Water Chemistry for 3 gal. Batch

[Lacasse93]

So I have finally decided to take the jump into messing around with water chemistry so have been reading a bunch of articles and forum posts but I am still a bit lost. I do not know how good my local tap water is but I do not know if I trust it enough. I have always used spring water from the grocery store to brew. I tried looking into the brands mineral info but it just gives me ranges of what each mineral may fall into.

My question is how difficult is it to buy distilled water and work a water profile using that (so from scratch I guess)? Also, I brew a 3 gallon BIAB and for most recipes I usually mash with roughly 2.5 gallons and sparge with 1.5 gallons. Do I also need to alter the chemistry of my sparge water or do I adjust as the full 4 gallons is being brought up to boil?

 

[mabrungard]

Well, you don't HAVE to adjust the chemistry of the sparging water. But if your goal is to provide a certain ionic content for a particular style (like having enough sulfate in a west coast IPA), then you'll probably need to make up for it somewhere.

I do have beers for which I do or don't adjust the sparging water. In the case of distilled or RO water, you can get away with no adjustments to sparging water. But if your tap water has significant alkalinity, then you'll be better off if you always neutralize the alkalinity for your sparging water.

 

[Lacasse93]

Once again typically I mash with 2.5 and sparge with 1.5 respectively to get to 4 gallons and boil down to three. In theory, is it possible to put all the salts necessary to get my full 4 gallons into the mash water and then sparge with untreated water? Or is this going to mess with the pH too much?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

There is no issue with respect to sparging with distilled water. It's alkalinity is only on the order of a few ppm.

 

[McKnuckle]

The simple answer for this part of your journey is to just adjust the mash water, and don't worry about the sparge portion.

Formulate additions to the 2.5 gallons in order to reach an appropriate mash pH according to software, and to achieve at least 50 ppm calcium in the mash. Then sparge with your untreated/distilled 1.5 gallons. Don't worry about calculating additions for 4 full gallons of water.

Alternately, calculate additions for and treat all 4 gallons at once, then separate it into 2.5 and 1.5 gallon volumes for mash and sparge. That will work too.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Alternately, calculate additions for and treat all 4 gallons at once, then separate it into 2.5 and 1.5 gallon volumes for mash and sparge. That will work too.

It will work, but only for recipes (grists) which demand zero alkalinity.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Spring water almost assuredly has alkalinity which must be properly addressed. Some spring waters are very high in alkalinity. Treat it to a measured 5.4-5.6 pH with an appropriate acid, as this will properly address the alkalinity.