First brew with RO water and adding brewing salts

[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.