Mistakes water addition

[StroudCreek]

Ok guys I've been brewing for a while now but I'm just now starting to adjust my water. I recently brewed a Pale Ale and instead of adding 6 grams of Gypsum and 2 grams of Calcium Chloride to the mash I added it in my HLT strike water. What will this do to my finished beer?

 

[Yooper]

Ok guys I've been brewing for a while now but I'm just now starting to adjust my water. I recently brewed a Pale Ale and instead of adding 6 grams of Gypsum and 2 grams of Calcium Chloride to the mash I added it in my HLT strike water. What will this do to my finished beer?

Nothing at all?

 

[StroudCreek]

Are you saying that because I added it to my water and not the mash it had no effect on the beer or are you saying their is no difference in adding the additions to the mash vs the strike water

 

[Yooper]

Are you saying that because I added it to my water and not the mash it had no effect on the beer or are you saying their is no difference in adding the additions to the mash vs the strike water

Yes.

There is a small chance that your mash pH wouldn't be as low as desired, but salt additions are not the way to drive mash pH anyway. If you added the salts to the water in the HLT, that's no different than adding it to the mash and sparge water.

 

[Rev2010]

Are you saying that because I added it to my water and not the mash it had no effect on the beer or are you saying their is no difference in adding the additions to the mash vs the strike water

The strike water IS in the mash. That's how you use brewing salts, you add them to your water. I go by grams per gallon, not really grams but fraction of since, for example, my last beer was .5g of gypsum per gallon. My strike water was 3.5 gallons so I added 1.75 grams of gypsum to my strike water and 2.5 grams to my 5 gallons of sparge water.


Rev.

 

[mabrungard]

It definitely affected your mashing pH. However, since those salts should have ultimately made it into the kettle wort, the elevated mashing pH may have been alleviated in the kettle. You will still make beer!

 

[xpops]

It definitely affected your mashing pH. However, since those salts should have ultimately made it into the kettle wort, the elevated mashing pH may have been alleviated in the kettle. You will still make beer!

So then...should salts be added directly to mash, and NOT to HLT when heating mash water?

 

[mabrungard]

To uniformly distribute salts and acids, they should always always be added to the water and mixed thoroughly. Then add to the mash. Adding them in the HLT is preferred. I may have had the mistaken assumption that the salts were only added to the sparging water. If that was not the case, then ignore my comments above.

 

[xpops]

Ahh ok! Makes more sense now