Water adjustments

[samatkins]

Hi all,

I'm brewing today and I'm still kind of winging it on water adjustments so I'm hoping you guys would be kind enough to glance over my numbers/procedures and tell me if you see anything out of place. I use RO water since I live in Phoenix which apparently has awful water for homebrewing.

I'm brewing a Southern English Brown Ale straight out of brewing classic styles (my goal is to brew all 80 recipes over the next 2 years, but that's another story!) so I'm planning to use London's water profile:
Ca - 100
Mg - 5
SO4 - 50
NA - 35
CL - 60
HCO3 - 265

I got these numbers from brewersfriend.com's water chemistry page. Using EZ water calculator it looks like I'll be adding the following (in grams):
Addition: Mash / Sparge
Gypsum: 2 / 3.9
Calc. Chloride: 3 / 5.8
Epsom: 2 / 3.9
Baking Soda: 4 / 7.7
Chalk: 3 / 5.8
Lactic Acid: As needed / As needed

This is for a 6.75 gallon mash and 13 gallon sparge. Looking at the resulting water profile all of the items are within 2 or 3 PPM, which I'm sure is close enough.

A few questions:
1. How do you guys calculate your additions? I've just been fiddling around with numbers until I get the right resulting water profile. I understand that each salt adds its corresponding ions to the water (e.g. CaCl2 will add Ca and Cl), but that is the extent of my understanding.

2. I didn't calculate how much lactic acid to add since I have a Ph meter anyways. Last time I brewed I added about 5mL of lactic acid and still wasn't down to 5.6 in the boil kettle so I stopped because I was worried I would end up adding too much and ruining the beer. How much lactic acid do you guys typically add? I think Kal from theelectricbrewery.com said you could add up to 1-2mL per gallon before it would have an impact on the flavor, but I was feeling cautious

I think that's it, if anyone has any additional tips I'm all ears. Thanks in advance!

 

[ajdelange]

The first thing the brewery would do would be to remove as much of the bicarbonate as possible (about 204 mg/L) which would leave around 61 mg/L. This is means removing 3.34 mEq/L Ca++ (about 67 mg) of calcium as well leaving 43. As it would be difficult to prepare the water as specified from which you would only remove the calcium carbonate anyway my suggestion is to not put it in but rather come up with something with about 50 mg/L Ca++, 60 mg/L Cl- and tweak sodium and calcium levels as necessary to get electrical balance.

 

[samatkins]

Interesting, so the bicarbonate I saw was far too high? I lowered it as you suggested, thanks!

 

[ajdelange]

Not so many years back the standard practice for home brewers trying to brew, for example, a beer from Munich was to emulate the water of Munich with little regard for the fact that while Munich breweries use Munich water they may or may not treat it before using it to make beer. Thus recipes for various cities' waters abounded on the internet (there are still some at my own site for example) and homebrewers sought to do in a few minutes or hours what takes nature months or years i.e. dissolve limestone in water.

We're a bit wiser now and as it's hard to get the bicarbonate in and it usually is taken out anyway seldom advocate the addition of bicarbonate (or carbonate) except in those cases where the grist is acidic enough through the use of dark malts (that were used when the brewers of yore couldn't get all the bicarbonate out) that it is needed to neutralize the acids from those malts.

 

[mabrungard]

The Brewing Water Series of articles that are published in Zymurgy are my attempt at helping brewers understand the things that brewers from those old brewing centers probably did to brew great beers with their local water. Probably the most important component in their brewing was water alkalinity reduction.