Water additions.

[helterscelter]

I tried doing water additions for the first time today. I used 16.5g water for my brew. 8.5 went in the mash. Rest went into the hlt for herms temp control and stuff.

Question I have.. the water looked milky after I added the minerals. And now that I've finished sparging my hlt is coated in white chalk. Is this normal?

I added

7g chalk
3g baking soda
5g gypsum
8g calcium chloride
5g Epsom salt

 

[Blazinlow86]

Looks ok to me

 

[helterscelter]

Looks ok to me

Forgot to attach a pic

 

[whiskeyjack]

Why are you using baking soda and chalk? I'm pretty noobish when it comes to water additions, but I've never had to use either of those. Baking soda and chalk are not used very often in general recipes, my understanding is if you need to lower the PH acid of some sort is used, if you have roasted malts, acid additions are generally skipped or lowered depending, but you don't use chalk or baking soda to raise it. May be helpful to post your recipe with your water profile you were using. Like I mentioned I'm no expert but when I saw baking soda and chalk the 1st thing that came to my mind was that old cartoon with Yosemite Sam yelling Whoa, whoa whoa camel whoa! Maybe Yooper or Adjelange will be around sometime to correct me if I'm wrong lol

 

[quijiba]

Do you know your starting water?

That's a lot of baking soda and chalk. Unless you have incredibly acidic water, i don't know why you would want to raise the alkalinity/hardness of your water that much.

To be honest you could probably just do:

8g calcium chloride
5g gypsum

no anything else (unless you need magnesium in your water or something, then use a bit of epsom salt)

 

[helterscelter]

Why are you using baking soda and chalk? I'm pretty noobish when it comes to water additions, but I've never had to use either of those. Baking soda and chalk are not used very often in general recipes, my understanding is if you need to lower the PH acid of some sort is used, if you have roasted malts, acid additions are generally skipped or lowered depending, but you don't use chalk or baking soda to raise it. May be helpful to post your recipe with your water profile you were using. Like I mentioned I'm no expert but when I saw baking soda and chalk the 1st thing that came to my mind was that old cartoon with Yosemite Sam yelling Whoa, whoa whoa camel whoa! Maybe Yooper or Adjelange will be around sometime to correct me if I'm wrong lol

I was using the Brewers friend water chemistry thing. Lol. I fully admit that I have no clue what I'm doing.

Basically I picked the "balanced" target profile. Chose a starting profile that is basically ro water. And fiddled with the additions until the calculator said all my ions were within range of the target profile..

No clue if that's how you're supposed to do it. The documentation on how to use the calculator kinda sucks.

I'm sure there are considerations I should make when choosing between the various additions besides making the calculator turn green but I'm too noobish to know what they are. Lol

 

[helterscelter]

I was using the Brewers friend water chemistry thing. Lol. I fully admit that I have no clue what I'm doing.

Basically I picked the "balanced" target profile. Chose a starting profile that is basically ro water. And fiddled with the additions until the calculator said all my ions were within range of the target profile..

No clue if that's how you're supposed to do it. The documentation on how to use the calculator kinda sucks.

I'm sure there are considerations I should make when choosing between the various additions besides making the calculator turn green but I'm too noobish to know what they are. Lol

View attachment 568847View attachment 568848

My actual starting water was reverse osmosis from the store

 

[whiskeyjack]

I use brewersfriend water calc with ro water as well. Post your recipe and ill try to get you in the ballpark. I normally use around 1.6g CaCl and 1.5g gypsum for my 1.5 qt/gal mash. 4gal batch though, at least thats what i used today with balanced water profile on a cali common

 

[Wreck99]

Hmm I've never had a chalky substance in my kettles after a brew day since using brewing salts. I'm subscribing to this thread as I'm curious why this happened to you. Perhaps the chalk? I've not used that personally since I heard it's difficult to get mixed in easily.

 

[helterscelter]

I use brewersfriend water calc with ro water as well. Post your recipe and ill try to get you in the ballpark. I normally use around 1.6g CaCl and 1.5g gypsum for my 1.5 qt/gal mash. 4gal batch though, at least thats what i used today with balanced water profile on a cali common

Here you go. Thank you for your help. I followed you on Brewers friend. View attachment Veda's amber ale - snapshot brew 20180505 - Beer Recipe - Brewer's Friend.pdf

 

[Yooper]

The chalky substance is chalk- which is good because you almost never need to add chalk (or baking soda) so it's good it didn't dissolve.

Try the advanced water calculator in brewer's friend, and see what the projected mash pH is with and without the chalk and baking soda. The simplified calculator is WAY too simplified in my opinion, and shouldn't be used in any cases that I can think of.

 

[whiskeyjack]

Ha! Told ya Yoop would get in here. So with 27.5 lb at 1.25 qt/lb it gives me 8.6 gallons for the mash. If you add minerals to the mash and sparge seperatly the mash itself will need 5g Gypsum, and 5g CaCl.

Ca Mg Na Cl- SO4- HCO
79.6 2.0 2.0 76.1 87.7 2.000

When I do water calc with brewersfriend I use advanced, do one for my mash and one for my sparge. Put all my minerals to 2-5 for the starting water since its RO. Start with CaCl because its the only one I can use to get Cl. Max my Cl out, then use gypsum and or epsom salt (i usually just use Gypsum) to get my Ca and So4 up to where I want them. Its also giving me an estimated mash PH of 5.26 for the mash with this setup. Not sure if its because the special B is 115 L or because of the thick mash. Like I said Im pretty noob at this, but this is what I would do. Its ball park. If Yoop or Adje says anything different go with what they say lol

 

[mabrungard]

That's odd that a competent calculator directed you to add chalk to your water. While alkalinity is needed for some dark grists, chalk is not an ideal way to add alkalinity to water. In addition, its never needed for sparging water. Was there a pH prediction for that mash?

The other additions were likely to have dissolved and contributed to your desired water profile. Fortunately, the chalk probably didn't add to the water's chemistry and probably didn't help drive pH up.

 

[helterscelter]

Ha! Told ya Yoop would get in here. So with 27.5 lb at 1.25 qt/lb it gives me 8.6 gallons for the mash. If you add minerals to the mash and sparge seperatly the mash itself will need 5g Gypsum, and 5g CaCl.

Ca Mg Na Cl- SO4- HCO
79.6 2.0 2.0 76.1 87.7 2.000

When I do water calc with brewersfriend I use advanced, do one for my mash and one for my sparge. Put all my minerals to 2-5 for the starting water since its RO. Start with CaCl because its the only one I can use to get Cl. Max my Cl out, then use gypsum and or epsom salt (i usually just use Gypsum) to get my Ca and So4 up to where I want them. Its also giving me an estimated mash PH of 5.26 for the mash with this setup. Not sure if its because the special B is 115 L or because of the thick mash. Like I said Im pretty noob at this, but this is what I would do. Its ball park. If Yoop or Adje says anything different go with what they say lol

Ya. Yooper is definitely a great source of know how and experience.

I'm going to have to look at the advanced water calculator. Probably going to have more questions than answers tho. Lol.

Thanks for the help!

 

[helterscelter]

Ha! Told ya Yoop would get in here. So with 27.5 lb at 1.25 qt/lb it gives me 8.6 gallons for the mash. If you add minerals to the mash and sparge seperatly the mash itself will need 5g Gypsum, and 5g CaCl.

Ca Mg Na Cl- SO4- HCO
79.6 2.0 2.0 76.1 87.7 2.000

When I do water calc with brewersfriend I use advanced, do one for my mash and one for my sparge. Put all my minerals to 2-5 for the starting water since its RO. Start with CaCl because its the only one I can use to get Cl. Max my Cl out, then use gypsum and or epsom salt (i usually just use Gypsum) to get my Ca and So4 up to where I want them. Its also giving me an estimated mash PH of 5.26 for the mash with this setup. Not sure if its because the special B is 115 L or because of the thick mash. Like I said Im pretty noob at this, but this is what I would do. Its ball park. If Yoop or Adje says anything different go with what they say lol

I probably just need to read more in order to understand this -- I feel really dense today. I don't understand how to get the water profile to work-out in the advanced water calculator..

I assume the mineral levels you listed are after all addtions? from the "Mash Water Report Before Dough-In:" of the calculator? or from the "Overall Water Report:" ?

what would the additions be in order to get those mineral levels, assuming I treat the mash and the sparge water separately?

 

[NTexBrewer]

That's odd that a competent calculator directed you to add chalk to your water. While alkalinity is needed for some dark grists, chalk is not an ideal way to add alkalinity to water. In addition, its never needed for sparging water. Was there a pH prediction for that mash?

The other additions were likely to have dissolved and contributed to your desired water profile. Fortunately, the chalk probably didn't add to the water's chemistry and probably didn't help drive pH up.

So I pretty much did the same as Helterscelter with my brew day yesterday. I use 100% RO water. I was brewing a Mexican Vienna Lager and used the Brewer’s Friend Balanced Water profile as it said it was good for amber colored beers.

It listed the Balanced Profile as

Ca+2 = 80
Mg+2 = 5
Na+ = 25
Cl- = 75
SO4-2 = 80
HCO3 = 100

To get this profile in 100% RO water you have to add Chalk and Baking Soda to get the bicarbonate of 100.

In my case I added

2.5g Gypsum
3.5g Epsom Salt
1g Table Salt
5g Calcium Chloride
6g Chalk
2g Baking Soda

My mash volume was 3.6 gallons for a mash thickness of 1.5qt/lb

Unlike helterscelter, I had the button checked to add all my salts to the mash. The calculater showed that I needed to add 5.25ml lactic acid to the mash to achieve a mash pH of 5.35 which is what I got. I sparged with 100% RO with no salt or acid additions since my RO has a pH of 6.2.

So I guess my question is if I’m using 100% RO water do I need to worry about the bicarbonate (HCO3) level of a water profile when I’m building up my water. Does it affect the flavor profile of the beer?

 

[whiskeyjack]

To get this profile in 100% RO water you have to add Chalk and Baking Soda to get the bicarbonate of 100.

Adjust for Ca, Cl, and So4. Then adjust for ph. These as far as Ive read are the most vital. Adjust the others to taste

 

[Yooper]

First of all, cross off chalk. It doesn't dissolve properly without extraneous measures (like bubbling c02 through the water).

And water "profiles" aren't something to shoot for, as the ideal level of bicarbonate is something like 0. So no chalk at all. And no baking soda, ever, unless your mash pH is too low (and it will almost never be).

Make sure your pH is 5.3-5.5 or so, and adjust the other salts "to taste", just like you do for cooking. Those ions are for flavor, and nothing more. Calcium helps with yeast flocculation, but you don't actually "need" it.

For a Vienna lager, I'd leave out epsom salt, gypsum, chalk, baking soda, etc. I'd go with either nothing in RO water, or a bit of calcium chloride (like 5 grams) in RO water.

 

[kevin58]

I'm not familiar with some of the software mentioned but in Beersmith there is a water profile tool. I sent in for a Ward Labs brewers water kit ($42) and they sent back a report. I made a water profile in Beersmith using that data and now when I make a beer I just choose a style from the menu and it tells me what to use and how much for that particular style.

 

[newtobrew1981]

Chalk is not recommended because it doesn't dissolve completely that's why you have a chalky film

 

[newtobrew1981]

Sorry for the repeat answer

 

[newtobrew1981]

And I believe if your using ro water your sparge additions can be added to your kettle instead. Exceptions would be chalk baking soda