Water profile for a golden stout

[undergroundbrewer]

This may sound like a "duh" kind of question, but I'm attempting to brew a golden stout but curious what kind of water profile I should be going for? I'm thinking I should just go with a traditional stout profile, but not sure if I need to account for the different malt profile.

Here's my mash bill:
4 lb pilsner
4 lb pale malt
3 lb munich malt
2 lb flaked oats
4 oz brown malt

RO Water
2g epsom salt
4g calcium chloride
.55g salt
.5g gypsum
7 ml lactic acid

This puts the mash at an estimated PH of 5.22, with the rest of the profile as follows:
Calcium: 63ppm
Mag: 10
Sodium: 11
Sulfate: 55
Chloride: 119
Bicarbonate: 0

I'm really going for the malty mouthfeel, as I've had trouble achieving this in the past when I've brewed stouts using RO water. I've never messed with salt (regular or epsom), but I understand having magnesium (10-40ppm) is beneficial for yeast health. Personally I try to keep it to gypsum / calcium chloride to keep it simple, but wondering if these additions will help get this brew over the edge to greatness

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

 

[marc1]

This may sound like a "duh" kind of question, but I'm attempting to brew a golden stout but curious what kind of water profile I should be going for? I'm thinking I should just go with a traditional stout profile, but not sure if I need to account for the different malt profile.

Here's my mash bill:
4 lb pilsner
4 lb pale malt
3 lb munich malt
2 lb flaked oats
4 oz brown malt

RO Water
2g epsom salt
4g calcium chloride
.55g salt
.5g gypsum
7 ml lactic acid

This puts the mash at an estimated PH of 5.22, with the rest of the profile as follows:
Calcium: 63ppm
Mag: 10
Sodium: 11
Sulfate: 55
Chloride: 119
Bicarbonate: 0

I'm really going for the malty mouthfeel, as I've had trouble achieving this in the past when I've brewed stouts using RO water. I've never messed with salt (regular or epsom), but I understand having magnesium (10-40ppm) is beneficial for yeast health. Personally I try to keep it to gypsum / calcium chloride to keep it simple, but wondering if these additions will help get this brew over the edge to greatness

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

You don't need to add magnesium. The malt has some in it already. If you are just starting out with water additions, I suggest leaving it out.

You could take a stout and add tiny amounts of these salts to it to get a sense of what they do - dissolve and dilute them in water first, then use a dropper to add to small glasses of beer to see the effects. I've done this with Calcium Chloride and gypsum, and it's very interesting how they work.

You could experiment with higher sodium chloride, try it in the glass test above to see what it tastes like.

A mash pH of 5.22 (room temp) is on the lower side. You could use a bit less acid. The software estimates aren't perfect, and if it's off a bit you could be getting lower.

 

[Jag75]

If your going to dive into water profiles my advice is to get a program. There are multiple ones to choose from like Bru N Water, Brewersfriend, mash made easy ect..

 

[Yooper]

I’d reduce or remove the lactic acid, and shoot for a mash pH of 5.5 or so. Brown malt and other roasted malts have a better smoothness with a slighter higher mash pH.
I’d remove the epsom salts totally. Take out the table salt, and use only calcium chloride to increase the calcium and chloride. Keep the chloride under 100 ppm, more like 70-80 ppm. You can leave the gypsum if you want, but I”d probably just use calcium chloride. It depends on your hop choices, as some hops get harsh to me with added sulfate. Plus, you don’t need sulfate in that stout anyway.

 

[mabrungard]

I'm curious, what's stout about that beer? The gravity? Other than a touch of brown malt, there isn't any roast.

I'm not sure that I'd target a mash pH higher than 5.4 since there isn't much brown or roast in that grist. For that reason, you'll probably want to leave the sulfate level as you have planned, but the chloride level is higher than necessary. As mentioned, getting chloride below 80 is probably better. I wouldn't want the water flavor to dominate the beer.

The magnesium addition is not really necessary unless you're wanting to enhance bittering. I don't expect that is your goal in this beer.

 

[undergroundbrewer]

@Jag75 This isn't my first foray into brewing salts, but just going off of beersmith this time around.

@Yooper I appreciate the simplistic approach - I will follow your sage wisdom. I'm using Northern Brewer strictly for a 60 minute bittering addition, but not much as this is a "milk stout" after all.

@mabrungard I'm ultimately trying to deceive the senses and make it taste like a stout without the look of a stout (which in turn requires a different mash bill). I'll be adding whole coffee beans and cacao during the end of fermentation to help with this as well. Brulosophy ran this experiment and had excellent results, hence I'm borrowing off that recipe with slight changes.

In sum, it sounds like ditch the salts, reduce/eliminate the lactic acid addition, reduce / eliminate the gypsum, and stick to calcium chloride additions. Believe it or not, this was my gut feeling but after not brewing in awhile and trying something totally different, I decided to doubt myself for some reason. Note to self - keep it simple, stupid

 

[undergroundbrewer]

Also @mabrungard i'll be toasting the oats for added effect the brown malt should help the toast factor come through without much color addition.