# Biab Water Profile Adjustments



## Charst (20/9/11)

Hi Im just really getting into water adjustments and thought i was calculating everything ok with my software but while listening to the BN podcast on water John Palmer mentions multiplying your salt amounts by the total volume of water you use. I had just assumed like every other ingredient in beer I would be calculating to my final volume. Being i brew in a bag and follow the BIAB water volume excel sheet I've on average been adding nearly half of what i should have been adding.

So with this in mind then, won't the total salt in your final beer really depend on your process, and how much water you use?
If this is true, just as id want to know the range of IBU's in an English IPA, wouldn't I want to know the range of salts in the final beer to match the style? 

cheers

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-4.html


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## donburke (20/9/11)

Charst said:


> Hi Im just really getting into water adjustments and thought i was calculating everything ok with my software but while listening to the BN podcast on water John Palmer mentions multiplying your salt amounts by the total volume of water you use. I had just assumed like every other ingredient in beer I would be calculating to my final volume. Being i brew in a bag and follow the BIAB water volume excel sheet I've on average been adding nearly half of what i should have been adding.
> 
> So with this in mind then, won't the total salt in your final beer really depend on your process, and how much water you use?
> If this is true, just as id want to know the range of IBU's in an English IPA, wouldn't I want to know the range of salts in the final beer to match the style?
> ...



you are right

sufficient calcium levels during the mash are most important,

if your calculations are based on final volumes then the salt levels would have been more dilute furing the mash as you have lost some of the salt in the water that the grain retained and you have also diluted the salts because you have allowed for the evaporation during the boil


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## Bribie G (20/9/11)

This is something that has puzzled me for a long time. Take Burton on Trent as an example. The traditional brewers there would mash with Burton water and sparge with Burton Water. They wouldn't mash with "concentrated" Burton water then sparge with distilled water. 
Transferring this to BIAB where we, basically, have our sparge water in the mash as well as what would be the mashing water in a 3v system, I'd adjust the whole thing to Burton water (in this particular example)

Unfortunately calculators like Ez Water cater for traditional "thick" mashes but not for BIAB and posts a disclaimer that it is not accurate for a thin mash. My own view is to look up water profiles for the beer you are looking at and adjust the entire volume of the water. 

In practice I do a fairly rough addition along the lines of Calcium Chloride for malt driven, Sulphates for hop driven and add a bit of yeast nutrient in the boil to give trace elements.


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