water chemistry only in mash?

[Pdaigle]

Hi All,

I decided to step up my game and play with the water. I added my city water profile in and using Bru'n water to calculate how much I need. Now my question is when Beersmith is giving me my element to add It's only for my mash, now whould I do it also for my strike water? for example adding 15gal for mash and 15 gal for fly sparge. Thank you all

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I use 100% RO source water and only treat the water used in the mash. I add minerals and salts according to the beer style and adjust the pH based on the grain bill. For sparge water I have been using straight RO water with nothing added. This approach works best for me, although you may want to hear from a few others too.

 

[doug293cz]

RO water has essentially zero alkalinity, so sparging with it cannot increase the pH of the grain bed. Your household water on the other hand may have considerable alkalinity, which could raise the pH during sparging, where if the pH gets above about 6 you can get tannin extraction. So, if using water with any alkalinity to sparge, it's best to acidify the water to a pH of about 5.6 to give you a margin of safety (acidifying the water neutralizes the alkalinity.) Bru'nWater can tell you how much acid to add to your water to get the sparge water pH you want.

Brew on

 

[Pdaigle]

RO water has essentially zero alkalinity, so sparging with it cannot increase the pH of the grain bed. Your household water on the other hand may have considerable alkalinity, which could raise the pH during sparging, where if the pH gets above about 6 you can get tannin extraction. So, if using water with any alkalinity to sparge, it's best to acidify the water to a pH of about 5.6 to give you a margin of safety (acidifying the water neutralizes the alkalinity.) Bru'nWater can tell you how much acid to add to your water to get the sparge water pH you want.

Brew on

So you calculate base off your Total Water and not just you mash water?

 

[doug293cz]

So you calculate base off your Total Water and not just you mash water?

I recommend calculating the mash water and sparge water separately. Bru'nWater allows you to do that.

Brew on

 

[mongoose33]

You're trying to control the water during the mash. Once that mash is complete, you've converted the starch to sugars, and sparging isn't doing anything except rinsing that sugar off the spent grain.

I'm still learning water (does one ever finish? ), but I had a bit of an uncertainty when I went from 4 gallons of strike water in a mash tun to 7.25 gallons using BIAB.

The water additions are essentially the same. I wondered how that could be, then (I think) it hit me in the head: I need to balance the grain and the additions, and since the grain amounts were the same, and 85 percent of the water is RO, then I wouldn't really need any more. That's what the calculators told me, and by George, it appears they were right.

 

[cactusgarrett]

You could go pretty deep into the rabbit hole regarding water chemistry, so I always approach my brew days this way:

1) At a minimum: (for all-grain) mash health is the most important aspect of the water chemistry adjustment. Get that in order, no matter what, using your tool of preference. Dilute with DI water and add salts as needed.

2) Close-second priority: acidify sparge water and/or dilute with DI, if your water calls for it. This is to avoid the extraction of tannins. I don't add any salts here.

3) Cherry on top: add salts to the boil kettle to match desired target water profile. There's debate out there whether it's futile or not to match a city's water profile, since it typically isn't known what a brewery further does to that city's water to brew. I, personally, add salts to the boil kettle to get the overall water (strike + sparge) to equal a given target profile. Beyond the mash, it makes logical sense (to me, at least) to do this for flavor purposes at best, but fermentation health minimally.

Just this man's $0.02.

 

[eric19312]

Hi All,

I decided to step up my game and play with the water. I added my city water profile in and using Bru'n water to calculate how much I need. Now my question is when Beersmith is giving me my element to add It's only for my mash, now whould I do it also for my strike water? for example adding 15gal for mash and 15 gal for fly sparge. Thank you all

I also use Bru'n water and Beersmith. I disregard Beersmith's calculations. I did upgrade to the supporter's version of Bru'n water and it provides a toggle so that you can choose to add all your salts to the mash water or to add them to both mash and sparge. Adding to mash and sparge is the default in the regular version of Bru'n water and seems to be general recommendation by Martin B. However I do find with my water profile that when brewing light colored beers I will end up adding all my salts to the mash tun and sparging with the plain (campden treated) water. This results in the salt profile in the boil kettle hitting the target profile for the style (e.g. yellow hoppy) while the salt concentrations in the mash tun are much higher than called for in the target profile. These higher salt concentrations (gypsum, CaCl2 and epsom) help me hit target mash pH (I aim for 5.4) without use of acid or acid malt in the mash. I do use a small amount of lactic acid in the sparge water as calculated in Bru'n water especially important on light colored and smaller beers.