Water adjustments

Sambow · Joined: 09 Sep 2013 Posts: 38

Hey everyone,

I just got my shiny new Hanah 98128 PH Meter and I'm excited to take it for a spin! I've been limping along without one and with very little knowledge of water chemistry so far. In Kal's article about brew salts he mentions that there may be a future article RE: water chemistry:

**kal** · Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 12:11 pm Post subject:

It has not been written yet, there's some dregs of thoughts/ideas but it's far from complete. I keep going back and forth between just how to use EZWaterCalculator to calculate salt additions per the recipes here, or writing a full blown article about water (which is considerably more work). Finding it hard to find a balancing point. Thanks for the reminder however - I think I should start with something really simple for now. Unfortunately I do not know when I'll be able to spend time on it so I hesitate to give any ETAs.

EZWaterCalculator is very easy to use. I would recommend going with that for now. There have been past discussions on it here. You plug your water's numbers in it and use my recommendations in the recipes for targets. EZWater then tells you how much to add to the mash, how much to add to the boil.

Kal

Sambow · Joined: 09 Sep 2013 Posts: 38

Cool, I figured I hadn't missed it unless it was buried in the forums somewhere. I'll keep plugging away at the water book then and use the EZWater spreadsheeting the mean time. You just answered the only question I had right now which is "do I add my salts to the hlt or the mlt, because I added to the hlt last brew and the chalk didn't dissolve well at all."

dwhitlinger · Joined: 26 Nov 2013 Posts: 10 Location: Crotonville, NY

Kal,
I'm almost done and can't thank you enough. I'll post pictures soon. I'm getting ready for my inaugural batch and want to the the Bell's Two Hearts. I have my water lab report from Wards and have started to plug numbers into the ezwater Excel spreadsheet. One quick question - the numbers you give with each of your recipes are ppms not mg/l yes? Thanks again!
Dave

**kal** · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 3:33 pm Post subject:

For all practical purposes (for our use), mg/l and ppm are the same thing. FWIW, the numbers I give are from EzWaterCalculator which uses ppm.

Kal

Sambow · Joined: 09 Sep 2013 Posts: 38

Hi all,

I'm brewing tomorrow and I'm still kind of winging it on water adjustments so I'm hoping you guys would be kind enough to glance over my numbers/procedures and tell me if you see anything out of place. I use RO water since I live in Phoenix which apparently has awful water for homebrewing.

I'm brewing a Southern English Brown Ale straight out of brewing classic styles (my goal is to brew all 80 recipes over the next 2 years, but that's another story!) so I'm planning to use London's water profile:
Ca - 100
Mg - 5
SO4 - 50
NA - 35
CL - 60
HCO3 - 265

I got these numbers from https://www.brewersfriend.com/#a_aid=5982783965026 's water chemistry page. This is Using EZ water calculator it looks like I'll be adding the following (in grams):
Addition: Mash / Sparge
Gypsum: 2 / 3.9
Calc. Chloride: 3 / 5.8
Epsom: 2 / 3.9
Baking Soda: 4 / 7.7
Chalk: 3 / 5.8
Lactic Acid: As needed / As needed

This is for a 6.75 gallon mash and 13 gallon sparge. Looking at the resulting water profile all of the items are within 2 or 3 PPM, which I'm sure is close enough.

A few questions:
1. How do you guys calculate your additions? I've just been fiddling around with numbers until I get the right resulting water profile. I understand that each salt adds its corresponding ions to the water (e.g. CaCl2 will add Ca and Cl), but that is the extent of my understanding.

2. I didn't calculate how much lactic acid to add since I have a Ph meter anyways. Last time I brewed I added about 5mL of lactic acid and still wasn't down to 5.6 in the boil kettle so I stopped because I was worried I would end up adding too much and ruining the beer. How much lactic acid do you guys typically add? I think Kal said you could add up to 1-2mL per gallon before it would have an impact on the flavor, but I was feeling cautious Smile

I think that's it, if anyone has any additional tips I'm all ears. I attached my EZ water spreadsheet with the above values in case anyone was interested. Thanks in advance!

Screwy Brewer · Joined: 30 Mar 2014 Posts: 4

I use EZWaterCalculator too but with distilled water that basically has no minerals, salts or buffering in it. I want consistency in my beer and that means my brewing water properties have to be consistent too. Starting out with distilled or reverse osmosis water will give you a clean slate where you can then add just the amount of salts, minerals and lactic acid you need, depending on your grain bill and style of beer

For my Clock Strukker IPA all I did was add the following:

- Mash water profile 4.0 gallons --
2.00 g - Gypsum (calcium sulfate)
2.00 g - Epsom Salt (magnesium sulfate)
2.00 g - Calcium Chloride
2.50 ml Lactic Acid

- Sparge water profile 5.0 gallons --
2.50 g - Gypsum (calcium sulfate)
2.50 g - Epsom Salt (magnesium sulfate)
2.50 g - Calcium Chloride

The beer came out delicious, clear light color and clean tasting with a nice bready finish.