What do you gain when you adjust your water?

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nilo

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I'm new to water chemistry and have adjusted water for my last two batches.
I have soft water so I add some chloride, sultate, calcium and magnesium.
One thing I notice is the clatiry of my wort/beer.
I got a much better hot break and my beer looks amazingly clear after fermentation.
Would that be the added calcium?

Anyways, just wondering what improvements you guys noticed when you started adjusting your water.
 
I have very alkaline and hard water. I noticed early on that I just couldn't make a good kolsch or lighter beer with my water. There was some great flavor, but an underlying harshness that I couldn't shake. So I used RO water, and I found that I made some terrific lighter beers even back then.

Gradually, I started learning a bit about water chemistry and found that all of my beers improved. I'm still in "baby steps" about water, and I don't have my own RO system yet, but I'm eagerly learning and reading everything I can. Every beer style has improved since then.

I think that my whole problem is the high alkalinity of my tap water. Mixing it with RO and adding necessary salts (and following ajdelange's advice) allows me to get into the proper mash pH area easily and the results prove it. I still have a long ways to go to understand it, but I know it works!
 
Just to add to what Yooper said...

I've got extremely soft water like you, and the calcium made a night-and-day difference in my beer's clarity. Charlie Bamforth describes the mechanism on the BrewStrong episode on beer haze.

Bigger than that though was the impact on flavor. A small mineral addition makes everything (particularly hop bitterness) snap. Before I started treating, everything was just a bit duller and flatter. Wasn't by any means bad, but the mineral additions have helped.
 
There is a very strong correlation between beer clarity and brewing water calcium content. You need an absolute minimum of 40 ppm calcium to get by and you should aim for about 50 ppm for good performance.

Being able to bring the mash pH into the desirable 5.2 to 5.5 range is also helpful. Finally, the ability to improve the beer flavor perceptions by adjusting the main flavor ions: sodium, chloride, and sulfate is beneficial.

As John Palmer appropriately mentioned on his show, water adjustment can be the difference in a beer scoring in the 40's instead of the 30's.

It is a worthwhile effort.
 
There is a very strong correlation between beer clarity and brewing water calcium content.

Martin, I have not seen this correlation. Where are you getting this from?

While I don't disagree with the benefits of calcium, I have made brightly clear beers with 30 ppm Ca and protein cloudy beers with 110 ppm Ca.

Nilo, I always had to adjust my water, ever since I moved into my current house and don't remember what the beer was like before that. After moving into the new house with a "Munich water" well I had a lot of trouble making a good beer. I suspected water and started to learn about water and mash chemistry. But in the end it turned out that a 1lb bag of Hallertauer hops, which I used for all the bad tasting beers, was the culprit.

Kai
 
Kaiser said:
Martin, I have not seen this correlation. Where are you getting this from?

While I don't disagree with the benefits of calcium, I have made brightly clear beers with 30 ppm Ca and protein cloudy beers with 110 ppm Ca.

I've not seen anything like Martin's sharp thresholds, but I did notice significantly clearer beers when I started adding calcium. I was starting with extremely low levels (<5ppm) and am now treating to around 50ppm.

My understanding is that the calcium helps oxalic acid to precipitate out in some circumstances. Certainly there are other causes of haze, and I can't really speculate about how much calcium would have been 'enough' to cause the clarifying. But, somewhere between 5 and 50 I noticed a significant change.
 
I've not seen anything like Martin's sharp thresholds, but I did notice significantly clearer beers when I started adding calcium. I was starting with extremely low levels (<5ppm) and am now treating to around 50ppm.

Yes, 5 ppm seems to be a bit low. I have gone as low ad 30 ppm, but generally keep the calcium in my lagers between 50 and 70 ppm. Ales may get a bit more.

My understanding is that the calcium helps oxalic acid to precipitate out in some circumstances.

Yes, potential oxalic acid precipitation in the beer is commonly cited when the recommendation of 50-60+ ppm Ca for brewing water is made.

Kai
 
While I don't disagree with the benefits of calcium, I have made brightly clear beers with 30 ppm Ca and protein cloudy beers with 110 ppm Ca.

I have made brilliantly clear beer with 4ppm Ca. Not saying the Ca is not important, but if you have hazy beer, I would not start by looking at the water.
 
The best description I have seen on the benefits of proper water treatment is "all the flavors seem brighter". That seems consistent with the "beers in the 40's vs the beers in the 30's" statement. I have certainly brewed very nice beers with calcium well below the 50 mg/L level and do so on a regular basis. I have had them range from crystal clear to having really persistent haze. But in all my years of brewing I have seen a calcium oxalate crystal exactly once (in my beer - at the urologist's it's another story). When I get haze it's protein globules.

My experiences can be summarized:

Use soft water
Supplement the calcium and especially the chloride a little
Keep the sulfate to a minimum
Control mash pH with acid

Keep in mind in considering those points (especially the sulfate one) that I am a lager brewer and that when I do ales they are German ales. Also that my criterion of optimality is the best tasting beer - not the most authentic nor the most likely to win ribbons in contests. Or put another way, those are the guidelines for my success but may not be for your success.
 
I'm a little confused. At some point I'm going to attempt a Pilsner and my plan is to use distilled water and add salts to match the Pilsen water profile. Doesn't that profile correspond with about 7ppm of Ca?

The implication on this thread seems to be that I'd be better with >30ppm? Am I reading things incorrectly?
 
I'm a little confused. At some point I'm going to attempt a Pilsner and my plan is to use distilled water and add salts to match the Pilsen water profile. Doesn't that profile correspond with about 7ppm of Ca?

The implication on this thread seems to be that I'd be better with >30ppm? Am I reading things incorrectly?
No, you are reading this correctly. There is some confusion around the Pilzen water profile and wether or not calcium is added during the brewing process. Brewers at that time knew about the benefits of gypsum for example. There is even a German word for gypsum used in the brewing process: Braugips.

Maybe A.J. has more insight, but I’d shoot for 30-40 ppm Ca for now.

At some point I plan to brew a beer with just R/O water just to see what happens or doesn’t happen.

Kai
 
Pilsen water is indeed very soft and the brewers there brewed their beer with that water for many years because that was the water they had. The very low sulfate content of that water allowed them to use large quantities of Saaz hops without the harsh bittering that results if one tries to get 40 IBU with sulfate bearing water. The low levels of calcium, magnesium and sodium gave the beer its renowned soft water character and a very fine beer it is indeed. But who is to say that it is the best beer than can be brewed with Moravian malt and hops from Zatec? If you brew it with Pilsen mineral levels it will be authentic and very good but can it be made better? I think the answer is yes and the reason for this lies, not I believe, in the effects of some extra calcium (which is beneficial to yeast and thus beer in many ways) but in the chloride that goes with it which mellows, sweetens and rounds out a beer. Now it doesn't take much chloride to do the job. I only use 14 grams of CaCl2.?H2O in 55 gal of treated RO water (but blend in a little tap water as well). This gives me chloride at about 40 mg/L. As I have a choice of potassium chloride, sodium chloride, hydrochloric acid, magnesium chloride or calcium chloride I might as well use the salt that gives me potential improvement in other ways and calcium chloride is the obvious choice. I get calcium levels of about 21 mg/L. Appreciably higher than the 7 ppm you refer to but well less than the 30 - 50 ppm that some think are essential.

Were I in your position (and, of course, I was at one time), I'd brew it with really soft water a'la Pilsen and then do it again with supplemented calcium chloride to about the level I mention. See which beer you like better and stick with that approach.

In all of this it is essential that you get the mash pH right so be sure to include some sauermalz in your grist.
 
Brewers at that time knew about the benefits of gypsum for example.

I think it's interesting in this regard that Kolbach's famous paper which we all think of as the place where residual alkalinity was introduced (it isn't) is really an appeal for the use of minerals and acids in water/wort/beer for control of mash/wort pH. Wonder how different the beer world would be today if he had succeeded.
 
Have there been any studies of the effect of decoction on freeing Ca into the brewing water? I have been under the impression that possibly that operation could be releasing more of the entrained minerals from the grist. We know that the Pilsen water is and was low in calcium.
 
I'm sure there have been but I'd have no idea where to point you. I had noticed before I started using sauermalz that there was a slight decline in pH as each decoction was returned. This is doubtless due to precipitation of additional calcium but whether that calcium was already in solution or released by the boiling action in the decoction I do not know. I'd guess the answer would be that with the undermodified malts of the past additional Ca and Mg probably were freed as matrices were digested but that with today's highly modified malts it wouldn't make much difference.
 
I think it's interesting in this regard that Kolbach's famous paper which we all think of as the place where residual alkalinity was introduced (it isn't) is really an appeal for the use of minerals and acids in water/wort/beer for control of mash/wort pH. Wonder how different the beer world would be today if he had succeeded.

Narziss and Back mention that as early as 1914 did the likes of Windisch (You may know this name from the one of the unit for diastatic power Windish-Kolbach (WK) ) and Kolbach notice and investigate the effect of brewing water ions on mash pH. I assume that this group discovered the concept of RA not that much later. The paper that A.J. talks about and which he was so kind to translate for us, is from the 1950s and it explicitly mentions that it was written b/c the original was not available to most brewers anymore.

In German brewing texts from the mid 1800s I found references to the benefits of adding gypsum to the water. It also mentioned the difference between temporary hard and permanently hard waters. But they hadn’t really figured out why the beers get better or worse based on the water.

You also have to keep in mind that in the early days of brewing brewers were very reluctant (they still are to some extent) to change anything in their brewing process once they found a way to brew good beer. I assume it took a lot of scientific work to convince them that correcting mash and possibly wort pH with lactic acid would make their beer better.

Kai
 
A.J., to what extent could it be the decreased solubility of magnesium phosphate that is causing the pH drop once a decoction or wort us boiled. I know that Magnesium phosphate is less soluble in hot solutions and thus might produce more H+ when it precipitates.

I always notice a pH drop when I do a decoction which is why I think that Narziss and Back advise against a mash pH below 5.4 for decocted beers.

Kai
 
Here are some numbers from my last 2 lagers both done with RO plus well water 9 + 1 supplemented with calcium chloride to around 20 mg/L. The first was a Pils made with the Weyermann floor malted heirloom malt and the second a VMO made with the regular Weyermann Pils, Vienna and Munich I. 3% sauermalz used in both cases.

Pils

Dough in 5.45
First Decoction 5.52
2nd Decoction not checked
3rd Decoction 5.51
In fermentor 5.23
14 hrs later 4.98
38 hrs later 4.74

VMO

Dough In 5.19
>50 min 5.32
1st Decoction 5.37
2nd Decoction 5.34
3rd Decoction 5.33
1 hr boil 5.13
In fermentor 5.01
>14 hrs 4.86
>3 days 4.57

Quite a bit of difference for beers with the same water brewed the same way but appreciably different grain bills. But both show a substantial drop (0.3) from the boil, an increase from the first decoction and small decreases the subsequent ones.

Now if precipitation of phosphate is responsible for these drops, and I think it is generally accepted that it is, that must be mineral released from the malt because there just isn't that much calcium in the water. If the decoctions are releasing these (and I would think they would be) why don't subsequent decoctions show larger pH shifts - especially the third - it is really just a sort of pre-boil (it's just the liquid - very little if any grain)? And why does the first decoction show an increase? I think perhaps that's because the mash is low in calcium. Were it present then I think I might see a drop. I believe the rise in the second decoction is part of the rise I usually see over time when sauermalz is used and believe that to be nothing more than the time it takes for the acid to react with the buffering systems of the other malts.

I think there is more to it than just phosphate precipitation. I seem to recall seeing that Ca/Mg mineral complexes are formed resulting in the release of protons by the same basic mechanism as when phosphate is precipitated.
 

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