Water Treatment Question

[brew-bandit]

Hello all,

I do BIAB and I use about 8 gallons of water during the process. About 5 gallons for the mash and the remaining 3 added right before boil.

Should I treat all 8 gallons or just the 5 for the mash?

It seems like the mash treatment is most important and needs to be done for correct pH and conversion. The additional 3 gallons will mainly impact final flavor. Do I have this correct?

So for example I have a Dublin water profile and I only treat the 5 gallons of mash water and the remaining 3 gallons is RO. Then my mash is a Dublin profile and my final water profile is 5:3 Dublin/RO.

 

[Homercidal]

I'll give this a go since an expert hasn't responded.

When you say the mash treatment is important and needs to be done for pH and conversion you are correct.

However, you must consider that ALL of the additions are important for flavor. The mash treatments are portioned out specifically for pH reasons, but that is only part of the whole treatment process.

In this case, if you use RO water for sparging, then there is no need to add minerals at that time. RO water is fine on its own for sparging. But if you don't add them at that time, then add them in the BK. If you don't sparge, then of course add them to the BK.

The problem with treating all 8 gallons is that you may not use the right amounts of different salts to get the pH you want for the Mash. Yes, you would get what you need for yeast health and flavor, but mash performance would suffer. Always treat the Mash as a separate thing. You can always add the remaining salts to the BK after the mash has done it's thing.

So in this case yes, treat the 5 gallons, then add the rest of the salts to the BK for flavor.

I use Bru'n water spreadsheet and it does a great job of calculating the mash pH requirements and pushing the remaining additions to the sparge.

 

[dammBrewer]

I'll give this a go since an expert hasn't responded.

When you say the mash treatment is important and needs to be done for pH and conversion you are correct.

However, you must consider that ALL of the additions are important for flavor. The mash treatments are portioned out specifically for pH reasons, but that is only part of the whole treatment process.

In this case, if you use RO water for sparging, then there is no need to add minerals at that time. RO water is fine on its own for sparging. But if you don't add them at that time, then add them in the BK. If you don't sparge, then of course add them to the BK.

The problem with treating all 8 gallons is that you may not use the right amounts of different salts to get the pH you want for the Mash. Yes, you would get what you need for yeast health and flavor, but mash performance would suffer. Always treat the Mash as a separate thing. You can always add the remaining salts to the BK after the mash has done it's thing.

So in this case yes, treat the 5 gallons, then add the rest of the salts to the BK for flavor.

I use Bru'n water spreadsheet and it does a great job of calculating the mash pH requirements and pushing the remaining additions to the sparge.

^ ^ ^
What this person said. Bru n Water has changed my brewing 10 fold!