PH Additions and Proportionality

[Brewmegoodbeer]

Hello Brewers,

I’m in a critical thinking situation right now. Lol I have a 10 gallon hot liquor tank that ill soon be using to heat the full volume of the mash and sparge water in via electric element. I start with RO water and build my water to suit the beer style. Its a 10 gallon HLT So Id first heat up 10 gallons of water to strike temperature and in there Id build my water and add lactic acid in the amount according to Beersmith. Id transfer 5 gallons to my mashtun as strike water, then add 5 more gallons of RO water to HLT to get up to volume of 10 gallons which is where my recirculation arm is in HLT. I now have 5 gallons of acid treated, salt treated water and 5 gallons of RO water in my HLT. Being that salt additions proportional, I would add salt additions proprtionally to treat the 5 gallons of RO. HERE IS MY HOLD UP: would I add lactic acid proportionally as well? Say beersmith states that it takes 4 mL to treat the “mash” to get down to 5.2 PH. If I wanted to treat 5 gallons of salt additioned water thats mixed with 5 gallons of PH treated water, what would I do? Additionally, how does beersmith account for treating a 10 gallon hlt full of water with acid to account for just the 5 gallons of mash volume?

 

[Oginme]

Regardless of how much water BeerSmith says you need, you can enter the amount you want to treat in the water tab (assuming BS3) and the program will scale the salt and acid additions based on that volume. Be careful with the acid recommenations from BeerSmith. The model Brad uses over estimates the buffering capacity of the wort and thus predicts about 60% more acid than is actually needed.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

I second not trusting the acid additions from Beersmith.

In your situation, I wouldn't add acid to the 10 gallons - you don't need acid in your sparge water when using RO. Add acid to your 5 gallons of strike water after you transfer to your mash tun. Salts can be added to the entire water volume - so add 2/3 of your total salts to the initial 10 gallons, then another 1/3 to the sparge water after you add the extra 5 gallons.

 

[Brewmegoodbeer]

Im still confused. I know I can change total water volume from whats recommended (8.7 in pic below) to what the total water I'm brewing with (12 gallons) but sparge and mash salt addition in grams both stay the same in “water adjustment salts” whether I choose 8.7 or 12 gallons. Wouldn’t I need more total salts if Im building a profile from 12 gallons of distilled water vs 8.7?? Why isn’t it changing when I change my volumes? For example, 1.09 g of cacl in sparge stays the same whether i change total water volume to 12 gallons or 8.7. Why isn’t it changing?

 

[Oginme]

I just tried it out and you are correct. At one point in the beta versions it did properly scale to the volume specified. I've added that feature to the suggestions on the BeerSmith forums and hopefully that will spur Brad to address the issue.

In the meantime, you can work around that particular issue with BeerSmith. You create a profile in the water tool and save it with the water agents needed to reach that profile. Now when you add the water to the recipe, click to add water and highlight the water profile you want. Now, below the ingredients list is the amount to add. Enter in the amount of water you want to make up and then click OK. The program will then pop up and tell you that there are water agents in the profile and ask if you want to add them to the recipe. Click 'yes' and it will add the salts based upon the volume you specified.

This is the way the water additions used to work in BS2 and it is one of the reasons Brad added the water tab to the new version. It seemed to work in the beta, but there are a number of things that were changed at the last update that ended up reversing some of the improvements and evidently this was one of them.