Water Adjustment - Sodium, Bicarbonate and Mash pH

[dschiller]

I decided to take the plunge and adjust my tap water and check my mash with a pH meter. I input my Ward Labs water report into Bru'n Water and I can't manipulate the dilution with distilled water and the water additions to hit all 3 targets of sodium, bicarbonate and (perhaps most importantly?) mash pH.

My existing water profile includes: sodium 58, sulfate 45 (after multiplying SO4-S by 3), and bicarbonate (HCO3) 183.

I'm going to make a BJs Jeremiah Red clone, which has a 16.0 SRM and the following grain bill: 2-row (10 lb), Dark Munich (2 lb), Caramel/Crystal 120L (0.5 lb), Caramel/Crystal 40L (0.5 lb), Chocolate Malt (2 oz), and 1 lb Candi Sugar.

For my Bru'n Water calculation, I'm on the border between Amber Balanced (target sodium 10, bicarbonate 40) and Brown Balanced (target sodium 15, bicarbonate 90). I'm not listing the other targets, because I can adjust for them easily enough. The challenge is that my existing sodium level is way too high, and when I dilute it with 50% distilled water (to get 29 ppm, which is still too high but I suspect acceptable) I can't reduce my mash pH to 5.2 or 5.3 without getting the bicarbonate much lower than the target. Here are 2 things I'm considering:

1. Target Amber Balanced profile: I can use 50% distilled water and hit my mineral targets by adding gypsum, epsom salt, calcium chloride and lactic acid. The mash pH will be 5.4 (a bit high but perhaps acceptable?) but the RA will be -14. Isn't that too low??

2. Target Brown Balanced profile: With 50% distilled water and various additives (but no lactic acid), I can hit the mineral targets with a RA of 32 but the mash pH will be 5.6 (way too high).

What I'd like to know is:

1. Which are the most important parameters to hit (e.g., out of mash pH, sodium, bicarbonate, RA, etc.) if I can't dial them all in without building a profile from nothing but distilled water and lots of additives?

2. What water profile would you recommend for this Jeremiah Red clone (perhaps it should be something other than Amber Balanced or Brown Balanced)?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

-David

 

[Siberian]

You can ignore bicarbonate that is left as long as you hit the mash PH. It's not something you can taste. Concentrate on PH and keeping sodium from being too high and hit your sulfate/chloride ratio.

 

[ajdelange]

When one prepares water for brewing he has two concerns. The first is that the water be at mash pH and the second is that it contain the so called 'stylistic ions' (sulfate, chloride, sodium, magnesium) in proportions reflective of the style he wishes to brew. As in satisfying the first concern requires removing most of the bicarbonate in the water it is immaterial what that bicarbonate level was in the source in terms of the profile as the brewer has to remove it to make the beer. The fact that it was there in the first place has to be accounted for as it determines what the brewer needs to do to get rid of it. So it is actually pointless to specify a bicarbonate level in a profile that is set forth as a target for brewers. It is not pointless, however, if you are trying to convey an accurate picture of the water of, say Munich.

Brewers aren't actually interested in bicarbonate. They are interested in alkalinity which is a measure of the acid they will need to fulfill the first goal cited above. Bicarbonate is a major contributor to alkalinity in most cases but there are other factors as well.

Without getting rambling further you should ignore the bicarbonate in the profile and just do whatever you need to do to get the other ions where you want them. The bicarbonate numbers in those profiles were thrown in there to give an electrically balance profile in each case at pH 8. You aren't going to be synthesizing anything at pH 8. You will must work to mash pH.

Now note that many of those profiles and any you make up yourself that are heavy in calcium, magnesium and sodium and relatively light on calcium and sulfate will require you to add calcium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate or calcium hydroxide. These are bases which will require you to add an acid to neutralize them. In the case of the first two this also adds bicarbonate and in the case of the third water though the program tells you it is bicarbonate. This is where I get confused. So I think the best advice is just ignore bicarbonate wherever you see it.

 

[McKnuckle]

As others said, completely ignore the bicarbonate. Get your pale beer predicted mash pH to 5.4 and dark beer to 5.5. That is the most important thing in water manipulation - not matching some dubious profile.

In pale beer where you have more leeway to add gypsum and CaCl (both of which lower pH), keep Ca, Cl, and SO4 between 50 and 150. Cl and SO4 are the "soft" and "crisp" ions respectively, so experiment with more of one vs. the other. Try a 2:1 proportion with 100:50 ppm.

In dark beers where you have to fight the malt acid to keep pH high enough, keep the mineral levels lower with Ca retained at minimum of 40 ppm. Raise pH with baking soda but go easy. Na of 20-30 is nice in a dark beer, but not much higher. No Na in pale beers, and no Mg at all (some might disagree but that works for me).

If you reach your self-imposed limits of salt additions but still need pH lowering, go with lactic acid.

Finally, less is more. Repeat: less is more. Add salts with a purpose, and watch anything with a 3 digit ppm value. (Less is more!)

 

[dschiller]

Thanks for the advice. I'll ignore the bicarbonate level and the RA and focus on getting the correct mash pH and hitting the targets for magnesium, sodium (by diluting with distilled water), sulfate and chloride. I also won't be overly concerned about the calcium level as long as it's 50-100 ppm (Bru'n Water instructions).

Since the Jeremiah Red clone is pretty dark, I think I can get away with Na of 29. But when I make IPA, Wit, or Hef beers, I guess I'll have to use about 80% distilled water to combat my tap water's 58 ppm sodium level .

 

[ajdelange]

While the high sodium effectively bans the use of sodium chloride as a source of chloride the main problem you are confronted with here are about 3 mEq/L alkalinity. It will be disposing of that which will drive you towards the use of RO water. Even though the beer you are considering contains quite a bit of colored malt the mash has a pretty high proton deficit. Brewed with your water as is you'd need a totaal of about 10 mL of lactic acid - approximately 5 mL each for the water and the grains.

To get that alkalinity down below 1 mEq/L (which is about as high as you ever want to let it be) you will need to cut at least 2:1 with RO water. At this point you should start asking yourself whether, given that you have to go to the store to buy 2 gal of RO for each 3 gallons of brewing water, you shouldn't just buy 3 and then simply add some CaCl2 and CaSO4 to get the desired sulfate and chloride levels

 

[dschiller]

AJ, I'd rather use distilled water rather than RO water so I don't add more Na. I can get close to the Amber Balanced profile by using the following:

60% distilled water (results in a SO4/CL ratio of 1.2)
0.2 gram/gal CaSO4
0.3 gram/gal MgSO4
0.45 gram/gal CaCL2
0.60 mL/gal lactic acid (results in mash pH 5.2)

I am still learning so I need to read more to understand your statement "To get that alkalinity down below 1 mEq/L (which is about as high as you ever want to let it be)". What value in Bru'n Water should I keep below 1 mEq/L? On the Water Adjustment page, the alkalinity of the existing and finished water profiles are reported as ppm, not mEq/L. The only thing that shows mEq/L is on the Mash Acidification page, which lists Net Water Alkalinity, Total Mash Acidity and Net Mash Acidity (all mEq/L). Besides the estimated mash pH, do I need to be concerned about either of these 3 values?

 

[ajdelange]

A lot depends on how seriously you take these profiles. In fact it is not necessary to do so. You start with Na at 58 and alkalinity at 3 or a bit more. To get the sodium down to 10 you would have to dilute with 4.8 parts of RO water for each part of tap water and that would get your alkalinity down to 3/5.8 = 0.5 (25 ppm as CaCO3) which is definitely good. But if you are going to use 5.8 gallons of RO water for each gallon of tap you might as well use 6.8 gallons of RO and not worry about the tap water at all.

When one dilutes with n parts of RO per 1 part of tap the ion concentrations are reduced by the factor n+1 thus dilution with 4.8 parts RO gives you a dilution factor of 5.8 as you can see from the calculations above. The basic unit of measurement here is the mEq/L. Sometimes Brun water uses that, sometimes it uses ppm as CaCO3 equal to 50 time mEq/L and sometimes it uses grams bicarbonate (61*mEq/L). I cannot figure this out and so cannot tell you how to do this with Bru'n water but someone here may be able too. OTOH the calculation is so simple you should be able to do it in your head (approximately at least).

I don't understand your comment about RO vs distilled. RO isn't as pure as distilled but approaches it. For example I get 3 mg/L TDS out of my machine.

The Amber Balanced profile can be realized 'exactly' (all errors less than 0.0006%) by adding the following to 1 L DI/RO water:

Salt/Acid/Base mg/gal Synth
CaCl2.2H2O 389.51
NaCl 83.41
MgCl2.6H2O 0.00
CaSO4.2H20 240.63
MgSO4.7H20 383.84
H2O (DI) Liters 0.00
CaCO3 114.73
NaHCO3 18.41
CO2 0.00
HCl 0.00
Ca(OH)2 0.00
Na2CO3.H2O 0.00
Sodium Lactate 0.00
Potassium Lactate 0.00
Lactic 222.88
Sulfuric 0.00
88% Lactic ml/Gal 0.2102

As is the case with many of the Bru'n Water profiles one cannot realize the calcium and sodium specs without exceeding the sulfate and chloride specs which he does by adding sodium bicarbonate and (in this case) calcium carbonate. These raise the pH and so must be neutralized by acid. That is the source of the requirement for the 0.2 mL lactic acid per gallon (to pH 5.4).

By increasing the lactic acid addition to 1 mL/gallon of strike water you should be able to overcome the alkalinity of your grains and reach mash pH of 5.4. For pH 5.2 (pretty low) you'd need total lactic at 2.29 mL/gal which is pushing it.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

While the high sodium effectively bans the use of sodium chloride as a source of chloride the main problem you are confronted with here are about 3 mEq/L alkalinity. It will be disposing of that which will drive you towards the use of RO water. Even though the beer you are considering contains quite a bit of colored malt the mash has a pretty high proton deficit. Brewed with your water as is you'd need a totaal of about 10 mL of lactic acid - approximately 5 mL each for the water and the grains.

To get that alkalinity down below 1 mEq/L (which is about as high as you ever want to let it be) you will need to cut at least 2:1 with RO water. At this point you should start asking yourself whether, given that you have to go to the store to buy 2 gal of RO for each 3 gallons of brewing water, you shouldn't just buy 3 and then simply add some CaCl2 and CaSO4 to get the desired sulfate and chloride levels

AJ,

Slightly off this topic, but what is your opinion on water chemistry and BIAB?

I use Brun water and know that you just adjust the sparge volume to 0 gallons to do a BIAB profile. This is what I've done.

Say you had two beers:

One is BIAB with all distilled water and all additions in the pot.

The other is a regular mash and sparge. All the water is distilled with the same additions as BIAB, so the mash and sparge would use the same water.

The water for both examples

Would the two beers be exactly the same? I guess the only difference is the grist ratio.

What if you used distilled water for the sparge, therefore upping the additions in the mash water?

Hope that made sense.

 

[dschiller]

Thanks again, AJ. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this. My water adjustment decision really comes down to how low I want to get the Na. I agree that if I feel I need to get all the way down to 10 ppm, I should build up with 100% DI/RO water (Bru'n Water assumes some Na in RO water). If I dilute with 60% DI water, I'll get my Na down to 23 ppm, which might be good enough (IDK).

 

[dschiller]

For an IPA or red ale, is the (Bru'n Water) recommended sodium level of 10-15 ppm just a rough guideline? AJ calls these the "stylistic ions," so I'm guessing that as long as I hit my mash pH, I might not be able to taste the difference between Na at 10-15 ppm versus 25-30 ppm.