Water Adjustments

[Piperlester]

Hello super smart people!

I've been struggling with BIAB efficiency (60-70% - not terrible, but not good either). I've eliminated all the variables that I can come up with except some chemistry - crush size, double-milled, single milled, pH, mash duration, mash temp, and mash thickness. My final frontier seems to be water adjustments - here in Calgary, we have hard water (hyuk, water is hard year round in Canada!).

Last year's water report can be found here, if anyone wants more info: http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/Water/Doc...ter-Treatment-Plant-Treated-Water-Summary.pdf

The highlights, as averages:
Sulfate: 74 mg/L
Alkalinity (CaCO3): 144 mg/L
Chloride: 11 mg/L
Hardness (CaCO3): 214 mg/L

Based on these numbers and some research, we have high temporary hardness. I'm not looking to get into adjusting everything to a target profile (yet), but to eliminate the hardness as a cause of the poor efficiency I'm curious if pre-boiling (for 10 minutes to precipitate out the minerals) will make a difference, or if there's any other singular action that I can take to eliminate hardness as a cause?

Any ideas are appreciated!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

If you boil your water, then cool and settle it and lastly decant, you should end up with somewhere around 22 to 29 ppm Calcium (call it 25 ppm) and 65 ppm alkalinity. The chloride and sulfate should not be affected by this.

Magnesium may also come down a tad, but I'm not certain of this.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Hardness doesn't cause poor efficiency, pH issues from bicarbonate (listed on your report as alkalinity) can. As silver said, boiling will remove some Calcium/Magnesium (hardness) and some Bicarbonate (alkalinity). This should continue until the lower of the two is at about 1mEq/L. That means you can only get down to about 60ppm Bicarbonate (72 ppm alkalinity). I'd suggest you have three options:
1. Use RO water and follow the 'water chemistry primer' (sticky in this section).
2. Boil your water to remove bicarbonate, add back 2 grams per 5 gallons of water Calcium chloride and use acid to adjust pH. The amount of acid will depend on what you're brewing. Most pale to amber beers will need some acid.
3. Use your water and don't boil. Add extra acid to counter the bicarbonate. Don't worry about the Calcium chloride (you won't be removing Calcium through boiling). If you go this route, you'd probably be better off getting hold of some 85% Phosphoric acid. It's readily available in every HBS over here (Australia), but seems harder to get in the U.S. I'm not sure about Canada.

 

[ajdelange]

2. Boil your water to remove bicarbonate, add back 2 grams per 5 gallons of water Calcium chloride...

Add the supplemental CaCl2 before the boil. This may allow you to get more bicarbonate out than if you add it after the boil.

85% Phosphoric acid. It's readily available in every HBS over here (Australia), but seems harder to get in the U.S. I'm not sure about Canada.

It's readily available in the US from http://www.dudadiesel.com/choose_item.php?id=FGphos. Don't know whether they ship to Canada. Where I live we just have stuff like that sent to a shop in VT that specializes in receiving packages and pop over the border to pick it up. Looking at the map I don't believe that's practical from Calgary.

Lactic acid is probably the most popular acid for dealing with alkalinity but phosphoric is preferred by many as it is flavor neutral.

 

[mabrungard]

Magnesium doesn't play a part in boiling treatment. It can't form a precipitant by just driving off CO2. It requires a stronger base. So the only precipitant you can produce with the pre-boiling treatment, is calcium carbonate. Your magnesium concentration will remain unchanged.

While you could consider other water treatment for your tap water, your proposed pre-boiling would make an appreciable difference in the quality of your paler beers. While I am more inclined to say that the modest efficiency you are achieving is due to the BIAB process, water treatment will still make a difference in your beer. Give it a try.

 

[ajdelange]

This brings to mind lime treatment which results in the same level of decarbonation (generally) as boiling but does not require heat. Another advantage with it is that some of magnesium can be removed if desired. But it is really the bicarbonate you are after - not the calcium and magnesium so much.

 

[Piperlester]

Thanks all! One more question - will a run of the mill RO system produce variable output based on the high/low values in the water report, or will it produce a fairly consistent profile? I'm not opposed to learning to use RO water and make the necessary adjustments if it avoids the highly variable water we get here in Calgary (thanks to mountain runoff), and lets me focus on other variables that I can tinker with.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

**I've never used an RO system, so what I say is based on what others have said, mostly on this forum.
The output is fairly consistent as long as you maintain the filters (replace as needed).
Buy a good quality dissolved solids meter to check your output water.

 

[Gameface]

Thanks all! One more question - will a run of the mill RO system produce variable output based on the high/low values in the water report, or will it produce a fairly consistent profile? I'm not opposed to learning to use RO water and make the necessary adjustments if it avoids the highly variable water we get here in Calgary (thanks to mountain runoff), and lets me focus on other variables that I can tinker with.

I only periodically check TDS but mine seems to provide consistent water year round. We have very hard water here as well, most of it is runoff from snowpack. But it changes a lot from winter to spring to summer and fall.

 

[ajdelange]

RO systems remove a fraction of the ions which depends on the ion and the membrane. Lets say your membrane rejects 99% of sulfate ions. With your feed water sulfate content of 74 mg/L the permeate would have 0.74 mg/L sulfate in it. Should the feed water sulfate double to 148 mg/L you would expect 1.48 mg/L in the permeate. So the output concentrations track the feed water concentrations but at a much lower level.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

My initial guess for your water if passed through an RO unit:

13 ppm TDS
11 ppm Alkalinity
1 ppm Cl-
0 Ca++
0 Mg++
5.5 ppm Na+