First brew with RO water and adding brewing salts

[Mark3885]

I have my Buckeye Hydro RO system up and running. I have my recipe in Brewfather and calculated out my salt additions.
1) When and where do I add the salts? All in to mash ?
2) Add into strike and sparge water?
3) All into strike water?
4) I don’t have any way to measure Ph , so I’m just going by what Brewfather has calculated 5.35 ph .
Thanks

 

[VikeMan]

1) When and where do I add the salts? All in to mash ?

That depends on why you are adding them. Salts in the mash will affect mash pH, as well as flavor and mouthfeel and yeast flocculation. Salts added to the sparge water (or the kettle) will affect flavor and mouthfeel and yeast flocculation.

You might want to have a look at this presentation:
http://sonsofalchemy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Intro-to-Brewing-Water-Treatment.pdf

 

[tracer bullet]

I add salts only to the mash water, as well as acid, partly for pH reasons and partly because I've simply moved away from sparging and so that's the only place for them. When I was sparging I'd only add a touch of acid to try and help hold that water at a reasonable pH. I think however if you are using RO water you wont' care about that.

 

[Mark3885]

My main concern was to adjust my water to an acceptable mash ph . Previously , I used city water, which I made good and great tasting beers. 3 years ago I moved to the country with a well and a softener, then had to buy spring water. I never worried about ph on city water because the beers tasted good.
I tested the mash with the dip strips and it told me my ph was below 4.8 . So Brewfather says with my balanced water profile ,would give me a mash ph of 5.35 I guess I’ll have to brew a few beers to see where I’m at and adjust from there.

 

[tracer bullet]

There are a number of calculators, all will get you in the ballpark but some are more accurate than others. Base malt has a ton to do with it. It's a lot of trial and error I've found. If you repeat a recipe, or make small changes, you can dial things in. If you try new recipes often, or change your base malt (or both) you somewhat start over. FYI I guess, you might expect to be all over the place for a while.

pH meters >> strips, I've never had luck with strips and I think most would say the same. Not very accurate, and if you make a dark beer they are impossible.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

pH strips are close to useless. And generally they read low.

 

[cire]

I used pH strips suitable for brewing until about 10 years ago. Those cost more than a cheap pH meter does today, and no longer can I find those indicators. Buy a pH meter, it's the only practical way now.

 

[hottpeper13]

I add my mash salts on a gram per gallon of brewing liquor. Since RO water has no buffering capacity I add those salts to the BK.
I don't know how those accurate those programs are, i use the chart's in Palmer and Kaminski's Water book and a calculator to figure it out.
Just know that the mash consumes 30 ppm of calcium and the yeast 20 ppm,so make sure 50 ppm is there. YES even for Pilsners!

 

[mabrungard]

Just know that the mash consumes 30 ppm of calcium and the yeast 20 ppm,so make sure 50 ppm is there. YES even for Pilsners!

Um, NO! There is NO requirement for calcium in brewing water, but there are a couple of good reasons to have it in there.

The malt provides ALL the calcium that the yeast need for their nutrition, but having ionic calcium in the water can provide a couple of duties. The first is to react and precipitate oxalate out of the wort. You should have about 40 or more ppm in the MASHING water to produce that reaction. The sparging water can have zero calcium. The other reaction that you'd want ionic calcium available in the mashing water is to improve mashing enzyme activity. A final reason a brewer may want ionic calcium in their mashing water is to produce its pH lowering effect by reacting with malt phytin.

Those reasons can be assessed by the brewer, but an important point is that many of those actions are produced by dosing the mashing water with the calcium salt and not the kettle. It does not appear that adding calcium salts to the kettle instead of the mashing water is really wise.

While all those reasons mentioned above are useful, that is not to say that every brew should get a healthy dose of calcium salts to promote them. Sometimes, its more beneficial to the beer to have a lower ionic calcium content. This is particularly true for lager yeasts since they are susceptible to premature flocculation if the calcium content is high. Since lager yeast need to stay in suspension for a while during and after fermentation to perform important flavor and off-flavor improvements, keeping them in the beer is helpful. But for ale brewers, the opposite can be true. Having 50 or more ppm calcium helps clear the beer earlier and get it ready for serving sooner.

To provide low calcium content in lager wort while still temporarily boosting the calcium content during mashing, adding all of a batch's calcium salts to the mashing water and none to the sparging water is the way to go. Of course, this assumes that you're starting with very pure water like distilled or RO. The supporter's version of Bru'n Water is set up to provide for that technique and I find it works well in producing great lagers with low ionic content.

 

[Mark3885]

Wow , all good information here.I’m starting to understand the whole chemistry involved. I brewed an Irish Red this morning and my strike and sparge water was the same brewing salt concentration, I was very conservative on my brewing salts additions, didn’t want to get crazy on any particular. We’ll have to see how it comes out and adjust as necessary. Thanks for all the help.

 

[hottpeper13]

Well Martin, i guess all the instructors at Siebel were wrong. Funny that they had a German accent add stressed 50 ppm Ca and did not tell us how to measure it in the malt. It was even on the test. So the 45 out of 50 score on my Check Pils was a fluke ,cause it had 73 ppm added to the RO water.
So how much Ca is in malt and do different malts differ.
Show me the way buddy.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

https://nopr.niscpr.res.in/bitstream/123456789/34294/1/IJTK 15(3) 500-502.pdf

 

[Christoff]

Um, NO! There is NO requirement for calcium in brewing water, but there are a couple of good reasons to have it in there.

The malt provides ALL the calcium that the yeast need for their nutrition, but having ionic calcium in the water can provide a couple of duties. The first is to react and precipitate oxalate out of the wort. You should have about 40 or more ppm in the MASHING water to produce that reaction. The sparging water can have zero calcium. The other reaction that you'd want ionic calcium available in the mashing water is to improve mashing enzyme activity. A final reason a brewer may want ionic calcium in their mashing water is to produce its pH lowering effect by reacting with malt phytin.

Those reasons can be assessed by the brewer, but an important point is that many of those actions are produced by dosing the mashing water with the calcium salt and not the kettle. It does not appear that adding calcium salts to the kettle instead of the mashing water is really wise.

While all those reasons mentioned above are useful, that is not to say that every brew should get a healthy dose of calcium salts to promote them. Sometimes, its more beneficial to the beer to have a lower ionic calcium content. This is particularly true for lager yeasts since they are susceptible to premature flocculation if the calcium content is high. Since lager yeast need to stay in suspension for a while during and after fermentation to perform important flavor and off-flavor improvements, keeping them in the beer is helpful. But for ale brewers, the opposite can be true. Having 50 or more ppm calcium helps clear the beer earlier and get it ready for serving sooner.

To provide low calcium content in lager wort while still temporarily boosting the calcium content during mashing, adding all of a batch's calcium salts to the mashing water and none to the sparging water is the way to go. Of course, this assumes that you're starting with very pure water like distilled or RO. The supporter's version of Bru'n Water is set up to provide for that technique and I find it works well in producing great lagers with low ionic content.

How does all that work with Palmer's suggestion of 50-150 ppm? how to brew book says calcium ".. is vital to many of the biochemical reactions in fermentation...". I am in a similar boat as the OP and trying to figure out how salt additions really work

 

[hottpeper13]

Silver ,great info but how do I translate it into a number I understand ,which is ppm/gal like in Palmer and Kaminski's Water book?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Silver ,great info but how do I translate it into a number I understand ,which is ppm/gal like in Palmer and Kaminski's Water book?

I'm not sure as to what you're asking.

 

[hottpeper13]

How do you convert mg/kg to ppm/gal. In other words how much (ppm's) of Ca does the malt contribute to the mash?

 

[Christoff]

How do you convert mg/kg to ppm/gal. In other words how much (ppm's) of Ca does the malt contribute to the mash?

I think 1 ppm is nearly equal to 1 mg/L. I presume mg/kg is a typo/mistake. But if it’s not maybe someone here more experiences if familiar with that.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Many of the minerals inherent within malts are chemically (or molecularly) bound and will not transition to the Wort. I don't believe there is any potentially valid means of predicting what will remain bound and go out with the spent grist, and what will be freed to ionically enter the Wort.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I think 1 ppm is nearly equal to 1 mg/L. I presume mg/kg is a typo/mistake. But if it’s not maybe someone here more experiences if familiar with that.

No, it is not a typo mistake. It is a representation as to the analytically assessed mineral content within the malts. There is no water involved here. Only Kg.'s of dry malts...

 

[Christoff]

No, it is not a typo mistake. It is a representation as to the analytically assessed mineral content within the malts. There is no water involved here. Only Kg.'s of dry malts...

but ppm is a unit within a solution, no? Can mg/kg be converted to a measurement of a solution? It's been a long time since I was in any formal science so I am acknowledging how much I have forgotten.

 

[DBhomebrew]

but ppm is a unit within a solution, no? Can mg/kg be converted to a measurement of a solution?

You could, along with the mash volume. But, as @Silver_Is_Money points out, we don't/can't know how much of the mg/Kg will make it out of the grain into solution.

If we could, I think it'd look something like this...

((mg/kg of mineral in the grain * percentage that makes it into solution) x kg of grain used) / L of mash = mg/L = ppm

But since we don't know how much makes it into solution, this exercise is unhelpful.

@Silver_Is_Money, ammorite?

 

[mac_1103]

But since we don't know how much makes it into solution, this exercise is unhelpful.

True, but you could calculate how much of the mineral content would have to end up in the wort to hit a certain level.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

but ppm is a unit within a solution, no? Can mg/kg be converted to a measurement of a solution? It's been a long time since I was in any formal science so I am acknowledging how much I have forgotten.

No! ppm merely means "parts per million parts", and on a strictly weight per unit weight basis no less. That is why ppm only sort of follows along with mg/L. I wish ppm would fade into the sunset.

As opposed to ppm, mg/L is a weight to unit volume measure. Weight to weight does not equal weight to volume, except perhaps for some rare bird occurrences.

Edit: But what really matters is that chemicals react strictly on a mEq to mEq basis (with due allowance as to dissociation constants, which effectively quantify the degree of observed reaction reversal), and not on either a ppm to ppm basis or a mg/L to mg/L basis.

Edit #2: For decades AJ deLange urged everyone to understand mEq's.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

If bowling balls all weighed the same, and two red bowling balls were hidden in a pile of 999,998 blue bowling balls the pile would be 2 ppm in red bowling balls.

 

[hottpeper13]

Yeah, bowling is pretty popular in Wisconsin too.

 

[thirsty-one]

I have been reading this thread and many others racking my brain on water chemistry. I’m still having a harsh taste with most of my finished beers. I use Brewfather and pretty much have the water salts and mash PH down to a good working knowledge. I use a milwaukee PH meter.

And I believe my overall process from brewing to fermentation is fine as well. 3V HERMs (keggle) system. Controlled fermentation temps in 2 separate chambers.

I use RO water and add some distilled water just for shitz n getz. Although I read RO water this n that and don’t worry, blah blah blah….

I fly sparge and I would like to think I have overlooked the sparge water PH. I typically treat only the mash (salts/acid) and just leave the sparge alone.

Well, my RO (water mill express kiosk) usually has a PH of around 6.3, it varies a little but that’s the average. I now started to check PH once I have all of my brewing water together in the HLT (before salt additions) and this is whether or not I mix in some distilled or go all RO. I also collect more than the recipe calls for just to have extra. I do this to have a true starting PH point and if it’s off, I’ll update my water profile to the recipe in Brewfather. Pull off strike, treat it and mash as usual. Sparge until I have my boil amount. Just never touched my sparge.

With all that said, I feel my 6.3’ish sparge has been the culprit. So should I split water additions between the mash and sparge? Or treat just mash with all the salt/acid additions, focusing on mash PH and simply a little acid to the sparge to get under 6? I read so many conflicting opinions.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

What is the TDS reading for your RO water?

 

[day_trippr]

Right: Have you ever taken a TDS reading of the "RO" water?

If it's truly RO and hasn't had minerals added back in (it happens) then you probably could skip acidifying the sparge liquor as it won't have ionic power to move the mash pH. My single digit RO water doesn't need acidifying - if I add a single ml of 25% PA to 12 gallons in my HLT it'll take the pH from 6 to below 5, so I don't even bother....

Cheers!

 

[thirsty-one]

https://watermillexpress.com/frequently-asked-questions/can-i-use-your-water-for-home-brewing/

This is about all I can find. Emailed them awhile back and got the same thing

 

[day_trippr]

They must be adding the sodium back in, but given "the level of alkalinity of our water is typically ND" you can treat it as straight RO wrt acidification...

Cheers!

Contaminant	Results
Calcium	ND*
Magnesium	0.10 mg/L
Sodium	1 mg/L
Sulfate	ND*
Bicarbonate	unknown**
pH	6.0

* ND is an expression that the contaminant was Not Detected above the minimum detection level.
** Bicarbonate is alkaline and the level of alkalinity of our water is typically ND

 

[VikeMan]

With all that said, I feel my 6.3’ish sparge has been the culprit. So should I split water additions between the mash and sparge? Or treat just mash with all the salt/acid additions, focusing on mash PH and simply a little acid to the sparge to get under 6? I read so many conflicting opinions.

Distilled water or good RO water will not move the pH of your wort significantly, because distilled/RO has virtually no buffering capacity. I'd spend my brain cells on something else.

 

[thirsty-one]

They must be adding the sodium back in, but given "the level of alkalinity of our water is typically ND" you can treat it as straight RO wrt acidification...

Cheers!

Contaminant	Results
Calcium	ND*
Magnesium	0.10 mg/L
Sodium	1 mg/L
Sulfate	ND*
Bicarbonate	unknown**
pH	6.0

* ND is an expression that the contaminant was Not Detected above the minimum detection level.
** Bicarbonate is alkaline and the level of alkalinity of our water is typically ND

So, treat the sparge with a little acid? I typically use 88% lactic but also have 10% phosphoric

 

[VikeMan]

So, treat the sparge with a little acid? I typically use 88% lactic but also have 10% phosphoric

There's no reason to do that. To bring 5 gallons of distilled/RO water down to a pH of 5.5 takes about 0.005 ml of 88% lactic acid. Good luck measuring that. But luckily, there's no need to measure that, because the distilled/RO water has virtually no buffering capacity, so it doesn't move the wort pH.

 

[thirsty-one]

There's no reason to do that. To bring 5 gallons of distilled/RO water down to a pH of 5.5 takes about 0.005 ml of 88% lactic acid. Good luck measuring that. But luckily, there's no need to measure that, because the distilled/RO water has virtually no buffering capacity, so it doesn't move the wort pH.

about 0.005 ml….haha yeah that’s pretty crazy small. Then I don’t know what it is other than my additions of baking soda? I only add it to match a recommended water profile for the style I’m brewing.

Such as this recommended HCO3 addition. I still kept it lower than suggested and there are even recipes out there that don’t have a particular amount and just stick with the Ca Mg Cl So additions.

 

[VikeMan]

about 0.005 ml….haha yeah that’s pretty crazy small. Then I don’t know what it is other than my additions of baking soda? I only add it to match a recommended water profile for the style I’m brewing.

Are you saying that you are adding baking soda to your sparge water? If so, don't do that.

But if you mean that your main mash has baking soda, and that you are hitting an acceptable mash pH with the baking soda included, then you are still good to sparge with plain RO.

As an aside, baking soda is Sodium Bicarbonate. Unless you need it to raise mash pH, don't add carbonate/bicarbonate in any form. IMO there's no good reason chase any particular bicarbonate number from a "profile" perspective. Bicarbonate is either a water source fact of life that (most often) has to be overcome with acid, or a tool to raise pH.

 

[thirsty-one]

Are you saying that you are adding baking soda to your sparge water? If so, don't do that.

But if you mean that your main mash has baking soda, and that you are hitting an acceptable mash pH with the baking soda included, then you are still good to sparge with plain RO.

As an aside, baking soda is Sodium Bicarbonate. Unless you need it to raise mash pH, don't add carbonate/bicarbonate in any form. IMO there's no good reason chase any particular bicarbonate number from a "profile" perspective. Bicarbonate is either a water source fact of life that (most often) has to be overcome with acid, or a tool to raise pH.

Yes, adding just to the mash never the sparge. I have been caught up in chasing numbers but starting to realize no point adding it if not needed. I’m typically looking to push a PH down to range in most of the styles I like anyway. For now on just leave the HCO3 at a big fat zero unless I brew a dark beer that’s way low.

 

[JohnDBrewer]

I use Beersmith, RO water and fly sparge. I only add salts to my mash and occasionally to my sparge. Beersmith and calculates separate amounts of salts to add to mash and sparge. I've only ever put the calculated mash amount into the mash.
-Should I putting the total amount calculted salts (mash & sparge) into the mash since I'm not adding anything to the sparge water?
-Also, when I do on occasion add the sparge salts to the sparge water, due to the limits of my brewing system, I have to actually have 4 gallons more of sparge water in my hot liquor tank. I have been increasing the the salts proportionally. So Beersmith calculates I need 4 gallons of sparge water, my system requires I have 8 gallons to do 4 (its a sight glass issue), so I would just double the required sparge only salts. That sound ok?

 

[malhal]

If you are unable to get your sparge water below the crucial level of 5.7 pH you could try sparging cold.

 

[oldschool]

Um, NO! There is NO requirement for calcium in brewing water, but there are a couple of good reasons to have it in there.

The malt provides ALL the calcium that the yeast need for their nutrition, but having ionic calcium in the water can provide a couple of duties. The first is to react and precipitate oxalate out of the wort. You should have about 40 or more ppm in the MASHING water to produce that reaction. The sparging water can have zero calcium. The other reaction that you'd want ionic calcium available in the mashing water is to improve mashing enzyme activity. A final reason a brewer may want ionic calcium in their mashing water is to produce its pH lowering effect by reacting with malt phytin.

Those reasons can be assessed by the brewer, but an important point is that many of those actions are produced by dosing the mashing water with the calcium salt and not the kettle. It does not appear that adding calcium salts to the kettle instead of the mashing water is really wise.

While all those reasons mentioned above are useful, that is not to say that every brew should get a healthy dose of calcium salts to promote them. Sometimes, its more beneficial to the beer to have a lower ionic calcium content. This is particularly true for lager yeasts since they are susceptible to premature flocculation if the calcium content is high. Since lager yeast need to stay in suspension for a while during and after fermentation to perform important flavor and off-flavor improvements, keeping them in the beer is helpful. But for ale brewers, the opposite can be true. Having 50 or more ppm calcium helps clear the beer earlier and get it ready for serving sooner.

To provide low calcium content in lager wort while still temporarily boosting the calcium content during mashing, adding all of a batch's calcium salts to the mashing water and none to the sparging water is the way to go. Of course, this assumes that you're starting with very pure water like distilled or RO. The supporter's version of Bru'n Water is set up to provide for that technique and I find it works well in producing great lagers with low ionic content.

I haven’t heard before that calcium in some excess can cause early flocculation. Can you post a link?

 

[mabrungard]

I haven’t heard before that calcium in some excess can cause early flocculation. Can you post a link?

If you’re a BA or AHA member, you can search for calcium and magnesium requirements in brewing in order to find the articles in their respective magazines.