My "simple" Detroit water treatment

[jmf143]

This is the water I am working with:

pH – 7.7
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est - 140
Electrical Conductivity - ..23
Cations/Anions, me/L – 2.3/2.1

Sodium, Na - 5
Potassium, K - 1
Calcium, Ca - 28
Magnesium, Mg - 8
Total Hardness, CaCO3 -103
Nitrate, NO3-N - .3 (x4.43 = 1.33)
Sulfate, SO4-S – 7 ( x3 = 21)
Cloride, CL - 8
Carbonate, CO3 - <1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 - 89
Total Alkalinity, CACO3 - 73

My plan is to add just enough pickling lime (taking into consideration my grain bill) to my mash tun to achieve a pH of approx. 5.5 at room temp. To my boil kettle I'll add any brewing salts if needed to bring my mineral concentrations wihn the ranges recommended by Palmer.

Can it be this simple, or am I overlooking something?

 

[mabrungard]

Those are appropriate goals. Recognize that the alkalinity of that water is high enough that you may need to add acid to reach that pH with light colored grists. Be careful with the lime additions. It is powerful stuff. Bru'n Water will get you close, but a pH meter is a good tool to have to double check.

Be careful with the ion concentrations recommended by Palmer. A few are too high in my opinion. Let the beer make the flavor, not the water. Less is more.

 

[ajdelange]

For most beers you will need some acid to establish proper mash pH. The need for chalk or lime may arise occasionally but should be rare. Be guided by a pH meter by which I mean don't add alkali (chalk, lime, hydroxides, bicarbonate) to mash unless a meter reading indicates it is necessary. If adding acid you are less likely to screw up (because you nearly always need it whereas with alkali you seldom do) but it is still a very good idea to check pH with a reliable instrument.

Yes, it can be that simple. Have a look at the Primer in the stickies here. OTOH you can make it very complicated if you want to but people are beginning to realize that it usually isn't necessary or desirable. KISS - it's easier and it makes better beer.

 

[jmf143]

I have brewed a pale ale 3 times now where I added small amounts of Gypsum, Epson salt and Calcium Chloride along with sauermalz equal to 2% of my grist. I plugged the grain bill for that beer along with my water into Martin's Bru'n Water, and omitted all the salts and sauermalz. I'm getting an estimated room temp mash pH of 5.27. That is what lead me to the insight of skipping the sauermalz in the future and adding a small amount of lime and saving any salts for the boil kettle.

 

[ajdelange]

The spreadsheets are fine for planning but the realized accuracy varies according to your particular brewing practices (materials, methods....). If I measure pale ale malt (Maris Otter) I find a distilled water pH of 5.6. Even a pale ale usually contains a little higher kilned malt. That will pull the pH lower. But then you have somewhat alkaline water which will pull it up. Don't know the details of your grist (and even if I did it wouldn't be that much of a help as I wouldn't know the titratable acidity of the particular malt(s) you used but I'm guessing that the two effects would pretty much balance out and you would have a mash pH of 5.6 or so. 2% sauermalz with that should bring you to about 5.4 which is right where you want to be (5.3 - 5.5 is OK for an ale) and you can even go wider than that. But we're looking for better beer here.

The spreadsheet tells you you are a little over a tenth of a point low. And you may indeed be but I'm doubtful. Whenever I "check up" on the spreadsheets using data from my own brewing logs they always tell me I'm low on pH and should add alkali or reduce acid so I'm a little skeptical of them. OTOH I'm mostly a lager brewer.

If you are going to control mash pH you really can't rely on spreadsheets or AJ's rules of thumb or experience either. You really should be guided by a pH meter. That's the only way to be sure you got pH "right'.

But they brewed good beer before Doc. Sørensen did his thing and you can do the same thing using the same method. Experiment and taste. You have already brewed beer 3 times using the sauermalz. Brew it again without and see if you like the result better. If you do, it doesn't really matter what the pH was - you achieved your goal. Note that I would still suggest measuring that pH so you will have an idea of what works and can tune for that in future brews.

 

[jmf143]

Sage advice A.J. I inadvertently left out the sauermalz when I brewed the pale ale 2 weeks ago. In 3 weeks I'll be able to taste the results. Thanks for your input.

 

[BigB]

Sage advice A.J. I inadvertently left out the sauermalz when I brewed the pale ale 2 weeks ago. In 3 weeks I'll be able to taste the results. Thanks for your input.

As a fellow DWSD customer, I have been following this thread... Please update when you taste the results. I would be interested to know because I have never used the sauermalz before, yet I find most of my beers to be only mediocre, and cannot seem to locate the source of the problem..... I've suspected water for some time now, but using a charcoal filter alone is not cutting it.

 

[MI_Craig]

Those in the Lansing area, or close proximity, shoot me a PM if good water is needed. We need to run 100 gal of water through our DI system weekly which usually just ends up in the drain. If you have your own filling vessels, I'm sure we could figure something out. We usually output 17Mohm water (ASTM Type 1), which is pretty much free of everything.

 

[MI_Craig]

Mrgreen4242 your pm mailbox is full.