NE IPA - help building water profile

[pennahighlandbrew]

Hi all! Trying to figure out how to best build a water profile for an NE IPA. Here are the details:

Water is 100% RO

Additions I have on hand to add: sodium chloride, calcium chloride, magnesium sulfate, calcium sulfate, calcium hydroxide, sodium bicarbonate, phosphoric acid (not sure if I’ll need all that, but that’s what I’ve got).

Grain bill:
10 lbs pearl malt
2 lbs white wheat malt
1 lb flaked oats

Mash at 152 for one hour, 1.375 qts/lb of grain for mash. Sparge enough to collect about 7.25-7.5 gallons in the kettle pre-boil.

My question is: what would you all recommend to get me good results? This is my first try trying to play with water chemistry, so if you could make it as simple as possible I’d appreciate it. Broken down into total grams or teaspoons would be ideal because I’m frankly not sure what I need ppm-wise.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jdauria]

Using John Palmer's EZ Water calculator (you should download)...assuming 4.5 gallon mash, 4 gallon sparge. 2 grams of Gypsum, 5 grams Calcium Chloride, 0.25 grams Epsom Salt gets you 107 ppm Calcium, 142 ppm Chloride and 71 ppm Sulfates in the mash. So that checks off the 2:1 Chloride to Sulfate ratio that NEIPA's are famous for though. However, with those additions and your malts, mash pH would be 5.69, way to high. You would need 8 oz of acid malt to drop pH to 5.3. Not sure how much phosphoric acid would accomplish the same. To your sparge water add 1.8 grams Gpysum, 4.4 grams Calcium Chloride and 0.2 Epsom salt.

 

[pennahighlandbrew]

Using John Palmer's EZ Water calculator (you should download)...assuming 4.5 gallon mash, 4 gallon sparge. 2 grams of Gypsum, 5 grams Calcium Chloride, 0.25 grams Epsom Salt gets you 107 ppm Calcium, 142 ppm Chloride and 71 ppm Sulfates in the mash. So that checks off the 2:1 Chloride to Sulfate ratio that NEIPA's are famous for though. However, with those additions and your malts, mash pH would be 5.69, way to high. You would need 8 oz of acid malt to drop pH to 5.3. Not sure how much phosphoric acid would accomplish the same. To your sparge water add 1.8 grams Gpysum, 4.4 grams Calcium Chloride and 0.2 Epsom salt.

Very helpful, thank you for pointing me in the right direction! I see that EZ Water labels lactic acid at 88%. My phosphoric is 10%, could I just change the acid content box in EZ Water to 10%, bringing me to about 47 mL total?

To rephrase: is an acid an acid an acid? Will using phosphoric or lactic in those levels hurt anything? And should I add it separately to my mash and sparge water? As in, a certain amount of acid in my mash water vs a certain amount in my sparge? Thanks again!

 

[jdauria]

Unfortunately an acid is not an acid is an acid. Forget where the discussion was, but someone asked if 88% lactic acid was 8.8 times greater than 10% phosphoric, and the short answer was no.

Not sure how the EZ water spreadsheet will handle changing the %, since it’s using a formula based on lactic to calculate pH. Do you not have a local shop where you can get acidulated malt?

As to sparge, with RO or distilled you usually do not have to acidify the sparge water. If using tap, you want to get sparge pH down to 5.5.

 

[TimmyWit]

I like to go a little heavier handed with my minerals in a NE IPA. You can get an estimated (using bru n water) 5.33 pH by treating all 9 gallons (4.5 mash, 4.5 sparge) with the following:

7.2g Gypsum
10g CaCl
2.8g Epsom

It's not quite 2:1 but I have been happy with this profile and you won't need any acid. This is what you'll end up with:
155 Ca, 190 Cl, 150 SO

 

[Upthewazzu]

I think people tend to get a little too heavy handed in mineral additions for NEIPA's. In Portland, Maine where most of these things come from (commercially, anyways) the water is almost completely void of natural minerals. Having had many examples from Portland I can say that they are all very soft, and probably not much is done to the water.

 

[TimmyWit]

I think people tend to get a little too heavy handed in mineral additions for NEIPA's. In Portland, Maine where most of these things come from (commercially, anyways) the water is almost completely void of natural minerals. Having had many examples from Portland I can say that they are all very soft, and probably not much is done to the water.

by soft, I assume you mean mouthfeel which is actually what we are trying to achieve by adding minerals. Scott Janish did a lot of research and a nice write-up on this:

http://scottjanish.com/chasing-mouthfeel-softness/