Water profile testing and efficiency issues

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Corosis

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Hey all,I would like to pick your brain on mash efficiency and water testing a little bit though, if you don't mind. I've been having TERRIBLE efficiency. typically about 50%. On my last batch, i tried some new interventions to try to change what I thought must be the problem. As background, I am using a 55qt rectangular cooler with a steel braid as a mash tun. I live out of town, so am using well water here in southern Minnesota (all limestone bedrock) but our water goes through not only the water softener, but also a mineral filter. So, really, I have no clue what mineral content is in my water. Where can I get this tested? are there any labs that will test water, and what kind of price tag does it carry?

As for efficiency, here is what I tried in my last batch. It was an american stout recipe, using a good 15.5lb of brains. The software I was using (beer calculus from hopville.com) set to a 69% efficiency (I was hoping my new stuff would help) said I should have an O.G. of 1.065, but my O.G. actually came out to 1.058. volumes were correct for pre-boil, boil off etc. Calculated out to about a 61% efficiency. This is an improvement from the 50 i usually get, but still not great. Here is what I did: I used a friends mill who usually gets about 80% efficiency, so the crush was good; I mixed in some about 10% water that comes fro the one faucet in the house that doesn't go through the water softener, I added the appropriate amount of 5.2 pH stabilizer from 5-star, and I stirred the mash every about 15 minutes. I batch sparge, and my sparge water was 180F, and frist and second runnings were of about equal amounts. With all of that, I still only had about a 61% efficiency.

Any thoughts on what may be causing this junk efficiency? It seems to me that it must be either the mineral content of the water, or the equipment itself.
 
Not sure about water testing labs, but this is what Noonan had to say about low extract:
Not enough malt used, poor sparging efficiency, insufficient crushing, balled starch from poorly handled dough-in, wrong mash pH, insufficient mash enzyme activity.

Maybe your carbonate levels are too high for the 5.2 to effectively buffer at it's recommended dosage. I'd say do a small batch with distilled water to see if that could be the problem.
 
How is your braid set up? Is it a single tube or does it loop around the cooler? With a rectangular cooler you could only be draining a small area of the tun with a straight braid leaving a lot of efficiency behind. Maybe the way your manifold is set up is the problem. When I used a cooler (10 lb round igloo) I used a straight braid and got about 76% efficiency with a single batch sparge and over 80% if I double batch sparged, but a round cooler has a much smaller bottom than a rectangular one for the same volume so I was draining the entire bottom not just one area....just a thought.:)
 
Not sure about water testing labs, but this is what Noonan had to say about low extract:
Not enough malt used, poor sparging efficiency, insufficient crushing, balled starch from poorly handled dough-in, wrong mash pH, insufficient mash enzyme activity.

Maybe your carbonate levels are too high for the 5.2 to effectively buffer at it's recommended dosage. I'd say do a small batch with distilled water to see if that could be the problem.

Plenty of malt used (15lb in my last batch), crushed on someone's mill who gets 80% regularly so crush was good, batch sparging, stirred lots, so shouldn't have dough balls, sufficient grain=sufficient enzymes, 5.2 should have corrected for pH.

I will have to try a new manifold/braid, and see if that helps. I've been considering building, in essence, a false bottom for my rectangular cooler also.
 
Hey all,I would like to pick your brain on mash efficiency and water testing a little bit though, if you don't mind. I've been having TERRIBLE efficiency. typically about 50%. On my last batch, i tried some new interventions to try to change what I thought must be the problem. As background, I am using a 55qt rectangular cooler with a steel braid as a mash tun. I live out of town, so am using well water here in southern Minnesota (all limestone bedrock) but our water goes through not only the water softener, but also a mineral filter. So, really, I have no clue what mineral content is in my water. Where can I get this tested? are there any labs that will test water, and what kind of price tag does it carry?

As for efficiency, here is what I tried in my last batch. It was an american stout recipe, using a good 15.5lb of brains. The software I was using (beer calculus from hopville.com) set to a 69% efficiency (I was hoping my new stuff would help) said I should have an O.G. of 1.065, but my O.G. actually came out to 1.058. volumes were correct for pre-boil, boil off etc. Calculated out to about a 61% efficiency. This is an improvement from the 50 i usually get, but still not great. Here is what I did: I used a friends mill who usually gets about 80% efficiency, so the crush was good; I mixed in some about 10% water that comes fro the one faucet in the house that doesn't go through the water softener, I added the appropriate amount of 5.2 pH stabilizer from 5-star, and I stirred the mash every about 15 minutes. I batch sparge, and my sparge water was 180F, and frist and second runnings were of about equal amounts. With all of that, I still only had about a 61% efficiency.

Any thoughts on what may be causing this junk efficiency? It seems to me that it must be either the mineral content of the water, or the equipment itself.

A couple of issues here. The water softener removes Ca (good) and Mg (good) and replaces them with Na (bad). The fact that you use a softener suggests the Ca and Mg were high, so now you have high Na (very bad).

In addition to not working as claimed, the 5.2 adds quite a bit more sodium (very bad).

Your mash pH using this water is going to be a bit high (if the water is low alkalinity) or very high (if the water is high alkalinity which is likely where you live). The latter case could explain your poor efficiency. The low Ca isn't helping, but Bohemian Pilsner can be made with low Ca water.

My recommendation would be to either find a way to get water before it hits the softener and test it or simply buy RO water and follow the advice in the Water Chemistry Primer which is stickied in the science section.

Water from a softener is never good for brewing. Given where you live your water is probably not great for brewing period unless you have an RO unit. My feeling is that it is easier to simply buy the RO water at the grocery store but in either case you are the perfect candidate for RO.

Also buy some iodine and test for conversion.
 
A science answer! I LOVE IT! (I'm a chemistry and physics major, so i love the science aspect, and appreciate it in an explanation)

Next batch I'll try with all water that does not hit the softener. We'll see how that goes.

Why do you say 5.2 does not work as they say it does? I'm not criticizing, just curious about it. I've only tried the product once, and I don;t have a pH meter to gauge its effectiveness at buffering.
 
5.2 is a sodium phosphate buffers. Buffers only work well around the pKa values for the associated acid, in this case 2.16, 7.21 and 12.32.

Since 5.2 is nowhere near any of these values, from a textbook/theoretical point of view, we would expect 5.2 to perform poorly.

More practically several people on the internet (Kai Troester, AJ Delange, myself, others) have done test mashes with 5.2 and observed it to not work well.
 
Very interesting. Full out analytical chemistry research time! :) Sounds like a fun trial to do. Time to borrow titration equipment from the university! I'd eb interested to knwo what is in 5.2 aside from sodium phosphate
 
Corosis-
I agree with everyone, and I had very similar problems...it was the water. I have a softerner and a carbon filter for my house. I had the water tested from Ward and just as I thought, low Ca, low Mg, high Na. The problems is likely that you have a high residual alkalinity (read Palmers How To Brew if you haven't, again if you have) and your mash pH is off. I solved my problems by cutting my water with RO about 1:1 to reduce the Na and alkalinity, then adding minerals with salts as needed for the individual brews. If your alkalinity is super high, you might even need to add some lactic acid to bring the mash pH down.
 
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