Water chemistry help

[Yooper]

Why all the hating on the chalk? I've only used it a couple times when trying to match a particular brewing city's water profile.

Because it doesn’t dissolve well in water, without extraneous measures like bubbling c02 through the water, so just falls out as precipitate anyway. Which is probably a good thing in your case, because if it did dissolve, it would likely raise the mash pH too much if you were trying to hit a city’s water profile.

Brewers don’t often use the water from the city without boiling it first, for example, to precipitate out the chalk. So that might make the “profile” but not the brewing water that was actually used. Generally, alkalinity is rarely desirable in brewing water unless making a porter or stout.

 

[cabron99]

["Yooper, post: 8252344, member: 4189"]Ahem- “gentlemen”? ]

Um, ah, that would be, oops. My most humble and sincere apologies forwarded.

Pat

 

[Yooper]

["Yooper, post: 8252344, member: 4189"]Ahem- “gentlemen”? ]

Um, ah, that would be, oops. My most humble and sincere apologies forwarded.

Pat

You made me laugh, so don’t apologize. I thought it was funny. I’ve been called “mate”, “Buddy”, “sir” and many others, and so “gentlemen” was no big deal to me!

 

[cabron99]

You made me laugh, so don’t apologize. I thought it was funny. I’ve been called “mate”, “Buddy”, “sir” and many others, and so “gentlemen” was no big deal to me!

Yoop, if I may be so familiar, I have enjoyed your views and input for years. I have always thought of homebrewing as a brotherhood, but now I think I'll change that to family. Thanks.

pao

 

[cactusgarrett]

As an alternate procedure to salting the sparge, I offer this (as it's what I typically do):

Say you've got a specific water profile in mind; let's call the salt additions to hit that "x".

• Add just enough salts to the strike water/mash to hit desired mash pH (based on grainbill) - call it "1/2 x" as it's typically around there for me.
• Acidify the sparge water enough to keep the pH down during sparge (calculators can tell you how much).
• Add the remaining salts (the other "1/2 x") to the boil.

By doing this, (in theory) i'm getting my mash pH where it needs to be, I don't have to worry about dissolving salts in sparge water, and i'm still hitting the overall "x" content and target profile for flavor purposes. I just like not having to deal with salts in the sparge water. Since I have to dilute my local water so much (due to high alkalinity) adding the whole target "x" salt load to my mash would be just too much.