Factors Affecting Water Chemistry Calculations

[Peebee]

We measure our water salts to what we think is one hundredth of a gram (two decimal places of a gram). If we do that accurately we must be getting the water additions as originally intended for the style of beer being brewed. Should we not?

Yes, you should ... If your mash to water ratio is identical to the original's. If, your sparge water (and any top-up water) is treated to be identical to the original's. If, you collect identical proportions of wort as the original. If, your "boil-off" is identical to the original. If, ... is there more?

Otherwise, your "accurate" weighing out water salts is meaningless? Even tenth of a gram, or within a gram, makes little sense.

Water chemicals are described as a concentration (grams per litre, etc.). Chemical reactions are described as an amount reacting with a specific amount. Flavours (with flavouring enhancers, such as already in the water) will depend on concentrations. Malt, sugars, hops, etc., (the source of reactants and flavours) will also be described as concentrations ... but in entirely different "units" (pounds per gallon, kilos per "batch", etc.) and those units not converted.

Why are so many of us obsessed with weighing things (like water salts) out to miniscule proportions? And other directly related things not weighed or measured to the same degree of accuracy?

 

[Miraculix]

Because we simply do not understand that.

 

[mabrungard]

A hundreth of a gram is overkill. However, for the typical small homebrew batch sizes, measuring to the nearest tenth is wise. The smaller the batch size, the more you need to make sure you aren't overdosing. But with that said, I still wouldn't worry about reproducing water ion concentrations perfectly. If you can get them to within 10 or 20 ppm, you probably wouldn't notice a difference in the finished beer. Do pay attention to acid additions though.

 

[MaxStout]

Then there's the "close enough for government work" approach of just adding a teaspoon of this and that.

 

[Deadalus]

What you are describing is sometimes referred to as the "effect size", which is the consideration of the magnitude different factors have on a dependent variable/outcome/product. But you are biasing your thinking because you consider the measurments of water salt mass small. Each significant factor that does affect some outcome (beer taste) will do so at differing magnitudes that will depend on how much that factor is changed. Simply thinking measurment accuracy at one-hundredth of a gram is a small effect isn't necessarily a given.

You also seem to be considering the water salt additions are an attempt to match a specific beer (original's) and not a style range?

 

[Peebee]

... But you are biasing your thinking because you consider the measurments of water salt mass small. ...

Yes, I am "biasing" my opinion. But you are describing the "biasing" as a negative thing ... I'm saying "hundredths of a gram" has no value in the context being discussed. Such small measurements are swept into insignificance by our subsequent actions.

No-one is providing any reason to measure things so fine, yet they are condemning people to attempting to measure things to such miniscule degrees (and "they" take it all in believing it to be the reason for x, y, and z issues they are having ... or will have if they don't comply).

There needs to be some rationalization of scale of the things we do, else waste bags of time carefully doing something only to wipe it out with the next process to be performed. Using an example from the original post: Chloride is a flavour enhancer. Its valued role is played in the final beer, not during the making. It is measured out as a salt to "hundredths of a gram". Fine so far ... and then the wort is boiled for a rough amount of time, with an undetermined boil-off ... what has happened to that careful weighing out? Will it have magically transformed into an equally precise (undetermined) amount of flavour enhancement?

Obviously not. So why did we bother to weigh it so precisely in the first place?


I never "attempt to match a specific beer", nor a specific "style range". But some do. And I do want people to understand why they need to measure things so accurately. Then they can tell me


I am going somewhere with this! So, I welcome anyone's input to prevent me drawing conclusions I then try to force on anyone else.

 

[Bobby_M]

There are X number of things other brewers care about and sometimes argue for that you don't have to pay attention to. I don't think anyone would ever argue that brewing salts need to be measured to a hundredth of a gram. The only reason to be precise is to remove whatever variables you can for subsequent brew sessions if the beer comes out amazing.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Back around 2018, I bought a digital scale (Amazon US) that was 50g ± .01 and discovered that it didn't weight small (< .5 g) amounts consistently. The 50g ± .001 scales that I bought have the ability to weigh small amounts consistently.

FWIW, with my 2.5 gal batches, I calculate salt additions to ⅒ g or ¼ g based on the water profile I'm targeting for the recipe.

 

[Deadalus]

Yes, I am "biasing" my opinion. But you are describing the "biasing" as a negative thing ... I'm saying "hundredths of a gram" has no value in the context being discussed. Such small measurements are swept into insignificance by our subsequent actions.

No-one is providing any reason to measure things so fine, yet they are condemning people to attempting to measure things to such miniscule degrees (and "they" take it all in believing it to be the reason for x, y, and z issues they are having ... or will have if they don't comply).

There needs to be some rationalization of scale of the things we do, else waste bags of time carefully doing something only to wipe it out with the next process to be performed. Using an example from the original post: Chloride is a flavour enhancer. Its valued role is played in the final beer, not during the making. It is measured out as a salt to "hundredths of a gram". Fine so far ... and then the wort is boiled for a rough amount of time, with an undetermined boil-off ... what has happened to that careful weighing out? Will it have magically transformed into an equally precise (undetermined) amount of flavour enhancement?

Obviously not. So why did we bother to weigh it so precisely in the first place?


I never "attempt to match a specific beer", nor a specific "style range". But some do. And I do want people to understand why they need to measure things so accurately. Then they can tell me


I am going somewhere with this! So, I welcome anyone's input to prevent me drawing conclusions I then try to force on anyone else.

You are just talking through what are saying without referencing any real data otherwise. One measures that finely because they are interested in duplicating a specific water profile and the amounts necessary to do that are on fine scale for the batch size needed. If whatever salt you need requires 0.5 g and you measure to 0.1 you might be +/-10%. The scale is reading 0.5 for <0.55 down to >0.45. And it would be worse if you went with 0.4 or 0.6g. The possible variation will increase for required amounts less than 0.5 and will be less for larger amounts. But you haven't considered it in such a manner, you are just saying because hundredths of a gram seems small that it won't matter. It's your hypothesis prove it. You could work up some water profiles and show what happens when you tweak them by 0.1, 0.5, 0.1, 0.2g etc for various salts and see where the water profile ends up. That would be like a sensitivity analysis.

And you were discussing some original recipe or something in your arguments. Whatever on that but right after you are talking about other variables that one would hold constant and being recipe specific (wort collected). Boil-off isn't hard to keep constant if your pot has gradations on it. Same for top-off water. And if you think those are inexact or people are inexact about it, you could again tweak the water profile to see what happens when you are off by a cup or a pint or a quart. As it sounds though, you don't seem to have given it much numerical consideration. Arm yourself with some actual numbers for some actual water profiles to make your point.

 

[Peebee]

Ha! I did "like" your previous post (@Deadalus) 'cos I knew from that you'd be providing a decent conversation on the subject .

... But you haven't considered it in such a manner, you are just saying because hundredths of a gram seems small that it won't matter. It's your hypothesis prove it. You could work up some water profiles and show what happens when you tweak them by 0.1, 0.5, 0.1, 0.2g etc for various salts and see where the water profile ends up. ...

I can't provide the latter on that just yet, but this is my way of raking in the material for it. But on the former I'm fairly comfortably on-track (hardly "comfortably", the work is a PITA) ... I'm in the process of dragging myself out of the hell-hole of measuring salts to hundredths of a gram (two decimal places). For example:

(And there's loads of that to draw from). Not anything worth drawing from in that example, just illustrating it is an ongoing project. Using "Bru'n Water" as a simulator to model and try things out with. I'm attempting to simplify water calculations by limiting mash additions to a fixed level of calcium, and predictable levels of alkalinity (everything else goes in the boil). Hardly ground-breaking, but I can find no instruction on the process, And not quite as far as:

Then there's the "close enough for government work" approach of just adding a teaspoon of this and that.

... but not far off (teaspoons aren't excluded).

Anyway, that's for later.

I'm not against measuring things to 2DPs of a gram (personally, I think we do it because the water companies report watery things to 2DPs and we don't want to be out done) ... I rant because those suggesting measuring to such miniscule levels then trash their hard work by not measuring things like volumes in equally tiny fractions of a litre (when the batch is 4 gallons, 19 litres, or whatever). I'm not suggesting measuring batch sizes in millilitres either!

 

[Rish]

Why are so many of us obsessed with weighing things (like water salts) out to miniscule proportions?

Why would one be obsessed with others' obsessions?

 

[micraftbeer]

I'm reading all this, and my thinking is aligned with @Bobby_M . If I've got twenty variables and have good control of 10 of them, the range in variation of the end product will be less than if I had good control of only 9 of them. That's just math.

What's also math, is if that 10th variable (that I do have good control over) is tiny in contribution to the end variation, then I might be reducing variability by an insignificant amount of my finished beer. On that, I'm with @Deadalus , share your data to prove it's insignificant.

But this is all so theoretical, not sure it has a practical impact. I don't eyeball my brewing salt additions, I weigh them. If my scale goes to .001, of course I use it. I'm weighing the additions anyway. That said, I just try my best to hit the weights. I don't go fishing out one ball of CaCl because it went over. Maybe that's the "stressing the significance too much" you're referring to.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I'm attempting to simplify water calculations by limiting mash additions to a fixed level of calcium, and predictable levels of alkalinity (everything else goes in the boil). Hardly ground-breaking, but I can find no instruction on the process

Over on the USA side of the Atlantic, there is

• Brewing Better Beer (May 2011) and Modern Homebrew Recipes (June 2015) or
• Water Chemistry – How to Build Your Water – Bertus Brewery (internet archives, Feb 2012)

No spreadsheets; teaspoons, not grams; different approaches to dark grains; generally more emphasis on "how" than on "why".​

Both are over a decade old, so a fresh perspective from the other side of the Atlantic could be interesting.

 

[Peebee]

... share your data to prove it's insignificant.

Hey ... not fair! It's my thread; I do the asking, and all you helpful souls do the answering?

And I ('cos I'm aging into a Master grumpy git) then argue with the answers that I have solicited. I think that's how it works?


Okay. I'll collect a summary of how I believe the stuff can be dealt with using less effort to achieve far greater accuracy ... but it will take me a few days to string it together and dress it up with some decent "spin". It'll take me longer to organise enough up-to-date practical data, so you'll have to imagine that. Meanwhile I rely on "common-sense" to back me up. I.e. One hundredth of a gram in 4 gallons of brew ... is that significant (if not ... what is)?

 

[Bobby_M]

I don't want to violate your thread rules by asking a question, but when you say

"No-one is providing any reason to measure things so fine, yet they are condemning people to attempting to measure things to such miniscule degrees (and "they" take it all in believing it to be the reason for x, y, and z issues they are having ... or will have if they don't comply)."

Are you attempting to convey an overall feeling you have or have you actually had people beat you over the head about this? Do you have a link to a specific post?

If this is just a thing to justify the thread, it's not necessary or productive. Just start the thread and ask if anyone really thinks precision of this level matters.

 

[MaxStout]

I'm getting a lot of this vibe here.

Everybody has their own tolerance range for what goes into their brewing processes. Some want to carry out measurements to three places. Some do two, some one. Some home brewers use spoons, like suggested in the posting I linked above (a posting written by AJ, who knows a thing or two about water chem). Occam's Razor. Sometimes the simplest solution works the best.

You're only wrong if your beer sucks.

 

[Peebee]

Over on the USA side of the Atlantic, there is ...

I'm no fan of Mr Strong, but what you've posted from "Scott" is reminiscent of Chris Colby's Web post's that I do reference (unfortunately his web site, beerandgardeningjournal.com, has disappeared and needs digging out of the "Wayback Machine" too ... his book "Methods of Modern Homebrewing" is still available but with less water details). Chris includes teaspoons as well!

This side of the Atlantic dropped, or mislaid, the lead with "brewing publications" before the start of this Century. Ron Pattinson perhaps goes on, but he doesn't go into water (beer history only ... if you tell him beer is mainly water, he'll probably refuse to come out of his home ever again).

As for "No spreadsheets" ... but, but ... I need them to tell me which side of the bed to get out of in the morning.

... attempting to convey an overall feeling you have ...

Yeap! Though the feeling is probably the pain due to being beaten over the head about it?

 

[VikeMan]

Meanwhile I rely on "common-sense" to back me up. I.e. One hundredth of a gram in 4 gallons of brew ... is that significant (if not ... what is)?

AKA an argument from personal incredulity. I'm not saying you're wrong, only that it's a logical fallacy.

But since you're citing "One Hundredth of a gram in 4 gallons of brew," can you provide even one example of where someone said it is significant, for any salt of your choice? If not, this thread is starting to feel like a strawman. If that's the case, kudos on building a strawman argument and then attempting to knock it down with personal incredulity. Were you by any chance on the debate team?

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

@Peebee : as I said earlier, a fresh perspective from the other side of the Atlantic could be interesting.

 

[micraftbeer]

Wait, this just occurred to me. Using brewing water calculator, you can plug in different grams of brewing salts manually and see the results on your key ions in terms of ppm.

This seems like a simple exercise with your brewing water calculator of preference. No need to talk in general terms or figurative/ visual references of hundredth of a gram in X gallons of water.

 

[Deadalus]

Wait, this just occurred to me. Using brewing water calculator, you can plug in different grams of brewing salts manually and see the results on your key ions in terms of ppm.

This seems like a simple exercise with your brewing water calculator of preference. No need to talk in general terms or figurative/ visual references of hundredth of a gram in X gallons of water.

Bingo! This is what I was suggesting earlier. I hadn't tried it in Beersmith and wasn't sure about other apps to suggest a specific one to try it in. Since it is ppm, one could just use the ppm from the water profile and then apply the percentage reductions/additions in weight to see the effect as well. From there however, it is still important to understand what ranges of ppm demonstrate important effects for each type of addition. OP is stuck on measurement scales without demonstrating actual effects-skipping the data section. And OP, I'd present the same argument if someone thought they had to measure to some minute fraction as well. What happens when you do or don't? I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I'm just trying to help you to see how to better evaluate the premise more effectively.

 

[sibelman]

Some of us treat brewing like cooking. Others, more like baking where greater precision is thought to be important. Either way, it's possible to obsess over factors that turn out not to require such intense focus. Personally, I'm more cook than baker.

Re water chemistry: what comes out of my tap varies somewhat. Whatever the precision in the reports I get from my water utility, I can't really be sure exactly what's going on next brew day. I speculate that even those with reverse osmosis equipment inevitably use somewhat different water from one brew day to the next. Thus, it seems to me that extreme precision in brewing salts may be a waste of effort unless one uses distilled water.

 

[Peebee]

Wait, this just occurred to me. ...

That's what I'm doing. But the day's ending this side of the Atlantic, and I'm falling asleep on me keyboard. I'm only up to 15SRM, a long way to go to before I get to 50 (5SRM intervals). I would normally criticise anyone using a purpose-built calculator as a "brewing simulator" (which is what I'm doing ) because different calculators often do not agree, and you are effectively "plagiarising" someone else's work to get results that you then use in a "competitive" sense (in this case Martin Brungard's work as I'm using Bru'n Water). But it would require quite a serious stretch of the imagination to think I could compete with Martin's calculator, so I'm just hoping he won't care?

Before I pack up for the day ...

If I succeed in figuring out a simple approach to water calculations (it's not a certainty yet!), it will need packaging up (as in my "Defuddler" spreadsheet) before others could use it (i.e. ages off). The purpose at this stage is to show the futility of measuring water salts to two decimal places, as is being asked of me. Warning! To make something easy, some hard stuff has to go. Some folks will hold such "hard stuff" as precious; they won't like it! (You may also be disappointed; I can't be doing anything "new", at best I'm just retelling ideas that will have already been tried).

 

[micraftbeer]

Killing me. I feel like I'm being scammed into doing someone else's work, but I couldn't wait any longer...

I started with a Pale Ale recipe I've brewed and had success with. Here's the Brewfather water calculator results:

Increased the Canning Salt by 0.1 grams up:

Put the Canning Salt back to baseline, increased the CaCl by 0.1 grams up:

Put the CaCl back to baseline, increased the Gypsum by 0.1 grams up:

Looks like being off by 0.1 gram of the brewing salts I used here, resulted in variations of 2 - 4 ppm of the various key elements. So it definitely seems precision of brewing salt additions of 0.001 g on a 6-gallon batch (volume into fermentor) would be insignificant.

 

[VikeMan]

So it definitely seems precision of brewing salt additions of 0.001 g on a 6-gallon batch (volume into fermentor) would be insignificant.

 

[Deadalus]

Killing me. I feel like I'm being scammed into doing someone else's work, but I couldn't wait any longer...

I started with a Pale Ale recipe I've brewed and had success with. Here's the Brewfather water calculator results:

View attachment 869199



Increased the Canning Salt by 0.1 grams up:
View attachment 869203




Put the Canning Salt back to baseline, increased the CaCl by 0.1 grams up:
View attachment 869204


Put the CaCl back to baseline, increased the Gypsum by 0.1 grams up:
View attachment 869205


Looks like being off by 0.1 gram of the brewing salts I used here, resulted in variations of 2 - 4 ppm of the various key elements. So it definitely seems precision of brewing salt additions of 0.001 g on a 6-gallon batch (volume into fermentor) would be insignificant.

Being off doesn't happen to just one measurement. So consideration needs to be made for all additions at the same time. Also, the sulfate to chloride ratio is important. You've only made three changes here, and singly, to one water profile. I understand your curiousity was burning but this wouldn't be considered definitive in any way. Monte Carlo simulations use upwards of thousands of runs. Wouldn't be hard to do if one has the equations programmed, then random values could be generated to feed in but I'm not doing the work for the OP either.

 

[Peebee]

... Were you by any chance on the debate team?

No. There was little emphasis on "debate" in my student years. I've only begun to find this debate caper interesting in these last ten years ... too late to be any value work-occupation-wise! I'm not great at it, hence I managed to annoy the administrator of the last brewing forum I frequented so much I got banned (and I was the complainant, not the defendant!). But good riddance ... it's much more fun here (and educational!).

But I've learnt enough to see my room to manoeuvre in this argument being squeezed out: Have I won in that there's little gap left for me to argue about any longer, or have I lost because I never had last word? One thing's for sure, if I try to squeeze a last word in now, I've surely lost! I'll pick up my "strawman" and wander off elsewhere.

And here: I'll finish writing up how I'm proposing to approach water treatment more simply (which I need to continue pushing on with because my brewing continues to be on-hold until I've got it sorted). The results from that should help me sort out my brewing in future, and, stop me weighing out hundredths of a gram, and, put an end to my sub-pH5.0 mashes? Maybe.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Looks like being off by 0.1 gram of the brewing salts I used here, resulted in variations of 2 - 4 ppm of the various key elements.

Looks right.

The BeerSmith 3 Water Profile tab can be used to "cross check".

5 gal of wort. 0.1 g of salt.

 

[Deadalus]

Looks right.

The BeerSmith 3 Water Profile tab can be used to "cross check".

5 gal of wort. 0.1 g of salt.

View attachment 869247

That's a helpful tool. So final batch size is probably 5 gallons but how much water are you mashing with? A middle gravity beer might be around 4 gallons. Bigger batch sizes than 5 gallons (of mash water) would have a lesser effect than demonstrated. A half size batch more than twice shown.

 

[micraftbeer]

That's a helpful tool. So final batch size is probably 5 gallons but how much water are you mashing with? A middle gravity beer might be around 4 gallons. Bigger batch sizes than 5 gallons (of mash water) would have a lesser effect than demonstrated. A half size batch more than twice shown.

This is the reason I stay at/near 5 gallon batches. When I brew smaller batches, I become more sensitive to errors/ variations in ingredients (weight of salts/ malts/ hops, volumes of water/ wort, AA of hops, etc) and thus makes it harder to duplicate results later.

Maybe if I was brewng 1 gallon batches, I'd need to start weighing my salts to 0.001 g, and crushing CaCl balls...

 

[Peebee]

I have been quietly crunching these water compositions. Time to start getting noisy again.

I'm finding the results (so far) very revealing. I have for years (since pre-Covid times) been mystified by low pH levels in my mashes (lower than pH 5.0) and getting nowhere trying to explain it ... or finding others on various forums to explain it for me. But these "tests" over the past couple of days have been turning up plenty of explanations and corrections.

They are tests, performed on a calculator (Bru'n Water), and will need confirmation from real brew trials. I'm only outlining what I'm up to here on the chance that someone has already done the work (so I won't have to!). There are no hundredths of a gram! Although I did use "hundredths of a gram of get the rounding going the right way.


I already brew "full-boil-length-mashes". Using "Grainfather" setups ("full metal jacket" BIAB ... with recirculation). My 70L 3V System has been out-of-commission for over a year. All these recent tests have been "full-boil-length-mashes". Mashing like that appears to have exacerbated my problems so I couldn't reach a swift resolution.

The following tables are rough, unfinished, and need a bit more smoothing out. Using what @Silver_Is_Money refers to as "quasi-empirical" techniques; I had to look that up:

quasi-
/ˈkweɪzʌɪ,ˈkweɪsʌɪ,ˈkwɑːzi/
combining form

1. apparently but not really

Oh wow! Got to have some of that (it's right up my street!).

I'll need to fill in some more scenarios too. Then crunch the whole lot down into a simple tool (Spreadsheet). Meanwhile, what I'm doing is stripping some, what I consider, are un-necessary variables, i.e. most of the salt additions in the mash, and the free-for-all mash-thicknesses to just two? Maybe an in-between third? Calcium additions to be fixed, I'm counting on 35ppm Ca being sufficient for the mash (as CaCl2). Alkalinity remains a variable, but its limited scope in these situations ought to make it easier to handle? All other additions for the boil where their influences, not being mash specific, wont impact the mash (like the effect of Ca and Mg on mash acidity, the source of many of my current issues.).

This is the table extracted (full boil length mash) so far:

Divided Yellow, Amber, Brown and Black. Goes to 50SRM black, which is the limit for Bru'n Water. Alternative for somewhat unpredictable Acidulated Malt is provided wits Phosphoric Acid (81%). The pH predictions are what I'm mainly stealing from Bru'n Water, but I do appreciate what a notoriously tricky task it is pairing pH with a handful of salts.

More than enough fo now ... I'm off to bed! The question is ... there will be those who've trodden this path before ... I hope to learn the pitfalls before embarking on this much further. I'll attempt to explain more (if neded) tomorrow?

Thanks.

 

[VikeMan]

If your goal is to fix your mash pH problem by developing a mash pH program that predicts pH using SRM as a factor, it's been done. Many years ago. John Palmer made a spreadsheet. You might even be able to download it from the Wayback Machine or somewhere. It sometimes worked well and sometimes didn't. The biggest problem (there was more than one) with the model was that Crystal Malts and Dark Roasted Malts have very different acid contributions "per SRM contributed." The models have moved well beyond the SRM model that John himself would today admit was primitive and sometimes wildly off. The model that you are working with, Bru'nWater, is far superior, as are several other modern models.

 

[Peebee]

If your goal is to fix your mash pH problem by developing a mash pH program ...

Thanks very much!

Yeap, it came to that (developing a mash program), but I've been on that for years and come nowhere near a solution until being forced to discuss it openly in this thread (slightly off-topic too ... fortunate that I'm the OP's author). I know of John Palmer's stuff and was being quite rude about it; I'm happy he would consider the old stuff was "primitive". But Bru'n Water is what I'm going with to model the tentative connection of "pH" with mash ingredients. (I will be asking him for permissions ... when I know what it is I'm trying to steal).

I do want to steal Mr Palmer's "Structure" stuff, because although he dismisses "Firm" as only describing two beers he knows of, he casually ignores virtually all of British traditional brewing (and I'm a Brit with traditional British beer tastes if you haven't noticed ... "traditional" means not 1960,70s+ British "keg" stuff which comes from, gawd knows where!). Including "Structure" ensures I'm not being "exclusive" in what I'm trying to do

But it's Chris Colby's work I want to model around ... dead simple; even suggests "teaspoons"! There's some evidence of that connection in the tiny table I created above ... the colour divisions are his. (Although I pushed it out to 50SRM which isn't fitting too well ... a bit of "cherry-picking" is in order, which brings me onto ...).

And @Silver_Is_Money; the person who put me on this track many moons ago by making me appreciate the difference between specific gravity and density (in grams per millilitre ... well, they look nearly the same). (SG? What's that got to do with it?). I'd like to use his work, but all that "DIpH" stuff does come with a painful amount of ongoing physical maintenance. But I take heart from his scribblings:

... Cherry picking, empirical method, quasi-empirical mishmashes of math modeling and made up stuff, and strict math modeling all seem to wind up within relatively the same ballpark as to prediction. ...

Could be worse! Your own (@VikeMan) spreadsheets haven't escaped my attention. But I haven't had time to mess with them, so they're safe. ... For now
Cheers.

 

[MaxStout]

I'm curious to see where you go with your new water program, @Peebee, though I'm not sure what improvements can be made beyond what Bru'n Water already does. Maybe you've got an angle that needs to be explored? Do you have the paid version of Bru'n Water? Well worth the modest cost.

 

[Peebee]

I'm curious to see where you go with your new water program

Good grief, no, no, no! I'm not attempting to better Martin's program. I can't even attempt what I'm doing without using Bru'n Water myself.

It's connected with what I started this thread with ... that some of us (which has included me) are losing their sense of scale: Confronted with a tools like Bru'n Water that is perfectly capable of handling "hundredths of a gram" there are those who believe they must work with "hundredths of a gram", etc., or else turn out naff home-brew. Instead of a time saving tool, the likes of Bru'n Water is being used to waste valuable time that could be used in more useful pursuits, like drinking home-brew. In my case it was lack of control of pH (sub-pH5.0 mashes) ... Bru'n Water could indicate the problem if I knew what I was looking for (instead, I used Bru'n Water to work with more and more ludicrous "precision" because that was the problem, lack of precision ... wasn't it? ).

The "new program" (actually just a spreadsheet and, sort of, a "philosophy") is just a hand to step back from the brink ... and its throwing up loads of snippets that's keeping me from getting on with "more useful pursuits" ... ironic that? A spreadsheet will take weeks (months), for now I just want a framework.

 

[MaxStout]

I get that. I've made a spreadsheet where I keep various calculations, set up in a way that reflects how I do things. It's snowballed into this multi-tabbed behemoth over the past dozen years or so.

 

[Peebee]

I'm having a little trouble with my "scheme"; and it all goes back to my original post in this thread:

We measure our water salts to what we think is one hundredth of a gram (two decimal places of a gram). If we do that accurately we must be getting the water additions as originally intended for the style of beer being brewed. Should we not?

Yes, you should ... If your mash to water ratio is identical to the original's. If, your sparge water (and any top-up water) is treated to be identical to the original's. If, you collect identical proportions of wort as the original. If, your "boil-off" is identical to the original. If, ... is there more?

Otherwise, your "accurate" weighing out water salts is meaningless? Even tenth of a gram, or within a gram, makes little sense.

I was widely criticised for sounding off about something I provided no example of. But this time I have! No end of it, because the thread evolved into one describing what I was doing before my earlier rant, so I'm banging my head on what I ranted about again ...


In drawing up my "scheme" I need to establish a "working arena" of lots of example beer recipes which the "scheme" will cover (they will provide the data that the scheme's solution will be able to replicate). I'm using Bru'n Water to generate the numbers to use. The following example is from one such recipe where the "alkalinity" is being provided by 0.03g/L of Baking Soda (NaHCO3) to create an "Estimated Mash pH" of 5.45 (the water it is added to is effectively distilled). 0.10g/L of Calcium Chloride (anhydrous) is to provide a minimum Calcium concentration of 35ppm in the mash (derived from Internet searches):

(At this point the "scheme" is only modelling the mash and is not a completed recipe). All is well with this, a snip from a little further right in the Bru'n Water spreadsheet is:

The "Batch Size" is 19L (5 USgallons), you are I hope remembering this is modelling and not an actual recipe. This is a "full-boil-length-mash" ("no sparge"). Although I do use "no sparge", I can't expect others to be convinced, so I model for three different mash thicknesses. One is a half boil volume mash, a mash:boil ratio of 1:2. This translates to:

Humm, that's shaken it up a bit. Firstly the Calcium Chloride is halved in the mash, well below the "recommended" amount (the calcium is to react with malt elements, and the amount of malt has not changed). Easy fix, change the first of those "No" boxes to "Yes" and the salts portioned for the sparge are added back to the mash.

The "alkalinity" (as bicarbonate) has also been cut in half so it's now saying pH5.23 ... and worse, having increased the mash calcium in the previous step, the mash is predicted as down to pH5.16. A bit of twiddling (increasing the bicarbonate from 0.03g/L to 0.24g/L) and I can get pH5.45 again.

Humm ... but that's a lot of bicarb: 2.3 grams. By the time the recipe "iterations" are for "brown" beers pHs are into 5.5+ numbers the sodium (from all that bicarb) is well over 100ppm. My plans to create a "simple" approach to water calculations will require a good bit of work from me to get it right. I'll sort something, meanwhile ...

CONCLUSIONS:

Measuring precise amounts based on a hodge-potch of different measuring scales (concentrations like grams/Litre and "absolute" measurements like just "pounds" or "kilograms") is a Fool's Game. Stop doing it! Unless your absolute measures are paired with another absolute measure (e.g. "USpounds" paired with "USgallons"). And in particular: Stop instructing others using a mish-mash of different scales!

I'll go further than just rant at weighing "hundredths of a gram" ... even tenths of a gram ... even whole numbers! ... doing it is insanity in these situations.

I've learnt the hard way and wasted eons of time trying to sort the implications ... I do not recommend treading that path.


Has me "strawman" got some backbone now?

 

[VikeMan]

No, it doesn't. You still haven't provided an example of anyone insisting that you or anyone measure salts to any specific degree of accuracy/precision. If you mean that the Brun'Water model itself is forcing you to do anything, that's silly.

Your conclusions don't follow from your modelling example. The Bru'nWater model reacts to changes in inputs just like it's supposed to. There is solid theory and observation behind it. Go ahead and round your input/output numbers to your heart's content. Love or ignore the result. Or don't use the model at all. Nobody is forcing you, or has "beaten (you) over the head about it."

(Edited to be nice(r))

 

[Peebee]

You still haven't provided an example of anyone insisting that you or anyone measure salts to any specific degree of accuracy/precision.

I haven't?

You've got me ... because I won't pick any one person out as an example. And any calculator should be worded to avoid such a slip, as you've said. But there is one bit of software illustrated above which does mention "Recommended Range" for Calcium is 50-150ppm.

Now some things are "flavour enhancers" and some things take an active role in the Chemistry. Flavour enhancers should be specified as a concentration, like "50ppm", or, if you specify no additions in the sparge and the sparge contributes half the fluid in the final wort, the wort contains only 25ppm. That may be the intention, or maybe an unknowing slip?

Another example. The 50ppm is for something that contributes to actual chemistry. You calculate for your full-boil-length-mash (BIAB say) and your water needs 5g of ... Calcium salt say. You decide to mash convensionally in half the water. You put 2.5g (5/2) of the calcium salt in the mash. But the mash constituants other than water hasn't changed. 5g of Calcium salt should have been used. But that would have pushed calcium salt up to provide 100ppm calcium. Works both ways: I was caught out when moving to full-boil-length-mash, I stuck with the ppm amount of Calcium without appreciating the actual amount of calcium in the mash was doubling ... the Mash pHs were dropping through the floor!

No fault of Bru'n Water or anyone. Except! Whoever mentions "ppm", "mg/L", or whatever, as a value to use without providing the context to use it in.


Examples abound in this forum particularily (water chemistry). It doesn't need me to find one, you can find your own in no time at all. This sort of error won't be high-lighted, but there'll be plenty of suggestions to measure quantities to two decimal places.

(Not edited to be nicer, I think I'm being nice enough).

 

[VikeMan]

Ok, I'm done. I'm not going to try to understand another rant.