Water Report Insight Please!

[Birdgunner]

Hi All,

I never thought much about water except in our last house which was on a municipal system and treating for Chloramines but as I am continuing in my brewing journey and the seemingly constant chatter of additions and water manipulation surrounding NEIPA’s and Pales I figured it was time to attempt to get more educated in the subject but honestly my eyes start to glaze over with the majority of the articles I have attempted to read…

I would absolutely appreciate any insight one could provide regarding my water results, particularly pertaining to my HCO3 and CaCO2 levels and the impact those may have on various styles (if any) and how to counterbalance if need be. As a whole based on how my beers turn out I speculate I must have pretty decent foundation (water) but this is new territory for me, appreciate the sharing of knowledge and feedback!

Water Test Results

pH 7.1

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 139

Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.23

Cations / Anions, me/L 2.7 / 2.4

ppm

Sodium, Na 11

Potassium, K <1

Calcium, Ca 31.5

Magnesium, Mg 8

Total Hardness, CaCO3 113

Nitrate, NO3-N 0.1 (SAFE)

Sulfate, SO4-S <1

Chloride, Cl 2

Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0

Bicarbonate, HCO3 142

Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 117

Total Phosphorus, P 0.07

Total Iron, Fe < 0.50

Thanks!

 

[RPh_Guy]

As with any other aspect of brewing, there are lots of different ways to do things.
I'll explain what I do.

• I start with RO water. It has a negligible amount of ions.
• In Brun Water I enter the grain bill.
• I add calcium sulfate and calcium chloride to hit a reasonable level of calcium and achieve the ratio of sulfate and chloride appropriate for the particular beer, based on my experience/opinion.
• You can add sodium or magnesium too, but those a less important (via sodium chloride or magnesium sulfate respectively).
• I then add enough lactic acid or sodium bicarbonate to achieve the right mash pH (5.2-5.5) based on Brun Water's prediction.

I didn't like the result I was getting with my tap water because I'm sensitive to the amount of lactic acid needed to neutralize the amount of alkalinity (yours is higher than mine BTW).

Cheers

 

[Birdgunner]

Thanks RPh. With your tap water and not altering it what did you experience?

From what I can gather, having higher alkalinity can lead to lower efficiency and increased chance for pronounced tannins/other harsh flavor and potential inhibition of yeast metabolism, am I missing anything else?
I read one can offset to some extent efficiency with longer mash time... I have never tried a 20 or 30 min mash like some successfully do so maybe the old 60min recommendation I have always adhered to has been a crutch to offset this?

I used to follow efficiency and routinely hovered around 75-80 sometimes higher but over the years I have largely stopped taking readings and calculations because I feel I have my system dialed in and things routinely turn out good so I just blissfully and carefree rockon, probably because, thankfully, I have never experienced noticeable tannins and I was on a big pilsner quest this winter and ended up making several super clean beers, my thought being if anything was hiding it would be exposed.

I am however now super intrigued with what my mash pH is/has been so I intend to buy a good reader and learn from that in addition I will experiment with Brun Water.

I rarely say never but I just can't see myself using RO water because part of what I love about brewing is the local aspect, such as water, growing my owns hops (more of an attempt in the south vs back home in MI), lemon grass, coriander, using local malts when possible, etc. so that said with the water profile I have, I can add gypsum to buffer the alkalinity and or use of acids but ultimately if I am not having off flavors, yeast issues or dramatic efficiency loss will doing such make my beers that much better? I guess to answer that it is important to know I like lighter beers in the sense so far this year I have made 30 gals of pils, 30 gals of NEIPA, 10 gals of Blonde, 10 gals of wheat ale....stouts and such aren't really my thing even though from my water profile they probably should be!
Thanks for any additional insight!

 

[RPh_Guy]

I did have one super harsh batch before I started adjusting pH. I over-sparged.

Experts and homebrewers alike almost unanimously recommend adjusting mash pH and flavor ion levels. I started adjustments pretty early in my homebrewing path so I don't have a lot of experience with unadjusted water.
In my opinion, is it worthwhile? Absolutely.

Your water has very low ion levels aside from alkalinity. With proper additions you could probably use it for any style.
BTW, RO water is "local" too, it just goes through a filter to remove the vast majority of the ions.

 

[Birdgunner]

Appreciate the feedback.
From what I can gather looks like my residual alkalinity is around 86ppm or using Kolbach's 1.78 mEq/l yielding a 0.148 pH shift, so next time I do an American Pils and target a RA of -50 looks like for my 14gals of mash 9g of Epsom salt, 9g CaCl2 and 8.5mL ish of 85% phosphoric acid would align me with the "suggested" profile...unless I am way the heck off on my calcs which is possible as my head hurts now! lol I will try this in the coming weeks and see how it turns out vs previous non altered water and report back.

 

[duffbeer71]

Your chloride and sulfate levels are so low if I'm reading this right, so I would definitely look into adding salts to your future brews. I have found brewersfriend.com has an excellent water calculator, that you can save your calculations to your profile and refer back to. Also has some good reading on the same page as the water calculator.

Here is a current calculation I did for a Pliny The Elder clone that I am planning on brewing.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/?id=PM7QTVB

 

[Birdgunner]

Thanks for sharing Duff, that's pretty slick, definitely something I will play around with in the future!

 

[RPh_Guy]

Appreciate the feedback.
From what I can gather looks like my residual alkalinity is around 86ppm or using Kolbach's 1.78 mEq/l yielding a 0.148 pH shift, so next time I do an American Pils and target a RA of -50 looks like for my 14gals of mash 9g of Epsom salt, 9g CaCl2 and 8.5mL ish of 85% phosphoric acid would align me with the "suggested" profile...unless I am way the heck off on my calcs which is possible as my head hurts now! lol I will try this in the coming weeks and see how it turns out vs previous non altered water and report back.

I'm not doing any math; I just use the software to aim for pH 5.3-5.5.

 

[Birdgunner]

Interestingly enough, I put in my water profile and Pils recipe into BrewersFriend and in my recipe I was already adding 2 tsp gypsum "just because" and other than pH theoretically being 5.78 everything else was deemed in the normal range for the style.

Next go round per BF if I add 10mL of Phosphoric and 2.5 tsp of gypsum in theory will yield a mash pH of 5.3 so I will try that out and see if it improves the beer that much, this will be a fun experiment.

 

[Yooper]

No- the mash pH is too high! Aim for 5.2-5.5 or so, 5.2-5.4 for the lighter colored beers and 5.5 for stouts.
Use some phosphoric or lactic acid to lower the pH.
The advanced water calculator is much better, in my opinion, and no harder to use.

The most important thing is the mash pH- the other things like the salt additions are there as "seasoning"- for flavor as in cooking. With a high mash pH, you can get harshness and astringency. Especially with noble hops- a high mash pH (and sparge pH if you're sparging) can cause some harsh flavors.

Don't use salts for pH control- they are for flavor. Use acids to lower pH.

 

[mabrungard]

That is actually really good water for brewing excepting for the iron content. Do you get any bloody or metallic flavor notes or staining?

If there is noticeable iron, then its probably going to require RO to knock that out. Aeration and filtration may also work, but that's another step in your brew day.

 

[Birdgunner]

That is actually really good water for brewing excepting for the iron content. Do you get any bloody or metallic flavor notes or staining?

If there is noticeable iron, then its probably going to require RO to knock that out. Aeration and filtration may also work, but that's another step in your brew day.

0.50ppm didn't even register to me as potentially being high for Iron but upon a little research looks like I am in the mid acceptable range. Thankfully I have never tasted metallic or blood notes (unlike when I lived in N. MI very pronounced metal taste in the water) and definitely no staining of sinks, toilets, pots, etc..
Funny thing about aeration...several years ago I read about Goose Island not aerating their Wheat beer, after they cooled it they just pitched the yeast and ever since then I tried it once (not aerating) had no difference in fermentation take off or reaching FG and have never aerated since!

 

[Birdgunner]

No- the mash pH is too high! Aim for 5.2-5.5 or so, 5.2-5.4 for the lighter colored beers and 5.5 for stouts.
Use some phosphoric or lactic acid to lower the pH.
The advanced water calculator is much better, in my opinion, and no harder to use.

The most important thing is the mash pH- the other things like the salt additions are there as "seasoning"- for flavor as in cooking. With a high mash pH, you can get harshness and astringency. Especially with noble hops- a high mash pH (and sparge pH if you're sparging) can cause some harsh flavors.

Don't use salts for pH control- they are for flavor. Use acids to lower pH.

Thanks Yooper. I think you may have answered a lingering question I had, when I first tried a pils it was good but the hops (Spaltz) flavor was much more astringent than I was anticipating, next go round I counter balanced this by adding my hops addition with only 20 mins, 5 mins and WP as opposed to 60, 30, 10 which most recipes were calling for...looking forward to trying this again but with Phosphoric Acid and getting the mash down to pH 5.3 and seeing how that impacts the hop flavor!
BTW you are a special bird to carve out a life that far North...I am from the 45th (TVC) and can't imagine being even further North (guess that is why I fled to NC after college! haha).

 

[Yooper]

Thanks Yooper. I think you may have answered a lingering question I had, when I first tried a pils it was good but the hops (Spaltz) flavor was much more astringent than I was anticipating, next go round I counter balanced this by adding my hops addition with only 20 mins, 5 mins and WP as opposed to 60, 30, 10 which most recipes were calling for...looking forward to trying this again but with Phosphoric Acid and getting the mash down to pH 5.3 and seeing how that impacts the hop flavor!
BTW you are a special bird to carve out a life that far North...I am from the 45th (TVC) and can't imagine being even further North (guess that is why I fled to NC after college! haha).

I'll be looking forward to hearing your results. The other thing I'd suggest is when using noble hops, do NOT add so much sulfate. That also causes a perception of dryness, which you want with a hoppy beer, but with noble hops it can create harshness. For a pilsner, I"d go with almost no additions in RO water. You could bring the calcium to 40-50 ppm if you really want to and use calcium chloride and a tiny bit of gypsum to get there, but very modest amounts. Consider no more than 40-50 ppm of chloride and sulfate if you're adding any.

I have been up north for a long time, and didn't mind the cold until more recently. I have to admit that I've been going south from the winter for the past 8 years, and hate the cold and snow these days.
My avatar photo is from my back yard in Florida, in February.

 

[mabrungard]

Funny thing about aeration...several years ago I read about Goose Island not aerating their Wheat beer

Sorry for the confusion. The aeration treatment that I mentioned is not for yeast husbandry. It's to convert soluble iron in water to its insoluble form so that it will precipitate out or be filtered out.

 

[Birdgunner]

I'll be looking forward to hearing your results.

I followed my standard Pils recipe with the slight deviation of adding 10mL of 85% Phosporic as well as splitting the batch with one using Hornidal yeast and the other my standard go to W-34/70 for giggles and Yooper I think you nailed it, with the acid addition creating the lower mash pH the hops profiles were as intended and zero astrigency!
Thank you all for your guidance, I followed up the initial batch with a very light blonde and identical hops flavor results, case closed!
For what it is worth, the "Pils" with the Hornidal fermented at garage temperature (80F+) turned out crisp, clean and amazing with a fraction of the effort vs the temperature controlled version (which was also amazing but not worth the effort comparing the two).

 

[Yooper]

I wish I could "like" this 100 times! It's so great that you fixed a problem that quickly and easily. I love the success, and the beer looks fantastic!