water profile and fly sparging with on demand water heater

[redbone]

I think I have my water profile situation figured out, but this leads me to another question regarding water profile and sparge water. I have a on demand water heater that I use to fill my mash tun and fly sparge with. Given that this is my method of brewing, I'm not able to treat my sparge water prior to sparging. So, looks like there are 3 possible options if I don't want to change my mash/sparge method.

• Treat mash water only with proper additions for that amount of sparge water: ie it calls for 18.75 gallons of water to sparge with, but the total water needed is 35.12. Only treat the 18.75 gallons. Leave out the rest.
• Treat mash water with ALL additions for the total amount of water: ie: treat the 18.75 gallons of water as if it's 35.12 gallons.
• Splt it up. Treat mash water with proper additions for 18.75 gallons and then add the other additions directly to the boil.

Again, I need to work within my limitations and I do not plan on adding a HLT or any intermediary tank to do these adjustments.

What is the best thing to do in this situation? Any other options?

Thanks!

 

[Yooper]

If you have good water for sparging (no alkalinity), you can do it however you’d like. But many people have water with a higher pH (not RO quality), or a high alkalinity.

What is the make up of your water? If it’s extremely soft with low alkalinity, you can do however you want as long as the mash pH is good. If it’s alkaline, you won’t get good results with using it without adding acidity.

 

[redbone]

Yooper, thanks for the reply. We have very hard water. Here is the profile that I've been working on.

As you can see... HCO3 is pretty darn high and ph is 7.9 in my base profile (water from the tap). Yet.. We've not had any issues in mash conversion and when we've tested historically, PH has fallen in line to where it should when mashing. Our efficiencies are good and we're producing some good beers (dark and light). I'm just looking for more in this IIPA we're about to brew.

 

[Yooper]

Your HCO3 is way too high for sparging without treatment though. Ideally, the alkalinity would be close to 0 for sparging. If you're doing full volume mashing, you could add enough phosphoric acid to neutralize that, but if you want to use your on-demand heater, you'd need to figure a way to neutralize that alkalinity before sparging with that water. Is that what you're doing now? How are you dropping the alkalinity from 210 to 26 ppm?

So, I'd suggest doing that- doing a full volume mash and not sparging if you don't want an HLT or other way to treat the sparge water before using.

 

[redbone]

Yooper, I don't know what to tell you. I'd still like to reference my original post for what I'm looking for. We got derailed very quickly on alkalinity. I'll just post my water report here and say a few more things after that.

I'll let you tell me if i'm reading HCO3 wrong or not... I've seen Ward lab reports for this area and municipalities dating back to before 2010 and they are all > 170ppm. I think this is going to be one of those things that we could take off line and be more productive at than talking ona forum about. I'd be happy to call you to discuss. I can tell you that in 15+ years brewing, we've not had a problem mashing or sparging in any way without treatment. There are plenty of members of homebrew clubs in the Middle Tennessee area with the same experience. We've all won plenty of various competitions and we know we make great beer here in the area.


Going back to my original post, If I don't have an HLT or other vessel to do ion adjustments in... how would you apply adjustments? If anyone knows, please let me know. I'm thinking I'll just put it into the boil and skip the mash to be the most safe if we're not having any mash difficulties (which we are not). I didn't state my original goals, but the only reason for this post is to do something more to try and get the best water profile for an IIPA we'll be doing tomorrow for a hop forward beer taking it back and making ipa's great again.

 

[mabrungard]

I'd be happy to call you to discuss. I can tell you that in 15+ years brewing, we've not had a problem mashing or sparging in any way without treatment. There are plenty of members of homebrew clubs in the Middle Tennessee area with the same experience. We've all won plenty of various competitions and we know we make great beer here in the area.

It looks like you entered the data correctly. That is actually great brewing water as long as you address the high alkalinity for some brews.

You wouldn't ever note a 'problem' with mashing or sparging with that water, but your brewing results may not be ideal. If 'everyone' in your area is brewing without any water treatment measures, everyone's beers are going to have the same result and possibly the same flavors. Could be great or might not since that water is better suited to some styles and less so for others. And I love medals as much as the next person. But in some cases, they only show that some beers were better than the others. If they are scoring 35+ points under the review of National or Masters level judges, then they really are good beers. But don't read too much into a medal if the beer's judging and scoring aren't top notch.

While that on-demand water heater is nice, there is no reason why you can't treat that water prior to sparging use. I used to have the same issue. I ran my hot sparging water into a bottling bucket and treated the water as necessary and then used the bucket outlet nozzle to feed water for the sparge. In the case of your water, you DEFINITELY need to acidify that water for sparging. It will help several issues.

If IPA is your goal, then boosting the sulfate level is certainly recommended. Any of the treatment options you mention above are feasible, but each has different implications for pH during your process. I'm not sure if Beersmith is an ideal tool for predicting pH at any stage of the brewing process, but there are other brewing water tools out there.

 

[redbone]

So, we brewed last night. Finished around 11:30pm. Made some salt adjustments via Beersmith recommendations. All of which went into the mash. Even though the Ward Labs report the pH to be 7.9, it was actually around 7.4, the mash was about perfect at 5.23 or so. Didn't add any acid at all, although we were prepared to with a bottle of 29% phosphoric acid waiting in the wing. We sparged with water directly from the on-demand hot water heater. Coming out of sparge, pH didn't get above 5.32. The total water Pre-boil volume pH read about the same as the mash and post-boil into the fermenter pH was about 5.1 as I would also have expected.

Given Bicarbonates/Total Alkalinity and pH, one would think and all the tools would tell you that you will need to make acid additions with this water. However, we did not and nor did we need to. Given our close monitoring of pH through the entire process, I don't see any mistakes made other than someone might still argue that the sparge water needed treating (even though it was running out around 5.32).

My original post was really trying to figure out at what point to add salts or if it mattered how much I added at any particular stage. After realizing that everything I was dealing with was relatively pH neutral aid none would have a dramatic effect on pH, I added them all at the beginning of the mash. This apparently worked fine.

Oh, and as usual... our recipe in beer Beersmith estimated an OG of 1.069... OG was measured as 1.069 with pictures to prove it.

Thank you Martin and Yooper for your replies.