Parti Gyle Sparge Water Do I need to add salts? Should I?

[DuncB]

I'm making an English Barleywine tomorrow ( Thomas Hardy ale ).
I add all of my salts to the Mash for the barley wine and no sparge for this. Previously I just have acidified the sparge water and treated for chlorine, but I've always wondered whether I should add some salts as well.
Some salts will be in the grains from the first treatment for the main brew but will enough get to the final runoff and beer?
My base water is

Barley Wine Water target

Thanks

 

[lumpher]

When I do partigyles, it's for an extra beer conveniently. I don't modify those at all.

 

[DBhomebrew]

The sparge will dilute whatever's left. You're going to want to get the calcium up for good yeast health and flocculation to say nothing about flavor.

Assuming a British beer with a British yeast, I'd aim for overall calcium, figuring the sparge volume along with the water left in the grain bed, at 125-150ppm. I'd bump the Na back up to 40, too.

 

[DuncB]

Yes going to be a best bitter from the partigyle.
I'm estimating 6.5 litres of water left in the grain bill ( so has the original salt balance) , then just match for 20 litres of sparge water as if a new brew ?

OR do I take the ions residual in the grain and update a new base water profile ( ie spread across the 26 litres ) then use that new base profile and target my final water profile off that?

Yes it's a British ale yeast WLP 099.

 

[DBhomebrew]

#2 if you want to aim for levels different than your barleywine.

 

[DuncB]

#2 if you want to aim for levels different than your barleywine.

No I'm happy to have the same profile so I'll just plan for the sparge water to go to target.

Given that all the mashing is done I can just add those salts straight into the kettle ?

 

[DBhomebrew]

That's what I do.

 

[VikeMan]

Some salts will be in the grains from the first treatment for the main brew but will enough get to the final runoff and beer?

That depends on what you consider to be enough. If you want the same profile in both beers, then treat the sparge water to the same concentrations as you did the mash. You *could* add salts to the kettle, but you'd need to do some more (relatively tedious) math if you want exactly the same concentrations in the end.

 

[hottpeper13]

Don't know if this is right but what I do. In the water book there is a chart that gives ppm/gal, mg/ml of all the salts. I figure out what I want in calcium and split it between CaSO4 and CaCL2 for the style. For most beers it's .5-1 grams per gal (g/gal)
To make it simple I'll use 1 g/gal in this example, for the first runnings I need 8 gal strike liquor so there will be 8 grams of both in the mash. Since the absorption is accounted for I'll need 7 gal of sparge liquor to run into a second boil kettle. I put some flaked grain and 1/2 lb of pils malt in a bag and mini mash that with the 160* wort and add the 1 g/gal of salts to the kettle.

 

[DuncB]

Thanks everyone keep adding options for me I'm getting closer to the 11th hour.

 

[Indian_villager]

Recently did a partigyle. I'd say adjust the sparge water to target what you want the partigyle to be. My recent one was run off a big ol 14.7% stout. The partigyle beer was ok at first, then I added a smidge of acid and sodium to the finished beer and it came alive. I tested out my additions in a glass and once I found a mix I was happy with, I ratioed up for the volume in keg. This is still a beer, do what you have to in order to hit your preboil and post boil pH targets, and while you will have salts still in the grain from what you mashed with you may find value in adding some at this phase. You can also add some salts to the finished beer if you want to change, its not like your beer will be lost if you don't add salts to the sparge.

 

[mabrungard]

Since you're creating another beer with the remaining partigyle, the ionic makeup of the sparging water can differ from the first runoff beer. The main thing I caution is that the alkalinity of the sparging water still needs to be low in order to reduce the tannins that may be extracted.

A good barleywine or similar high gravity beer should include a healthy dose of sulfate in the initial wort in order to help properly dry that beer's finish. But the second partigyle won't have that much malt left in it and you probably DON'T want that same high sulfate content in the sparging water so that the dryness of second beer isn't too high. Reducing at least the sulfate content from the starting level, is a good idea and its reasonable to reduce all ionic concentrations for the sparging water too.

Remember that malt provides ALL the calcium that yeast need for their metabolism and the water doesn't need to have any in it. But there are good reasons to have at least 40 ppm Ca in order to precipitate oxalate and to improve yeast flocculation. With regard to the oxalate, the first mash will likely have precipitated all the oxalate and the sparging water might get away with a minimal content.

PS: That is a ton of ionic content in that Barleywine water profile. I find that at those levels, the water definitely imparts "minerality" to the beer. A more neutral but effective level for the chloride and sulfate would be at about half the levels shown. However, I recognize that Burton was the birthplace to several great barleywines and Burton ales and we know how mineralized that water is.

 

[DuncB]

Thanks for these comments and brewday is done.
Probably due to too fine a crush and perhaps full volume rather than even stiffer mash and some sparge I got target volume but only 1.099.
Partigyle I treated the water with overall less salts than the barley wine but in the same proportions.
The water was also acidified enough.
I got 18 litres at 1.049 for the gyle brew and should have collected more but due to vessel issues stopped early, really should have collected about 6 litres more and probably got 1.044.
pH and temp was good in both brews.