Chalk or calcium carbonate has a water solubility of 0.013 g/L (25 °C). You can get about 13mg to dissolve per liter, pretty much useless in the mash. You can get it to dissolve over time in the presence of carbonic acid, in other words in carbonated water.
Those four additions are sufficient for getting started.
Chalk dissolves readily in the mash and works very well. Have you ever tried it? I know some brewers don’t like to use it, because it doesn’t dissolve well in water, but a mash is a bit more complicated than water. With my tap water, I need to raise pH when brewing dark beers. Chalk works great for me. The pH is always spot on when I use Graham Wheeler’s water calculator. Quite a few home brewers in the UK use it. Are they all wrong?
I know it's somewhere McMullan, mind sending its location?
Are they all wrong? I don't know what they do first hand what they do in the UK, but it's highly unlikely that the mash some how works magic on this salt. It's well known among brewers, both homebrewers and pro's that it has almost no effect on mash pH because it's not very soluble. I have tried it myself and the pH in the mash did not change, so I did some research and discovered the only way to get to go into solution is through a pre-treatment of carbonated water.
Have you tried using chalk in the mash? It’s very easy to assess its effect on mash pH. It works. I’m not saying you have to use it. There are at least a few ways brewers can raise pH. There is a myth propagated by some home brewers that chalk doesn’t work when, in fact, it does work.
That’s interesting, because I have assessed the effects of chalk on mash pH using a reliable pH meter, and it works. My mash pH is always spot on too when I use chalk additions.
It takes years for the chalk to become dissolved into the water table and water chemistry is much more complicated than it first appears.
That’s right, and it’s a continuously ongoing process as well. It takes minutes in a mash. Easily observable with a pH meter.
Yes, it needs to be dissolved to effect pH. That has always been a problem with chalk, it doesn't readily dissolve and literally drops out, or precipitates out of solution.
I have done that and I observed no change in the pH, or very little. It doesn't work. I don't know what your doing, but chalk is not dissolving into solution because it is not very soluble, therefore your mash pH is rising due to something else.
I see. So many British brewers have got it all wrong then? It clearly does work, in reality. And, in terms of raising mash pH, just as well as any other method used by brewers. Can you explain why your opinion on the matter goes against the conventional wisdom of so many brewers in Britain? What have you read, exactly? Second-hand myths?
Well the assumption would be that because it's present and available, what little percentage of it that is able to be dissolved will provide the ion or whatever is needed and then as it's used up, more will dissolve to replenish that.
It’s not a problem in the mash. Again, a mash isn’t simply water. Next time I brew, I’m going to prep a mini mash containing some dark malt and make a little demo of the effects of chalk on mash pH. Then I’ll post it here.
I have played around with Bru-n-water (non paid version), EZ-water-calculator, and BrewFather. They are all a bit different seems like, and the bru-n-water pH is fixed on 5.72, it never changes even when I purposefully put wacky numbers in. So far I like the Brew Father, just don't know how accurate it is but I followed it for my hefe brew over the weekend. I have a few kits planned, mostly ales, one stout and an oktoberfest.
This has not been my experience at all. Can you provide some details? Grain bill, etc?
You must be entering something incorrectly. I entered that grain bill with RO water and also got 5.72 for the starting pH. But the pH starts to drop as soon as I start adding salts.
I would say that a program that has you adding backing soda to a hefe just to use acid to neutralize it is not a good one. The question I ask is why you need RO in the first place. For me it is because my alkalinity is 400 ppm, so when I brew a dark beer I add back filtered house water, which dissolves really nicely.
I think it's an easy mistake to make though. I know that when I first started to look at regional and historic water profiles to learn about what was used to brew particular styles, I naively thought that the idea was that you needed to replicate that water and then go from there. But of course those profiles describe the water those brewers have, not the water they want. And after reading the instructions and notes in Bru'n Water and then playing around with it a little, my folly became clear.
And even if your only goal is to recreate a beer as it was historically made (not the same thing as making the best possible beer, though that's an argument to be had elsewhere), you have to know both the regional water mineral content, and any treatment the brewers of the time put it through before brewing. This can be done (at least in some cases), but I think it takes us way out of the "Beginners Beer Brewing" forum.
