Water Modification Videos, TH's Spreadsheet

[GreenMonti]

Nice work Bobby_M. Thank you for putting this together. I am just getting interested in water profiles. This helps out a lot.

This is just a thought.
I know that municiple water is different at times. What you get depends on what they were supplying that day. I don't know how different the water is or what it is that they change. Does anybody know what I am talking about? If so, are the changes big enough to even matter?

Sorry if this was asked or adressed eairlier on. I didn't read the whole thing.

 

[Bobby_M]

I know that my water system remained within a few ppm on everything between two tests 3 months apart but I'm hoping to talk another person on my system into sending a sample in February.

 

[kal]

Love the spreadsheet TH! Phenominal work. Good job. It's the first time someone's actually explained residual alkalinity as a function of SRM to try and get your mash into the right pH range (5.1-5.3). Good job!

A question/comment however:

Actually, the pH of your WATER is irrelevent. It is the pH of your MASH that's important.

Understood, but what what slow fly sparging however? My city's water is soft with a high pH of 9.3 (confirmed with my pH meter).

I understand how and why salts are added to the mash and boil per the spreadsheet but I'm worried that when I slowly rinse my grain bed during fly sparging over 60 minutes with this untreated pH 9.3 water at 168F that I may leech tannins. When sparging I can see the untreated clear sparge water pushing down the sweet wort. So am I not pushing a pH 9.3 solution past grains? Can't this leech tannins? Shouldn't this sparge water be treated to ensure it's under a pH of 6?

I guess my question is: Should I acidify my sparge water (and only my sparge water) to bring it down to around 6 pH or so to avoid issues? If yes, how does this affect my boil kettle additions of salts using this spreadsheet? Using acid to lower the pH will then work with other salts and possibly lower the pH of the sweet wort collected in the brew kettle to something too low, no?

I have a pH meter now and will be measuring pH throughout the process to check/confirm this but would love to hear from some experienced people first. Thanks!

Kal

 

[GreenMonti]

On the adjustment spreadsheet, is it better to use the total alk or to use the bicarbonate numbers?

 

[kal]

I'm brewing a clone of Fuller's London Pride soon. They say they Burtonize the water but like BobbyM I find the Burton numbers bit over the top so I'm going with Moser's Ideal Pale Ale numbers.

My beer's specs: 1.044 SG, 11 SRM, 30 IBU

What I plan on doing to my soft Ottawa water:

Note that my Sulfate amount in pretty low compared to Mosers (140 in the mash and 94 in the final product, instead of 350 in both). This because I want something not overly bitter so I want to keep the Chloride to Sulfate ratio somewhat reasonable (1:2). I'm also leaving out the Epson salt (MgS04) out of the boil kettle to do that, but get the mash into the right pH range.

This is the first time I'm doing anything to treat my water so comments are appreciated!

Kal

 

[harpo]

OK, so I am reading this entire thread and doing lots of goofing around with the spreadsheet. BobbyM, you mentioned in your videos about not including the additions to the boil of some of the sodium (If I remember correctly). Which ones are candidates to leave out of the sparge+mash profile (add to boil)? Is there any reason to do this? Does it affect the RA? I see that gypsum, epsom and table salt change the chloride to sulfate ratio, but does it affect the RA at all? Maybe a dumb question...

I just asked my city water dept about my pH level from the tap our water has very low ionic strength due to a low amount of dissolved minerals. They told me that over the past 9 years, over 300 samples had been taken and an average for the pH is 7.3 to 7.8.

Then I got confused about whether or not to change my sparge water because of the pH. Do I need to do anything about this? I am rapidly heading toward brain explosion about all this...

here is the raw info, using Edinburgh as a target:

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 15.4
Mg: 2.7
Na: 7.5
Cl: 7.9
SO4: 22
CaCO3: 15

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 9 / 8.7
Dilution Rate: 0%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 5.5 / 0
CaSO4: 2.5 / 0
CaCl2: 0 / 0
MgSO4: 5 / 0
NaHCO3: 0 / 0
NaCl: 1.5 / 1.45
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 97 / 57
Mg: 16 / 10
Na: 25 / 25
Cl: 35 / 35
SO4: 120 / 72
CaCO3: 112 / 64

RA (mash only): 33 (8 to 13 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.48 (Very Bitter)


Thanks.

 

[southpawbrew]

I came upon this thread to close to my next brew day to be able to absorb all the great information here. Thanks ahead to everyone that has included info and tools in this and other threads it has been tremendously helpful. I would love feedback on my water profiles that I have worked up (very quickly) with the help of this thread, bobbym's videos, and the ez calculator.

I am brewing a Red Rocket Clone, beirmuncher's Cream of 3 Crops, and a Hefeweizen. I found a need to dilute my water with different %'s of RO to bring done some high levels in my water.

I used the Burton profile for the Red Rocket Clone but didn't go quite to the high levels on some components:

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 43
Mg: 37
Na: 34
Cl: 29
SO4: 72
CaCO3: 230

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 5.31 / 12
Dilution Rate: 50%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 4 / 9.04
CaSO4: 18 / 40.68
CaCl2: 0 / 0
MgSO4: 1 / 2.26
NaHCO3: 2 / 4.52
NaCl: 0 / 0
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 305 / 305
Mg: 23 / 23
Na: 44 / 44
Cl: 15 / 15
SO4: 555 / 555
CaCO3: 306 / 306

RA (mash only): 75 (11 to 16 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.03 (Very Bitter)

Cream of 3 crops (Edinburgh profile, seemed balanced for the lighter SRM):

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 43
Mg: 37
Na: 34
Cl: 29
SO4: 72
CaCO3: 230

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 5.31 / 12
Dilution Rate: 60%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 0 / 0
CaSO4: 6 / 0
CaCl2: 5 / 11.3
MgSO4: 3 / 0
NaHCO3: 0 / 0
NaCl: 0 / 0
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 153 / 106
Mg: 29 / 19
Na: 14 / 14
Cl: 132 / 132
SO4: 254 / 98
CaCO3: 92 / 92

RA (mash only): -34 (2 to 7 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 1.35 (Malty)

Hefeweizen (Munich Profile)

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 43
Mg: 37
Na: 34
Cl: 29
SO4: 72
CaCO3: 230

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 2.5 / 6
Dilution Rate: 90%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 1 / 2.4
CaSO4: 1.5 / 0
CaCl2: 2 / 0
MgSO4: 1 / 2.4
NaHCO3: 0 / 0
NaCl: 0 / 0
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 140 / 74
Mg: 14 / 14
Na: 3 / 3
Cl: 105 / 33
SO4: 137 / 74
CaCO3: 86 / 86

RA (mash only): -22 (3 to 8 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.44 (Very Bitter)

 

[Julohan]

How does these water adjustments look for a English IPA? Can I add all the salts to on pot? Then separate the water for strike and sparg water. Or should I add all the salts to the the mash/strike water only? Last, is the balance too far off to very bitter?

 

[Bobby_M]

The pic is too small to see what's going on. If you select the third worksheet, you can copy and paste the raw data as text and it's very readable.

 

[Julohan]

Here is the water profile I am trying to achieve.

Target Beer Style Ca+2 Mg+2 Na+1 Cl-1 SO4-2 HCO3-1 RA Cl to SO4

Burton India Pale Ale 352 24 44 16 820 320 -3 0.02


Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 26.4
Mg: 12.6
Na: 40
Cl: 90
SO4: 87.1
HCO3: 49





Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 2.93 / 8
Dilution Rate: 0%


Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:


CaCO3: 5 / 0
CaSO4: 8 / 0
CaCl2: 0 / 0
MgSO4: 1 / 0
NaHCO3: 0 / 0
NaCl: 0 / 0
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0




Mash Water / Total water (ppm):

Ca: 371 / 119
Mg: 21 / 15
Na: 40 / 40
Cl: 90 / 90
SO4: 525 / 204
CaCO3: 261 / 99


RA (mash only): -16 (4 to 9 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.44 (Very Bitter)

 

[Bobby_M]

That looks good to me for any kind of hoppy pale beer though I'd chuck another gram of MgSO4 into the boil kettle to get the total magnesium up.

 

[Julohan]

Okay, thanks. Should I put all the salts in the strike water? Or in the strike water and sarge water mix, then split?

 

[Bobby_M]

They have to go into the mash tun after you'd doughed in. The reduced pH in the mash will enable the salts to dissolve. If you put them into water, they'll just sink to the bottom and coat your pot.

 

[Reelale]

A buddy of mine had both pre and post filter water tested the the Ca dropped by 3ppm and the Total Alkalinity dropped from 82 to 72ppm. For the most part, the filter does nothing to dissolved minerals.

Just got my report back from Ward Labs. I sent a sample filtered through a 1 micron whole-house filter. According to your post, this should be nearly the same as non-filtered? I'm just getting into this whole other realm of brewing. I've done quite a bit of water chemistry work on lakes and ponds, measuring and only trying to change pH. But we used reagents. This is another ballgame. By the way, my water looks like this:

Na 25
K 3
Ca 8
Mg 2
CaCO3 28
Nitrate .09
Sulfate 11
Cl 15
CO3 <1
HCO3 25
Total Alkalinity (CaCO3) 20

Looks like it's "kinda" close to Pilsen, but still needs some adjustments, no?
Would a good "starting" point on the spreadsheet be to shoot for Balanced, then adjust as needed based on style? And just what is in 5.2?

 

[Bobby_M]

It's very pilsen like, apparently similar to Seattle. I'd probably brew a Bohemian Pils every other batch if I had that water.

I'd say getting Ca up to 50 and Mg to at least 15 is bare minimum.

For a nice pale IPA, you could do something like this:

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 8
Mg: 2
Na: 25
Cl: 15
SO4: 11
CaCO3: 20

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 5 / 4
Dilution Rate: 0%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 1 / 0.8
CaSO4: 2 / 1.6
CaCl2: 2 / 1.6
MgSO4: 2 / 1.6
NaHCO3: 0 / 0
NaCl: 0 / 0
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 82 / 82
Mg: 12 / 12
Na: 25 / 25
Cl: 66 / 66
SO4: 111 / 111
CaCO3: 46 / 46

RA (mash only): -20 (4 to 8 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.59 (Bitter)


For a Brown in the 20SRM area, you can go like this:

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 8
Mg: 2
Na: 25
Cl: 15
SO4: 11
CaCO3: 20

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 5 / 4
Dilution Rate: 0%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 4 / 0
CaSO4: 0 / 0
CaCl2: 1 / 0.8
MgSO4: 2 / 1.6
NaHCO3: 4 / 0
NaCl: 0 / 0
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 107 / 69
Mg: 12 / 12
Na: 83 / 57
Cl: 40 / 40
SO4: 52 / 52
CaCO3: 250 / 148

RA (mash only): 166 (19 to 24 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.78 (Balanced)

 

[Reelale]

Thanks Bobby, I guess I'm fortunate that I have some lee way in adjusting. About CaCO3 in the boil....will it disolve? Is gypsum more soluble? I'm gonna have to give the spreadsheet a thorough look. And what significance is a negative RA number?

 

[kal]

Hey guys! A couple of questions:

Question 1:

My water has Mg at 2 ppm. I find it's hard to get Mg up to the 10 ppm minimum on lighter beers (helles, american lagers, etc) without blowing out S04 given that that only way to add Mg is MgS04.

So how "important" is Mg? I've been getting everything else in range but Mg has been in the 6-7 ppm range.

Question 2:

When adding your additions to the boil, does it make sense to wait until after the hot break instead of adding when you first start sparging? Reason I ask is that I do skim off a lot of the protein build-up (foop) that appears before hotbreak. I'm wondering if skimming it off ends up removing any reasonable amount of salts if you add them at the start of the boil.

Kal

 

[Reelale]

Hey guys! A couple of questions:

Question 1:

My water has Mg at 2 ppm. I find it's hard to get Mg up to the 10 ppm minimum without blowing out S04 given that that only way to add Mg is MgS04.

So how "important" is Mg? I've been getting everything else in range but Mg has been in the 6-7 ppm range.

Question 2:

When adding your additions to the boil, does it make sense to wait until after the hot break instead of adding when you first start sparging? Reason I ask is that I do skim off a lot of the protein build-up (foop) that appears before hotbreak. I'm wondering if skimming it off ends up removing any reasonable amount of salts if you add them at the start of the boil.

Kal

Question 1. I just asked a local microbrewer about his additions and this is what he said about sulfates and Mg. The additions were based on his well water, which is kinda close to mine.

Gypsum 4.1 grams/gallon
Epsom Salts 1.5
Baking Soda 0.7
This should bring up your sulfites and enhance the bitterness. Also the yeast love magnesium&#8230;helps the growth phase in initial respiration

Question 2. I'm just spit-ballin' here, but I would think that after the minerals are in solution, skimming wouldn't remove anymore than boiling would. I think they would have more tendency to precipitate out, rather than rising .

 

[Bobby_M]

Kal, if you list your whole profile, I can play around to see if I can get something you can work with.

 

[Reelale]

It's very pilsen like, apparently similar to Seattle. I'd probably brew a Bohemian Pils every other batch if I had that water.

I'd say getting Ca up to 50 and Mg to at least 15 is bare minimum.

How do you handle sparge water additions if you do no-sparge? Can you just plug in the total pre-boil volume into the spreadsheet? Or is it essential to add some of these minerals to the boil as well as the mash?

 

[Bobby_M]

If you're no sparging, all the water you use is mash water, none is sparge. All the salts would be stirred into the mash.

 

[kal]

Kal, if you list your whole profile, I can play around to see if I can get something you can work with.

Thanks Bobby!

I'll give my water numbers using my last beer as an example: A Blonde Ale with SRM of 5. I have no issues with getting to Moser Pale Ale style numbers. It's the lighter beers like this (Helles, american lagers) that I have issues with.

My water's soft.

My intentions in water modifications for this lighter coloured/style beer was:

(1) Keep the additions fairly light but still try and get all of the numbers into the recommended range (within reason)
(2) Create a balanced Cl:S04 ratio

Here's what I did:

Mg is low as you can see. I keep hearing that many people don't want to add extra Epsom Salt in the kettle so I left it out. I suppose I could have included the Epsom Salt in the sparge water as well and then upped the CaCl to raise Cl as follows:

This way I would have hit the recommended range and had a balanced Cl:S04.

I guess my question really is: What sort of targets would you guys want to aim for for something like a Blonde Ale done right to style guidlines (American 2-row, a very little bit of Crystal 15L, fermented with WLP001/WY1056 at 67F)?

I'm doing a Helles next week to style and figure I should go even more towards the "malty" side of Cl:S04 ratio.

Thanks!

Kal

 

[Bobby_M]

I think both are OK. No harm in adding epsom to the boil that I can tell.

According to the profile in the EZ calc, Munich is still on the bitter side of Cl:SO4, but not overly so. I think balanced to 1.25 would be good.

 

[Reelale]

If you're no sparging, all the water you use is mash water, none is sparge. All the salts would be stirred into the mash.

Thanks again. I should have seen that in Daddymem's post about BIAB. Just ordered my minerals and plan to adjust close to Munich profile for an upcoming Dunkelweizen. Before that, I'm gonna try a Marris Otter SMaSH w/o adjustments or minor adjustments just to increase my Ca and Mg a tad. I've had good results with Ed Wort's Pale Ale without adjustments. Think the SMaSH will be ok?

 

[kal]

I think both are OK. No harm in adding epsom to the boil that I can tell.

According to the profile in the EZ calc, Munich is still on the bitter side of Cl:SO4, but not overly so. I think balanced to 1.25 would be good.

Thanks Bobby. In reading about TH's spreadsheet it's been mentioned a few times that people prefer to keep salts out of the boil (esp. MgS04), which is why the checkboxes are added. Not 100% sure why.

Kal

 

[Bobby_M]

The two salts I regularly leave out of the boil are Chalk and Baking Soda. They are typically only good for raising RA for the mash pH. Also, if you need to use Gypsum and others to drastically lower RA, you'll likely get all the SO4 you'd need out of the mash addition so you wouldn't want to layer more on top for the boil.

 

[garretto]

But is there any thing wrong with adding them to the boil? I'm doing my first salt addition on my next batch and I'm trying to keep sane by trying to keep things simple the first time.
I guess my question restated would be: Are there any negative effects of boiling chalk and/or baking soda? (Given that I follow what EZ water calculator determines how much I add)

 

[Bobby_M]

No, the only potential issue is going overboard on the Ca, Na, and HCO3. I think the best bet would be to fill out the EZ sheet, and copy and paste the data from the "raw data" worksheet. We can all weigh in on your plan for a sanity check.

 

[garretto]

I guess I'm not so much asking for help with the salt additions (although I definitely would love some help, which is while I'll go ahead and post them below) as much as I'm trying to ask a more general question of the effects of adding salts to the boil.
Originally, I was just going to follow the EZ sheet gram for gram after I got my amounts correct, but then I watched the video about unchecking the box for boil as well as read that some leave certain salts out of the boil.

So is it generally just Ca, Na, and HCO3 you need to worry about? I imagine too much of any individual element (Na, Ca,...) is bad so is there a general rule of thumb like don't go above 7 grams of any salt? I realize the feedback from my info below may possibly answer a few questions.

This is for a Pale Ale


Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 4
Mg: 1
Na: 6
Cl: 2.5
SO4: 1
CaCO3: 17

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 4 / 4.5
Dilution Rate: 0%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 0 / 0
CaSO4: 7 / 7.875
CaCl2: 0 / 0
MgSO4: 3.5 / 3.9375
NaHCO3: 0 / 0
NaCl: 1 / 1.125
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 109 / 109
Mg: 23 / 23
Na: 32 / 32
Cl: 43 / 43
SO4: 349 / 349
CaCO3: 17 / 17

RA (mash only): -74 (0 to 4 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.12 (Very Bitter)



Thanks for taking a look at this.

 

[garretto]

Hey Kal, I just noticed your little notes below your sulfate about 50-150 being normally bitter and up to 350 being really bitter. How's that range working for you?
I forget if I have read about that in Palmer or not.