Water profile for Porter

[jdauria]

I am one of those guys that stares at the various water profile calculators and goes blank, so hopefully someone will give me an answer. I am brewing a coconut porter Sunday and was wondering if my water is good for that, or if I should use distilled and build up.

My water profile for Braintree, MA. all ppm unless stated:
Calcium 12
Magnesium 3
Sodium 55
Chloride 100
Sulfate 7.8
Alkalinity (CACO3) 23
PH 7.4

Grain bill
10.75 lb - 2 row
1.00 lb pale chocolate malt, 175L
9 oz - chocolate malt - 350L
0.5 lb - crystal 40L
0.5 lb - brown malt - 65L

So based on my water and grain bill, should I use my water to bill a profile for a porter, aka build towards say London water profile, or would I be better off using distilled and building from scratch.

Thanks!

 

[Hermit]

I'd say your water is a little high in sodium and chloride compared to the calcium level. The best thing to do in my opinion would be cut with half distilled water so that when you build the calcium up with calcium chloride you don't get 'excessive' chloride. If you like more hop bitterness you could just go with what you have and build up the calcium with some gypsum I guess.

Personally I think Kai's tool at brewer's friend is a great resource for this forum. You can post a link back for a more targeted response. You might even answer your question yourself once you get all the information input.

At this point just go with the default profile since it is kind of a minimal profile. Great place to start if you cut your water with RO or distilled.

If you haven't read the 'primer' sticky though, please do so. AJ was just first starting to post here when I decided that water was my next area to master.

 

[jdauria]

Thanks Hermit, I will read the primer again and take a look at Kai's tool. Wait, that didn't sound right!

 

[Hoser_brewing]

Looks like you're deriving your numbers from the 2011 water report from the town of Braintree. If you check out the previous years you'll see that there's a bit of movement in those values, especially for chloride. Is Braintree in the distribution zone for the MWRA? We certainly are up here in Melrose, so I can go by their latest values (available with monthly updates). Here's the latest one posted, which shows the levels of most everything to be highly reduced as compared to what you're seeing: http://www.mwra.state.ma.us/monthly/wqupdate/pdf/2013-cy-data/032013.pdf

 

[jdauria]

Braintree is only on MWRA for sewer. We have our own water supply. They have not posted their 2012 numbers yet, thus use of 2011. I do usually update my profile when they release their report.

 

[jdauria]

OK, spent half the morning reading the Water Primer sticky thread, trying the calculators on Brewers Friend, the Brun Water spreadsheet, etc. Finally went back to my old friend, John Palmer's EZ Water spreadsheet because once again I was just bogged down in all the info!

Based on my water profile posted in the first post in this thread, with a 50% dilution with distilled water as Hermit recommended, and with my grain profile, I come up with the following additions:

5 g of Calcium Chloride to Mash
3 g of Epson Salt to Mash
4.3 g of Calcium Chloride to Sparge
2.6 g Epson Salt to Sparge

That gives me Mash PH of 5.5 and a final water profile of:
Ca 78
Mg 16
NA 28
Cl 177
SO4 66
2.7 Cl/SO4 ration or very malty.

How's that look for a porter?

 

[Hermit]

Looks good to me cuz I like my beers malty. My water is calcium deficient also so I normally add a little gypsum in place of the calcium chloride to bring the calcium up. To help out I entered your numbers. It might help you understand the process a little better. I haven't double checked anything so feel free to correct errors and save the changes. Bottom line, you don't have a lot of minerals to interfere with the beer in that water profile and it should be just fine.


http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/?id=XTFVV2N

 

[Yooper]

You generally want to never go over 100 ppm of chloride, even for malty beers. Keep in mind that the sulfate/chloride ratio isn't really important, contrary to older texts and older thinking.

The Calcium, Mg, and Na look fine. But the chloride is just over the top, and the sulfate is a bit high as well.

 

[jdauria]

Thanks for doing that Hermit, I appreciate it. I really need to sign up for account on Brewer's Friend, it is such a great site. Thank you too Yooper...I made an adjustment on Palmer's spreadsheet which reduced chloride to 101 and sulfate to 65 and still gives me a 5.5 mash PH estimate and a 1.56 ratio which is still malty.

The beer I am making is a coconut porter that I made before that was a hit with all my friends and a BJCP judge in my homebrew club. I used all tap water that time and used Palmer's spreadsheet and it came out great, so not sure why I am so paranoid about water this time. Probably because I am considering sending it to Sam Adams Longshot contest, though it will be a close call as to whether it's carbonated in time to send before the deadline as I bottle, though kegging is in the works.

 

[jdauria]

Of course, if I ever get a PH meter that would help. Because all my water mineral additions are based on estimated PH per the spreadsheets and since I will be brewing before my LHBS opens tomorrow, don't have any acids to adjust alkalinity.

 

[Yooper]

Of course, if I ever get a PH meter that would help. Because all my water mineral additions are based on estimated PH per the spreadsheets and since I will be brewing before my LHBS opens tomorrow, don't have any acids to adjust alkalinity.

I've been using bru'n water spreadsheet lately, although I've used all of the others at some point. I found that bru'n water almost always nails the predicted pH for me, and I like the information on there (about chloride, and why the chloride/sulfate ratio is not a good way to adjust salts). If you have today today, give it a read. It's really helpful!

 

[Battles4Seattle]

*DEAD THREAD BACK TO LIFE

I'm sorry for the resurrection but I am brewing a Porter this weekend and am new to water profile. This is Spanish to me.

My Federal Way, WA water

Calcium 28
Magnesium 0
Sodium 7
Chloride 4
Sulfate 7
Alkalinity (CACO3) 50
PH 7.4

Brewer's Friend awesome calculator says I need to increase the Calcium and Sulfate.

If I add 4 grams of Gypsum that will increase my Calcium to 54 mg and Sulfate to 69 mg.

Does that look good or am I missing something?