or tap water where you’ve removed the chlorine.
• If you’re brewing beer from extract, or wine or cider or mead (I.e., you’re not mashing grain), you can probably rely on the “tastes good to drink = OK to use” rule.
• If you are pretty sure your water has a very low mineral content (you have a water report, you are using rainwater, you are using distilled or RO water), it’s probably a good idea to throw in some calcium salts. I personally like 1 g of CaSO4 and 2 g of CaCl2 for 5 gallons. I won’t argue that this is necessary, but this is soft enough that it’s unlikely to cause any problems, and it may help avoid a “flat” taste, help with mashing (if you’re doing it), yeast flocculation, and maybe even foam (for beer).
• If you’re mashing grain, and you think it’s likely you have lots of carbonates, you might want to head off potential problems by going straight to bottled/rain/RO. (Ask other brewers in your area, if you can.)
• There are particular problems where water chemistry is a good place to start troubleshooting. These include medicinal (“Band-Aid”) taste, astringency, unpleasant (as distinguished from “too high”) bitterness, and maybe sulfur/eggyness.

 

[Peebee]

Obviously, I am not going to contribute something new about water chemistry to this thread, but here is my accumulated wisdom (hah!) …

Don't you worry about @Drinking Sensibly! Take a note of his location. Now get a world atlas and look up "Outer Hebrides". Then sit down and think "what the hell can I recommend for him!". "Ask other brewers in your area"? He'll know as much, if not more, then any of them. Though if he widens his "area" to cover a large chunk of the mainland Highlands, he'll find some folk in the same boat (I was chatting to someone from that area recently; his tap water Calcium figure was reported as four mg/L.

Something with the mineral profile of RO water probably comes straight out of his tap. If he's lucky, whoever is responsible for supplying his water bump up the "Alkalinity" (the "carbonates" you refer to) a bit so it doesn't rot his pipes (slaked lime is usually used over here … and most of the rest of the world too). And there's always the chance he has a "private" water supply …


I'm probably a bit better off water-mineral-wise a good bit further south in Wales (24mg/L Calcium and 9mg/L as HCO3 alkalinity), and fairly noisy about water chemistry so he can always find me if he's desperate (and he'll need to be "desperate" to listen to my point-of-view on anything). But I don't bite … as long as he doesn't mention "water hardness"!

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

Not much calcium and quite a lot of sodium chloride. The pipes do rot.

mg/l:
Ca = 1.8, Mg = 2.4, Na = 35.2,
Bicarbonate = 0, Carbonate 8.4, Sulfate = 16.7, Cl = 41.
Total hardness as CaCO3 = 14

Ions don't quite balance because I used the average of the water reports.

I use the mabrungard spreadsheet for salts additions. I find it very helpful.

Incidentally, I used to live in Cardiff.

If anyone cares and assuming the links work...
Water quality:
https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/-/m...2309-Geocrab-Western-Isles-Last-12-Months.pdf
Hardness (scroll to "Geocrab")
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&s...0QFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1c2mfvsmkSr2FD5JvVhOnk

 

[Peebee]

Not much calcium and quite a lot of sodium chloride. The pipes do rot. ...

Ohh ... I'll have a go at that!

In my "Defuddler" it comes out as:

That's the downloadable "Defuddler" in my signature below (use the "development" version). The spreadsheet looks a bit fierce, but for you, you needn't go further than the first few lines like above. I didn't!

No "Hardness"! In your (@Drinking Sensibly) case, I hope you have realised it's not making much sense in those Scottish Water reports. The "Defuddler" does calculate it, it is used to extract data in some confused reports (not yours). Instead, you get "Alkalinity" as bicarbonate, which it usually is (bicarbonate, that is). But again, not in your case! Scottish Water will have dosed the water with (Slaked) Lime (Calcium Hydroxide) to bring the pH up. And your Alkalinity will be less than 22.65mg/L (as bicarbonate). You'd have to have it tested at the tap (you can do it yourself with a Salifert kit, but you must deal with a much bigger sample ... 4x or 8x what the kit suggests ... 4ml isn't it?). The "Defuddler" can be realigned (Adapted") for a new alkalinity value but it is a mild "bodge"! Whatever the real reason for the drop, it's too much un-necessary messing about for this spreadsheet to figure for itself. At a guess, your "Alkalinity" will be about 10mg/L as bicarbonate.

l see you have "Carbonate" reported, not "Bicarbonate". In reality, there is no carbonate in your water! Whatever you did to get that value ... Stop it!

"Hardness" is quite useless for brewers. You can (should!) use the values shown above in Martin's "Bru'n Water" as-is with no "Hardness" stuff at all, and the calculator will still work perfectly well (I use "Bru'n Water"!). As I said, the "Defuddler" calculates "Hardness" as potentially useful for extracting missing information. It was calculated from the report you provided but it didn't use it. In the bowels of the "Defuddler" it can be found (all grey to discourage messing with it):

Whereas the Scottish Water "Hardness" report, which I had to use to find the Calcium and Magnesium analysis (not an unusual arrangement in UK water reporting) and its documented as ... 9.20 mg/L as CaCO3 ... now there's a surprise

 

[dmtaylor]

Dude...

 

[Peebee]

@polehammer:

And I'm not forgetting this is your thread! I have wandered off a little way chatting to @Drinking Sensibly, but what I'm ultimately trying to do is offer this stuff to people thay haven't the inclination to dive into all this phaffing about. The "Defuddler" was a start, but still leaves visible stuff you wont want to know (I have to do that to build up trust in what I'm doing). What I'm currently messing with ("Defuddler-2" if you like) widens it scope to full-on water calculator. One (possibly?) driven by graphical means? Not ridiculously precise numbers.

All this "water mania" stuff should be easily accessible to all, not a source of voodoo magic accessible to a select few.

But bear with me, I may be months off yet! (i.e. Not much help to your immediate requirements!).



(@dmtaylor: Is that better? )

 

[Peebee]

Oh aye, forgot this bit:

... something to do with making water hard (whatever that means?) ...

Do you want me to enlighten you?

... naa. I'd best not or I'll be ejected from the forum!

(Flippin' out-dated, flippin' "Hardness" nonsense ... grrr).

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

Dude...

View attachment 863707

I suppose it is possible for someone to be a "beginner" at brewing but still an "expert" in water composition.

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

Defuddler

Wow.

Just...

Wow!

I'll have a play, looks interesting.
Didn't I get the carbonate figure from the report somewhere? Perhaps I just swapped the values for carbonate/bicarbonate or something. Anyway, I don't use that value in the spreadsheet. I tend to initially use the values suggested by Martin, or the regional values, and adjust until I think they'll work.

 

[Peebee]

... I tend to initially use the values suggested by Martin, ...

That's one value to watch! I calculate Alkalinity and related stuff differently to Martin, paying a little more attention to Sodium (which doesn't have anything to do with "Hardness") and it perhaps makes a small difference to some values (very occasionally, a huge difference!), especially yours which has a fair amount of common salt (sodium chloride) in it. The salt in your water is likely wind-blown. You've got a rather large chunk of "Atlantic" on your doorstep!

My biggest criticism of Martin ... he doesn't seem to have a psychopathic hatred of "Water Hardness" like me

 

[mabrungard]

That's one value to watch! I calculate Alkalinity and related stuff differently to Martin, paying a little more attention to Sodium (which doesn't have anything to do with "Hardness") and it perhaps makes a small difference to some values (very occasionally, a huge difference!), especially yours which has a fair amount of common salt (sodium chloride) in it. The salt in your water is likely wind-blown. You've got a rather large chunk of "Atlantic" on your doorstep!

My biggest criticism of Martin ... he doesn't seem to have a psychopathic hatred of "Water Hardness" like me

Oh, sure I do. But there's little we can do about it, other than preach the correct understanding for those various data that are reported in that dumb "as CaCO3" moniker.

When you see things reported as hardness or "as CaCO3", immediately study the reported data to figure out if its referring to an actual hardness (aka: the calcium and magnesium content) or if its referring to an alkalinity result. They can seem to say one thing or the other!

 

[Peebee]

Oh, sure I do. ...

Sorry. ...

Okay, I'll update my cards ... thumb, thumb, thumb ... ah, here you are, and there's the box I need to fill in ... P . S . Y . C . H . O . P . A . T . H .

Fine; the guys with the van will be around to pick you up later. (Odd, people are usually trying to get out of here?).

I'll be interested to hear the preaching, I just reach for the gun, or hammer if there's nothing better.