New to using RO water and brewing Czech Pilsner. Do these additions look right?

[njohnsoncs]

I'm new to using RO water for brewing and I want to brew a Czech Pilsner. I'm using Brun's water calculator and here is the recommended water profile using the PseudoBohPils profile in the caculator.

Calcium: 20 ppm
Magnesium: 0 ppm
Sodium: 8 ppm
Sulfate: 15 ppm
Chloride: 35 ppm
Bicarbonate: 0 ppm

My RO water profile is

Calcium: 1 ppm
Magnesium: 0 ppm
Sodium: 8 ppm
Sulfate: 1 ppm
Chloride: 4 ppm
Bicarbonate: 16 ppm

It looks like if I add

0.20 g/gal Calcium Chloride (CaCl2) and 6 mL/gal of Phosporic acid 10% it gives me the final profile of

Calcium: 19 ppm
Magnesium: 0 ppm
Sodium: 0 ppm
Sulfate: 0 ppm
Chloride: 34 ppm
Bicarbonate: -105 ppm

with a pH of 5.39

Does this look reasonable?

My grain bill is:

German Pilsner Malt, 4.2 lbs, 1.6 L (color) for 97.4% of grain bill and
Weyermann Carahell, 0.1 lbs, 11 L (color) for 2.6% grain bill.

Thoughts?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

How many gallons of mash and sparge water are you using?

This might be seen as splitting hairs, but how do you know the analyticals for your RO water? Those look like they might be the analyticals for Martin Brungard's RO water, which are not likely your RO analyticals.

 

[njohnsoncs]

How many gallons of mash and sparge water are you using?

This might be seen as splitting hairs, but how do you know the analyticals for your RO water? Those look like they might be the analyticals for Martin Brungard's RO water, which are not likely your RO analyticals.

I'm doing 1.61 gal for mash water and 2.43 gal for sparge water.

You are correct, those are the numbers the Brun calculator gave me for my RO water. I don't have a way to compute them otherwise.

 

[okiedog]

I've had good luck with about 30-35 ppm Calcium. You might be okay with less, but I was always concerned with having good conversion in the mash. You could add a little gypsum to bring up the Calcium without adding too much Sulphate. Does the Bicarbonate really show as -105 ppm?

 

[njohnsoncs]

I'm not really sure how to use the calculator either; my first time.

Basically, for the Water Report Input page I didn't change anything. For sparge acidification I also didn't change anything and it says the final water alkalinity is -1 ppm. For grain bill I added the above grain bill. For water adjustment I changed to using 100% RO water. I also changed, under minerals, CaCl2 to adding 0.20 g/gal and, under acids, Phosporic 10% to adding 6 mL/gal.

This is all I changed on the calculator. Does anything else need to be changed?

 

[njohnsoncs]

I've had good luck with about 30-35 ppm Calcium. You might be okay with less, but I was always concerned with having good conversion in the mash. You could add a little gypsum to bring up the Calcium without adding too much Sulphate. Does the Bicarbonate really show as -105 ppm?

Yes, I believe since my existing profile has 0 ppm Bicarbonate but I have it set to add 6 mL/gal of Phoposric acid 10% to bring the pH down. I don't really know what I'm doing so I'm not sure if there's a better way to bring the pH down or what the -105 ppm Bicarbonate even means lol

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm doing 1.61 gal for mash water and 2.43 gal for sparge water.

You are correct, those are the numbers the Brun calculator gave me for my RO water. I don't have a way to compute them otherwise.

Is the 6 mL of 10% Phosphoric acid the calculation for each gallon of mash water, or the calculation for 1.61 gallons? If it is for 1.61 gallons, then by my calculation you may wind up mashing at something closer to pH 5.6 than to pH 5.4, but unless your RO water units alkalinity is greater than Martin's, you should still be OK if mashing at up to pH 5.6.

Having developed my own, I don't use Martin's software, so I can't help you there.

 

[njohnsoncs]

Is the 6 mL of 10% Phosphoric acid the calculation for each gallon of mash water, or the calculation for 1.61 gallons? If it is for 1.61 gallons, then by my calculation you may wind up mashing at something closer to pH 5.6 than to pH 5.4, but unless your RO water units alkalinity is greater than Martin's, you should still be OK if mashing at up to pH 5.6.

It looks like it is 6 mL/gal in the calculator. So I would need 9.66 mL for the 1.61 gal mash water I guess...

 

[njohnsoncs]

Looking at the calculator closer, it looks like it breaks it down into mash and sparge additions.

I put in 0.20 g/gal for CaCl2 and it says I should add a total of 0.3 g for my mash water of 1.61 gal and then 0.5 g for my sparge water of 2.43 gal.

Below it says that I should add 9.7 ml of Phosporic acid 10% to my mash and 0.1 ml to my sparge water.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

By my calculation, 9.7 mL of 10% Phosphoric will likely get you to a mash pH of 5.4 for a standard North American 2-Row Brewers type base malt, but a good German Pilsner malt may require more like 20-21 mL of the same acid by which to hit a mash pH of 5.4. Splitting the difference and adding 15 mL seems reasonably safe here.

Bringing your 2.43 gallons of 16 ppm bicarbonate (13.1 ppm alkalinity) sparge water to a pH of 5.4 may take a pinch less than 2 mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid by my calculation.

Just curious, but if you combine your 1.61 gallons of mash water and your 2.43 gallons of sparge water into 4.04 gallons of mash water and zero gallons of sparge water, and do a no-sparge mash (while adjusting mineralization accordingly to maintain ~20 ppm of calcium), what is the computed mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid addition required to hit a mash pH of 5.4 for that scenario?

 

[njohnsoncs]

By my calculation, 9.7 mL of 10% Phosphoric will likely get you to a mash pH of 5.4 for a standard North American 2-Row Brewers type base malt, but a good German Pilsner malt may require more like 20-21 mL of the same acid by which to hit a mash pH of 5.4. Splitting the difference and adding 15 mL seems reasonably safe here.

Bringing your 2.43 gallons of 16 ppm bicarbonate (13.1 ppm alkalinity) sparge water to a pH of 5.4 may take a pinch less than 2 mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid by my calculation.

Just curious, but if you combine your 1.61 gallons of mash water and your 2.43 gallons of sparge water into 4.04 gallons of mash water and zero gallons of sparge water, and do a no-sparge mash (while adjusting mineralization accordingly to maintain ~20 ppm of calcium), what is the computed mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid addition required to hit a mash pH of 5.4 for that scenario?

I'm not sure how you're calculating that. I'm purely going by what the Brun calculator is giving me. Why would it be different?

Combinging the sparge and mash water, it says I need about 2.6 mL/gal (a total of 10.5 ml) to get 5.4 pH

 

[njohnsoncs]

I guess I'm looking to see if I'm close. It doesn't have to be perfect. I just want to make sure I'm within acceptable ranges for the additions. In particular, the acid addition...

 

[mabrungard]

I use a profile for my light lagers that is generally similar to the psuedobopils profile or boiled Munich profile. However, I add all the sparging water minerals to the mashing water in order to boost the mashing water calcium content to above 40 ppm for oxalate reduction. The supporter's version calculates the pH effect of adding the sparging water mineral additions to the mashing water and I use that feature a lot.

With respect to the chloride and sulfate in the water, there shouldn't be much of either of those ions in the water when brewing this style. Some brewers advocate staying away from sulfate in these light lagers, but the fact is that sulfate helps dry a beer's finish. The low sulfate content is helpful for keeping the finish a little dry. A visit to the Pilsner Urquel brewery will show you that even they use gypsum in their brewing water. A little bit is all that is needed.

For any Bru'n Water user: The ion concentrations for any of the water profiles (including the Dilution Water profiles) are editable by the user. Scroll down the Water Adjustment sheet and you'll see the light blue cells that indicate they are editable. If you have lab info on your RO water, feel free to enter those values. I'm betting that they won't be much different than what is already entered.

Enjoy!

 

[njohnsoncs]

I use a profile for my light lagers that is generally similar to the psuedobopils profile or boiled Munich profile. However, I add all the sparging water minerals to the mashing water in order to boost the mashing water calcium content to above 40 ppm for oxalate reduction. The supporter's version calculates the pH effect of adding the sparging water mineral additions to the mashing water and I use that feature a lot.

With respect to the chloride and sulfate in the water, there shouldn't be much of either of those ions in the water when brewing this style. Some brewers advocate staying away from sulfate in these light lagers, but the fact is that sulfate helps dry a beer's finish. The low sulfate content is helpful for keeping the finish a little dry. A visit to the Pilsner Urquel brewery will show you that even they use gypsum in their brewing water. A little bit is all that is needed.

For any Bru'n Water user: The ion concentrations for any of the water profiles (including the Dilution Water profiles) are editable by the user. Scroll down the Water Adjustment sheet and you'll see the light blue cells that indicate they are editable. If you have lab info on your RO water, feel free to enter those values. I'm betting that they won't be much different than what is already entered.

Enjoy!

Thanks for the info. Just to confirm, what I have above is OK to start with for this brew?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm not sure how you're calculating that. I'm purely going by what the Brun calculator is giving me. Why would it be different?

Combinging the sparge and mash water, it says I need about 2.6 mL/gal (a total of 10.5 ml) to get 5.4 pH

Why it would be different for a base malt on the order of 2-Row Brewer vs. Pilsner is that if you mash a 2-Row Brewer type base malt in distilled water you will be more likely see a mash pH of around 5.6 for it, whereas if you mash a Pilsner type base malt in distilled water you will be more likely to see a pH of around 5.8 for it. That's a huge difference. 2-Row Brewer is thereby noticeably more acidic to start with, and is already much closer to your target of 5.4 during the mash, so it should require noticeably less mash water adjusting acid addition than would Pilsner malt. particularly when you realize that the pH scale is logarithmic.

10^-5.6/10^-5.8 = 1.585

So there is "potentially" 58.5% more acid inherent within any given quantity of 2-Row Brewers base malt vs. the same weight quantity of Pilsner base malt.

 

[njohnsoncs]

Why it would be different for a base malt on the order of 2-Row Brewer vs. Pilsner is that if you mash a 2-Row Brewer type base malt in distilled water you will be more likely see a mash pH of around 5.6 for it, whereas if you mash a Pilsner type base malt in distilled water you will be more likely see a pH of around 5.8 for it. That's a huge difference. 2-Row Brewer is thereby noticeably more acidic to start with, and is already much closer to your target of 5.4 during the mash, so it should require noticeably less mash water adjusting acid addition than would Pilsner malt. particularly when you realize that the pH scale is logarithmic.

10^-5.6/10^-5.8 = 1.585

So there is "potentially" 58.5% more acid inherent within any given quantity of 2-Row Brewers base malt vs. the same weight quantity of Pilsner base malt.

Sorry I meant, why would our calculations be different for the same Pilsner malt (grain bill)?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Sorry I meant, why would our calculations be different for the same Pilsner malt (grain bill)?

As I said, I'm not using Brun' Water for my calculations. And in addition, it does not appear to me that (unless it has been revised) BW can distinguish between a 2-Row Brewer type base malt and a Pilsner type base malt. And at the same time both may have the exact same Lovibond color, so on a lot to lot basis any given lot of Pilsner malt may even be factually a bit darker than a lot of Brewer's malt in color, so you can't use color as a distinguishing characteristic by which to gauge their inherent acidity.