Ready to start looking at my water in Germany

[FuelshopMcgee]

Okay so I've been brewing for about 3 years now and I've been overall pretty pleased with *MOST* of my beers. There have been a few that have been coming out not as expected. Namely beers leaning toward the malty/roasty flavor profile and mouthfeel problems as well. My lighter color beers have all turned out as I wanted for the most part.

I've nailed my process down pretty well I have a consistent efficiency w/ my mash and my fermentation is 100% temp controlled. Using yeast pitching rates and starters to ensure ferment is healthy etc etc...I think this is my next step.

Anyway I live in Germany (US citizen stationed here) and It was hard for me to track down my water report. I found one for the town I live in and it seems fairly straight forward as far as translation. BUT I was plugging my #'s in and I figured perhaps there is a Deutsch speaking HBT'er that could help me make sure I'm not doing something wrong.

Here is the link to the water reportpwm
So I'll start by putting down my #'s that I pulled off of the water report and any confusion I might have.

Calcium PPM 15 / Magnesium PPM 2 / Sodium PPM 3 / Chloride PPM 4 / Sulfate PPM 3 /

The next two I'm iffy on. There was no spot for CaCO3 but I found Carbonathärte (WE) which tranlates to "Carbonate" figured that is what I was looking for. The # it gives is 2.3 in DH (Deutsche Härte) I did some searching and found to obtain the PPM equivalent you multiply by 17.9 which gave me 41.17.

The PH was the other iffy portion. There was several spots that mentioned PH but I didn't know which one to use. If the one I think is the correct one than my water PH is 8.35?

If those #'s above are correct after using Palmers spreadsheet my residual alkalinity is 30. (seems like I need some additions if I'm going to brew anything other than pale malt)

Can anyone help me re-affirm that I'm looking at the correct #'s this is my first time diving into water chemistry and I know I have a long road ahead of me but I'm completely committed to the cause. I'm going to start reading the Primer sticky at the top of this page but I wanted to get a jump on this too and see if this could be causing some of my flavor/mouthfeel issues I've been perceiving.


Did I mention I live w/in 20 minutes to the Bitburger brewery
Thanks guys!

 

[ajdelange]

Looks to me as if you have pulled all the numbers out correctly.

This is pretty good stuff all around and you should be able to brew most styles of beer given supplementation as recommended by the Primer. Adding calcium chloride should fill out the flavor profile of the beers (and calcium is almost always beneficial). Adding gypsum where sulfate related qualities are wanted will be a good idea in some cases.

I always recommend monitoring of mash pH with a meter. This can be the difference between good and very good beer. Once the mash pH is under control (and this often requires acid) the rest is tweaking chloride and sulfate to taste.

 

[FuelshopMcgee]

Thanks for the reply aj good Information as always. So in your experience would you say it's possible the lack of flavor or punch in some of my beers could be that this water is just to much of a "blank slate?". I forgot to mention I was monitoring ph w/ the cheap strips and using 5.2 salts to regulate. But I use a good litmus paper at work I'll snag a piece and try it out ( if it's good enough for hydrazine it should be ok).

 

[ajdelange]

Some beers are famous for the very soft water they are brewed with (in particular Bohemian Pilsner) but I think in most cases getting some chloride into such water just rounds out the flavors in the beer improves body and sweetens it slightly. IOW I think I make a better Pils by adding some calcium chloride to Pilsen's-like water. This is not to the extent that the oft quoted 50 ppm calcium is reached but to about half that level. You have very low chloride and low calcium. I'm guessing that any beer you brew would benefit from some calcium chloride. For Boh pils less; for other beers more.

When I see the word "punch" I am reminded of the fellow here who reported that "all the flavors were brighter" in his beers when he started controlling mash pH. I suspect that your problem may be that it is too high as this is usually the case especially if you are reading it with pH strips and relying on 5.2.

I'm very skeptical with regard to pH strips. There is no question of me using them personally as I am color blind but people with normal color vision widely report problems with them. Some, who have researched them, report a fairly consistent bias of about 0.3 pH low and I think this may have something to do with the widespread tendency (though I hope that we are stamping this out) of brewers to add more chalk and baking soda to their beers than they should. I have never seen a defense of them in brewing in which an investigator compared their readings to a pH meter and found them anything other than very approximate (in brewing). But I have seen condemnations of them by people that have done this. I don't know why this is. Perhaps it has something to do with wort color components staining the dye.

Unfortunately 5.2 does not live up to its promise. It is a phosphate buffer and phosphate does not buffer well near pH 5.2. In fact I just read yesterday that one investigator has hypothesized that the natural buffering of mash to around 5.7 should be ascribed to amino acids and not phosphate for this reason. In my experiments I found it incapable of moving mash pH anywhere close to 5.2 at the recommended dose. Even the recommended dose loads the beer with sodium.

Mash pH is best set with acid in some form.

 

[BigEd]

Thanks for the reply aj good Information as always. So in your experience would you say it's possible the lack of flavor or punch in some of my beers could be that this water is just to much of a "blank slate?". I forgot to mention I was monitoring ph w/ the cheap strips and using 5.2 salts to regulate. But I use a good litmus paper at work I'll snag a piece and try it out ( if it's good enough for hydrazine it should be ok).

The "blank slate" of your water profile is good in that it's pretty simple to do some brewing salt additions to such water to add the necessary calcium ions and others to tweak your brewing liquor. Your description of "lack of flavor or punch" in your beers will probably be helped by some additional ions. A crude analogy is food without seasoning. You don't say what styles your are brewing but as AJ suggested calcium sulphate (gypsum) and calcium chloride would be useful. In basic maybe over simplified terms hoppier ales like those of the UK and US styles will benefit from gypsum and calcium chloride is a good place to start for most lagers.

 

[FuelshopMcgee]

Thanks for the replies again. I didn't specify which beers particularly because I'm all over the place with my brewing these days. Just finished out a rye saison that turned out fantastic but before that I had a brown ale oaked and doused w/ a bit of bourbon and spices. The spices/oak and vanilla flavors all came out but there was just a complete lack in body and malt backbone. Very watery is the best way to describe it.

I really enjoy everything under the sun so it's nice to know where I stand at this point. I can just look into making these additions to my water and tweak to taste. I'm a huge hop head and my DIPA's that I've made have always lacked that strong malt backbone even when mashing high (similar to lagunitas)

Aj I'm sold on picking up a PH meter at this point. Is there a particular brand that everyone uses? I'm seeing a HUGE range in pricing on amazon from 20 - 150 I don't want to break the bank but I don't want to buy something I'm going to regret.

Thanks again to those of you that reply or will reply I can not believe the wealth of knowledge that gets shared on this site.

 

[ajdelange]

I'm not going to respond to that question other than to say that I believe many have had success with the Hanna pHep5. I use laboratory meters and I very much doubt that the average home brewer would want to spring for one of those.