Water profile adjustment

[meaulnes]

I am new to brewing. I plan to brew my second batch in a few days and I would like to benefit from my first experience.
During the first batch, I discovered that my wort was very astringent and bitter.
For bitterness it was mainly due to an error in hop proportion and time.
The beer was very astringent after the boil and after the fermentation. But since my beer has rested 3 or 4 weeks at 12°C (54 F) and the astringency seems to have dramatically decreased.
Reading John Palmer's book, I learned that astringency may be due to excess in alkalinity and that this can be corrected by boiling the water more than half an hour and letting the bicarbonates to settle, then decanting the water off the sediment.
I also read that water need chloride to improve the sweetness. As my water (according to my supplier) has no Cl ion at all and is a little bit more than medium hard, I plan to add some calcium chloride to increase the level of Cl ions and also improve the total Ca.
My question is : « Should the calcium chloride be added before the boiling and decanting treatment or after ?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Are you sure your local water company didn't state that the water is chlorine free? Chlorine and chloride are functionally different things. One is an element, and the other is an ion of it for which each atom has gained an electron.

You really need an analysis of your source water. Otherwise you are merely flying blind with respect to Ca++, Mg++, Na+, Cl-, SO4--, and alkalinity. It takes a lot of energy to boil water for a half an hour or more, and for the cost of that energy (along with the cost of your time and effort) you could likely purchase good quality and nigh on alkaline free RO water, and then add your own minerals, so you will know well more precisely what you actually have.

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

 

[jodell]

Second. Most groceries stores have ro water filling for about 30 cents a gallon.
I bought a few buckets from Lowes to take in and fill. To water is the best option for building a water from a blank slate.
Also check out Brian water. It is a free excel sheet that will greatly help you for coming up with a profile and minerals to add

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

First, are you brewing extract or all grain?

If extract, I'd recommend just using RO water as is. That's really all you need to worry about at this point.

If all grain, the water profile should be managed to get the correct content for the style of beer you have. What type of beer are you brewing?

I use RO water for my all grain brewing, but then I use Bru'NWater to figure out what to add to get the profile I want and the optimal pH for mash/flavor.

I know it's possible to brew great beer with tap water if you get lucky on your city's (or well's) water profile, but why risk it. Brewing a batch of beer takes work and you end up with a bunch of it to drink. Take the extra step to make it as good as it can be. I think I pay around $4 for 10 gallons of RO water at the grocery store.

 

[meaulnes]

Are you sure your local water company didn't state that the water is chlorine free? Chlorine and chloride are functionally different things. One is an element, and the other is an ion of it for which each atom has gained an electron.

You really need an analysis of your source water. Otherwise you are merely flying blind with respect to Ca++, Mg++, Na+, Cl-, SO4--, and alkalinity. It takes a lot of energy to boil water for a half an hour or more, and for the cost of that energy (along with the cost of your time and effort) you could likely purchase good quality and nigh on alkaline free RO water, and then add your own minerals, so you will know well more precisely what you actually have.

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

Thanks for your help.
I live in France and the word for chlorine in French is "chlore". For chloride it is "chlorure".
Apparently the report has changed since last time I visited their site. Now it states
- Chlore libre (Free chlorine): 0.11mg/l
- Chlore total (Total chlorine): 0.14mg/l
I understand your point and I have ordered kits to know more about hardness and alkalinity.
I will think also about RO*water but at the moment I don't know how it cost and where to find it.

 

[meaulnes]

First, are you brewing extract or all grain?

If extract, I'd recommend just using RO water as is. That's really all you need to worry about at this point.

If all grain, the water profile should be managed to get the correct content for the style of beer you have. What type of beer are you brewing?

I use RO water for my all grain brewing, but then I use Bru'NWater to figure out what to add to get the profile I want and the optimal pH for mash/flavor.

I know it's possible to brew great beer with tap water if you get lucky on your city's (or well's) water profile, but why risk it. Brewing a batch of beer takes work and you end up with a bunch of it to drink. Take the extra step to make it as good as it can be. I think I pay around $4 for 10 gallons of RO water at the grocery store.

Thanks for your help.
I am brewing "all grain" and I try to make a moderately strong belgian ale. The first one I brewed is not that bad except to much bitterness. As I told previously answering an other guy I will explore the RO*water alternative.

 

[RM-MN]

I am new to brewing. I plan to brew my second batch in a few days and I would like to benefit from my first experience.
During the first batch, I discovered that my wort was very astringent and bitter.
For bitterness it was mainly due to an error in hop proportion and time.
The beer was very astringent after the boil and after the fermentation. But since my beer has rested 3 or 4 weeks at 12°C (54 F) and the astringency seems to have dramatically decreased.
Reading John Palmer's book, I learned that astringency may be due to excess in alkalinity and that this can be corrected by boiling the water more than half an hour and letting the bicarbonates to settle, then decanting the water off the sediment.
I also read that water need chloride to improve the sweetness. As my water (according to my supplier) has no Cl ion at all and is a little bit more than medium hard, I plan to add some calcium chloride to increase the level of Cl ions and also improve the total Ca.
My question is : « Should the calcium chloride be added before the boiling and decanting treatment or after ?

You have discovered that beers like some conditioning. With most of my beers that 3 to 4 weeks of conditioning is just a good start. Depending on the color and alcohol content of the beer that conditioning time can be much longer with a strong stout coming out best at over a year. A light color, low alcohol beer may be ready to drink at the 3 week point.

 

[hottpeper13]

As for the adding salts before or after boiling. The more calcium you have when boiling the more alkalinity is removed,it's more complicated then that but this works for me. So I add my salts pre boil to help reduce the alkalinity, and the SO4 and Cl2 ions remain. I have a 220 volt induction burner and it cost me less then a buck to boil 10 gal,and I move it all with a pump.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

As was stated above, if (by necessity, as with the lack of access to RO water) you are pre-boiling your water to reduce alkalinity, you must add CaCl2 and/or CaSO4 to the water prior to boiling it to promote sufficient alkalinity removal. I would consider adding 6 g. CaCa2 and 3 g. CaSO4 before boiling the water. Start with ~11.4 gallons, add minerals, stir well, boil down to ~10.4 gallons, and after cooling you will end up post boil with the 10 gallons that you need. That should allow for sufficient boil time, and account for shrinkage loss due to cooling. Lastly decant.

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

 

[mabrungard]

As was stated above, if (by necessity, as with the lack of access to RO water) you are pre-boiling your water to reduce alkalinity, you must add CaCl2 and/or CaSO4 to the water prior to boiling it to promote sufficient alkalinity removal.

No. You don't have to add calcium salts to water with high temporary hardness...unless there is a lot of magnesium in the water. Most hard water sources tend to have sufficient calcium content for the decarbonation effect to precipitate calcium carbonate from the water.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

No. You don't have to add calcium salts to water with high temporary hardness...unless there is a lot of magnesium in the water. Most hard water sources tend to have sufficient calcium content for the decarbonation effect to precipitate calcium carbonate from the water.

It all comes down to understanding the strike waters analyticals. And in this case, we do not understand what we are starting with, so determining what we will end up with is simply not possible.

The boiling method itself is not capable of removing all alkalinity. In the real world, when sufficient calcium is present for maximal carbonate precipitation roughly 50 - 65 ppm of alkalinity will likely still remain after boiling. And boiling itself will in many cases deplete strike water calcium levels to the extent wherein supplementation with additional calcium is required.

So in light of the lack of analyticals, and in order to cover all bases, I would still recommend the addition of some quantities of CaCl2 and/or CaSO4, if for no other reason than to replace some level of the calcium that will inevitably be lost to precipitation, if not perhaps to also boost the calcium above what may be already low starting levels. The greatest negative here being the potential to introduce more chloride and/or sulfate than is desired. To avoid this "potential" negative, dilution with distilled or RO and/or acidification are preferred over boiling.

At the very least I suggest running a simple "GH and KH" test (fish water test kits generally have this capability) to determine total (general) hardness and alkalinity (as carbonate hardness).

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

 

[meaulnes]

No. You don't have to add calcium salts to water with high temporary hardness...unless there is a lot of magnesium in the water. Most hard water sources tend to have sufficient calcium content for the decarbonation effect to precipitate calcium carbonate from the water.

To be accurate the hardness is 19°f (French degree) i.e. 76 mg/l as Ca but I don't know anything about Mg. It is considered as moderately hard. Should I consider this value as sufficient regarding your remark?

 

[meaulnes]

So in light of the lack of analyticals, and in order to cover all bases, I would still recommend the addition of some quantities of CaCl2 and/or CaSO4, if for no other reason than to replace some level of the calcium that will inevitably be lost to precipitation, if not perhaps to also boost the calcium above what may be already low starting levels. The greatest negative here being the potential to introduce more chloride and/or sulfate than is desired. To avoid this "potential" negative, dilution with distilled or RO and/or acidification are preferred over boiling.

At the very least I suggest running a simple "GH and KH" test (fish water test kits generally have this capability) to determine total (general) hardness and alkalinity (as carbonate hardness).

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

It is more or less what I was contemplating. I thought of adding CaCl2 in order to bring a bit more Cl (as SO4 seems dominating Cl hence strong astringency) and to compensate for the loss of Ca due to CaCO3 precipitation.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

It is more or less what I was contemplating. I thought of adding CaCl2 in order to bring a bit more Cl (as SO4 seems dominating Cl hence strong astringency) and to compensate for the loss of Ca due to CaCO3 precipitation.

Sounds good! I would however inject that Cl does not negate SO4, so if your off flavors are in fact from SO4, adding Cl ions will not overcome this defect. That said, I'm not convinced that SO4 leads to astringency. I've gone as high as 206 ppm SO4, and many have gone well beyond this with no astringency.

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

5 out of 7 of the worlds classically famous brewing waters could arguably be said to become nominally calcium deficient (for most beer styles being brewed) if water boiling alone was to be utilized, without the addition of supplemental calcium. This assumption considers 40 ppm calcium as the low end for most home brewing strike waters acceptability, and also assumes that alkalinity is reduced to 50 ppm via the boiling process. The 8th famous brewing water, Pilsen, is excluded here, as they seem to be capable of doing amazing things with mineral deficient water via utilizing the decoction method of mashing (a method that is beyond the consideration of most home brewers). These 5 waters would benefit from added calcium via supplementation.

If a bit more alkalinity is permitted post boil due to real world boiling method efficiency considerations, 4 of 7 still fail this exercise by falling short on calcium after boiling, or alternately if one sets the bar at a minimum of 50 ppm calcium for their strike water, then 5 of 7 still fail, even if the boiling results in textbook perfect alkalinity reduction.

https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com/

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Thanks for your help.
I live in France and the word for chlorine in French is "chlore". For chloride it is "chlorure".
Apparently the report has changed since last time I visited their site. Now it states
- Chlore libre (Free chlorine): 0.11mg/l
- Chlore total (Total chlorine): 0.14mg/l
I understand your point and I have ordered kits to know more about hardness and alkalinity.
I will think also about RO*water but at the moment I don't know how it cost and where to find it.

Forget spending money on water tests for now. If you're in the EU then I think it's a EU requirement that the water company has to post a fairly recent analysis of the water from every reservoir on their website. It sounds like you've found that, and it's good enough as a starting point, although the way they present information about hardness/carbonates can be incredibly confusing. The key numbers are :
Ca2+ - calcium, needed for enzyme activity in the mash
Chloride (Cl-) and sulphate (SO4 2-) - the ratio of these two is as important as the absolute amounts. SO4 brings out the bitterness of hops with quite a "precise" structure and so you want lots of it in eg West Coast IPAs, a ratio in favour of chloride emphasises maltiness and hop-fruitiness and soft mouth-feel.
Hardness - which consists of hydrogen carbonate HCO3- which can be boiled out, and carbonate CO3 2- which can't. It's good for porters but not for much else. As a rough guide, if your kitchen kettle etc furs up with chalk then you have more carbonate than is ideal for brewing. It means you need more acid to get the mash pH right.

Reverse osmosis (RO) water is the modern equivalent of distilled water, it's a blank canvas with no minerals in so you can build up the salt profile of your choice. Often the cheapest bottled water is made by RO in a factory rather than romantically dripping through aquifers to make mineral water. However I suspect in France it may well be that the cheapest low-mineral water is in fact "mineral" water - something like Volvic is low enough in salts to be a good base for brewing, it's a question of looking at the mineral analysis on the labels of the supermarket standard water to compare.

As an example, here''s the water analysis for the municipal water around Poperinge in Belgium.

 

[RicardoBrittoni]

I agree, make your own water, don't rely on tap. Building water is really easy, and takes just a few tools, also it's a bit like breaking bad.

I use distilled, but RO is similar just a bit higher in pH, distilled is 7. RO is 8. From these blank canvasses I build what ever I want. Just download bru'n water. It's a complex spreadsheet, you pick a water that either fits your style of beer, or hits a mash pH you want. Over time you will get so comfortable in water chemistry you will build your own. I've been controlling water since my second brew.

This affords a huge level of control that you will learn to love. If you want a bitter IPA you can increase the sulfate, if you want a sharp pale ale, you can drop mash pH to 5.2. Richer mouth feel, take it up to a pH near 6.

That beer you make is almost all water, I say make it right. I've had great success building water. As for adding hops at the wrong time, try not to do that. Luckily time settles out hops.

Do you have beer smith software? It is invaluable in brewing, and can help you fix things, as it calculates every aspect of brewing.

Cheers and good luck.

 

[mabrungard]

Chloride (Cl-) and sulphate (SO4 2-) - the ratio of these two is as important as the absolute amounts. SO4 brings out the bitterness of hops with quite a "precise" structure and so you want lots of it in eg West Coast IPAs, a ratio in favour of chloride emphasises maltiness and hop-fruitiness and soft mouth-feel.
Hardness - which consists of hydrogen carbonate HCO3- which can be boiled out, and carbonate CO3 2- which can't. .

Nice try, but you seem to misunderstand several elements of brewing water chemistry and water chemistry.

Only the absolute amounts of Cl and SO4 matter. The ratio is virtually meaningless without an eye on the absolute amounts. I could have 3 ppm SO4 and 1 ppm Cl and I'm pretty sure that their effects on the beer will differ from having 300 ppm SO4 and 100 ppm Cl in the beer.

It also appears you need to study carbonate chemistry. Bicarbonate and carbonate are virtually the same thing. Their presence in water is primarily affected by the pH of the solution. Carbonate certainly can be boiled out of solution when there is sufficient calcium in solution.

 

[meaulnes]

Ok guys. Thank you very much. I will try to extract the best of what you advise me, even if it is still a bit difficult for the beginner I am.
See you after brewing my next one.