Water Chemistry

[roger_tucker]

So I just got a water report back from Wards. A little background information, I'm on well and I have a water softener. Palmer says that you should absolutely not use softened water in all grain brewing. It sounds like the one big factor there is that the salt and calcium get exchanged in the softener, that you end up with almost no calcium in the water and that you need calcium for "yeast, enzyme and protein reactions ..." As you can see my water fits the bill with almost no Ca. Also notice that my HCO3 is super high.

Sodium, Na 144
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 1
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 3
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 16
Chloride, Cl 2
Carbonate, CO3 3.8
Bicarbonate, HCO3 317

I've only done a couple of all grain batches up to this point and struggled with efficiency. It hasn't concerned me a ton because I've just spent a few more dollars and added a few pounds of grain. I am curious however how much impact this has had on my brewing.

As a final note I put the water profile in BeerSmith and by diluting it with distilled water and making a couple of additions I can get water that falls nicely into some of the parameters laid out by Palmer. All is not lost it seems

 

[dudius]

You may want to add even a little calcium, you want around 20 for stouts and as much as 150-200 for hop-forward beers. Bicarbonates are quite high, which will up the pH of your mash. Calcium can help bring mash down to ideal pH, ~5.4

Sodium also looks high, you'll to make sure it's usually below 150.

What you could do is use a 5.2 pH stabilizer in your water was you bring it up to temp. That will remove a lot of your bicarbonates and give you better brewing water.

 

[ndsgr]

When I stopped worrying about water and took the "if it tastes good, it's GTG" route, my brew days were a lot more enjoyable and the beers somehow started getting better (although that also correlates to using pure O2). The only thing I do now is add a little gypsum for hoppy beers. If it tastes bad, you're kind of screwed. Buy spring water or an RO system and build from there.

My efficiency is most strongly associated with the crush. My system gets ~80% when I use Brewmaster's Warehouse's grain, which is too high for my liking and I do no-sparge. My LHBS's crusher sucks and it drops to about 60%.

I would strongly suggest against using 5.2 stabilizer. I had a stint of beers with a, for lack of a better term, chalky off flavor. I blamed the new to me LHBS for a while, but the beers got great when the 5.2 went in the trash.

 

[roger_tucker]

When I stopped worrying about water and took the "if it tastes good, it's GTG" route, my brew days were a lot more enjoyable and the beers somehow started getting better (although that also correlates to using pure O2).

Right, I'm not overly worried about it. Like I said, my efficiency is low, but I just spend an extra couple of bucks and use more grain. And my beers are good. I'm not running a commercial brewery here.

With that said, I am going to play around with it a little bit just to see what happens. Experimentation and good record keeping is how we all ultimately learn and get better.

 

[masonsjax]

Is there any way to get water before it hits the softener? I wouldn't use that water as is. You'll want to dilute that sodium down with RO water at the very least. "If it tastes good it is good" is an unreliable piece of advice. It might be true, but more often than not, it will lead to so-so beer and leave you wondering about efficiency problems, cloudy beer, lack of hop presence, bland malt profiles, slow or stalled fermentation, off flavors, etc.

I would work out a way to bypass the softener and get that water tested, or start with RO water and build from there.

 

[gatsby174]

I have the same situation as you. I have an ro/di for a reef tank and use it to brew with as well. It's better for your ro system to be plumbed in after the softener, it is spupposed to help the system last longer. I add back about 1/2 tsp of cacl for a 3.5 gallon mash, and have had spectacular luck with apa's and light beers. I'd highly recommend an rodi system for your situation.

 

[IslandLizard]

Depending on the water source your well taps into, its mineral composition can change with the seasons, making a water report less useful since it's only a snapshot.

Many well treatment systems remove iron and manganese, so if your source is high in those, tapping before the filter column will not give you good brewing water. You could tap after it, but before it goes through the softener, to prevent all the Na+ and HCO3- being added. Those are difficult to get rid of, leaving dilution with RO/distilled water as the only viable option.

 

[roger_tucker]

Is there any way to get water before it hits the softener?

One of my outdoor spigots isn't softened, but I'm not going to mess with getting it tested again. I'm actually trying to sell the house. So I don't want to spend another $38 until I move.

I'm planning on brewing a pale wheat tomorrow. I crunched the numbers in the Bru'n water spreadsheet. I can dilute with about 60% distilled, add a little Gypsum, CaCl, and Epsom salts and get a really good profile.

I have been getting less than 65% efficiency in my mash. I'm going to go out on a limb and adjust my recipe for 70%. I'll keep the forum posted as to the results of my experiment.

I'm totally not afraid to screw a batch up as long as I learn something in the process.

 

[IslandLizard]

Your crush may have more to do with your efficiency than your water chemistry. Likely of an order 90/10. Crush finer.

You can send Ward labs your own sample in a bottle, and order the Household Mineral Test (W-6), not the Brewers Test (W-5a). It's only $21 that way, and gives you the same test except for Iron and Phosphorus. Now if you pull raw well water before your Iron/Manganese filter you do want to include Iron as well as Manganese if you're filtering for that. Phosphorus levels in drinking water should be low (better be!) and pale to what the grist puts in during the mash.

If you're moving the whole issue becomes moot until you settle into your new home.

 

[roger_tucker]

I'm sort of on the fence about what to do with this batch. Quite frankly, this will only be my fourth all grain batch and I haven't got the sparge right yet. The first time I tried some sort of bastardized fly sparge. I had no idea what I was doing. The second time I dumped all of my sparge water right in with the mash before draining, and the last time I was trying to follow the BeerSmith 2 part sparge and screwed that up too. Evidently I was supposed to dump the smaller part of the sparge in with the mash, rest 10 minutes, stir, vorlaf, drain and then dump the second, lager sparge in and repeat. I ended up doing a volaf and drain and on my mash, and then just dumping in the larger part of the sparge, completely skipping the smaller amount of sparge water.

So the scientist in me says change one thing at a time. Get the sparge right, get a good reading on the mash pH and efficiency and work from there, a control as it were

The other side of me say that my predicted mash pH is going to be about 6.5 with my untreated water, far too high for good starch conversion and why screw around just shoot for the right numbers.

 

[masonsjax]

You really can't mess up a batch sparge. You can add all of it or do it in parts. You can use hot water or cold. There's no need to let it rest. What's important is stirring the water in thoroughly, very thoroughly. If you're not stirring enough before runoff, it can cause low efficiency.

 

[roger_tucker]

You really can't mess up a batch sparge. You can add all of it or do it in parts. You can use hot water or cold.

You're not the first person I've heard that from which makes me lean toward doing the water adjustment and seeing what happens. I've read some other posts where people have claimed to have water like mine, low calcium, high alkalinity, and high pH. They claimed that by getting the alkalinity down and adding some calcium their brews improved markedly both in taste and efficiency.

I'll post after tomorrow with the results of my experiment.