Case Study: English Barleywine & Melbourne water chemistry

[kahlerisms]

Hi All,

Was about to tip a little over 10 kilos of grain into my keg today and I thought I'd check out EZCalc before hand. I've played a little bit with water stuff in Brew Alchemy and Brew Smith in the past but neither of them really helped me figure out why I was doing what I was doing, just how to emulate water from around the world.

So I ended up aborting my brew day as I'd prefer to spend a week and $10 getting my water chemistry right before using $70 or $80 worth of ingredients.

So I thought I'd make a new thread (I'm good at that) as a bit of a case study of what I'm doing and the more experienced folk around here can help me out. I really like EZ calc. Along with a little bit of documentation I think I almost have everything under control.

So, If you want to follow along at home, heres what I'm doing.

English Barleywine
9.75KG MO
0.3KG Simpsons Crystal
0.3KG Simpsons CaraMunich 1
40L carbon filtered water

I plug the water analysis in here
http://www.melbournebrewers.org/images/stories/BrewWiz/key%20concepts%20in%20water%20treatment.pdf


to EZ Calc, it tells me I'm low on a lot of stuff. That's cool, I can fiddle with my additions to bring my values down. I'm shooting for middle of the range whilst also trying to keep my additions to a minimum.

Anyway, I end up with something like this


Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 5
Mg: 2
Na: 8
Cl: 12
SO4: 3
HCO3: 12

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 40
Total Grain (lb): 10.4

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaSO4: 6 / 0
CaCl2: 14 / 0
MgSO4: 7 / 0
NaHCO3: 0 / 0
CaCO3: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid (ml): 0
Sauermalz (oz): 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 134 / 134
Mg: 18 / 18
Na: 8 / 8
Cl: 181 / 181
SO4: 155 / 155
Cl to SO4 Ratio: 1.17 / 1.17

Alkalinity (CaCO3): 10 RA: -97 Estimated pH: 5.59 (room temp)



And I'm struggling to get my pH down much further than that - EZCalc says I should be targeting 5.4-5.6 and I know lower is better, but I start getting out of balance or too much magnesium if I push it much further (and I don't get much lower)

What else can I do to drop my ph down another whole point or so?

 

[manticle]

Add acid - lactic, phosphoric and citric are common. You can do sour mash or add acidulated malt but adding acid is easiest.

You want calcium at at least 50ppm. Cal chloride and cal sulphate to get your sulphate chloride ratio where you want it and calcium to the right level.

Don't add any magnesium - malt provides enough.

Quality yeast nutrient for zinc levels.

There are more up to date reports for Melbourne water: http://www.melbournewater.com.au/content/library/water_storages/water_quality/Typical_analysis_of_Melbournes_water.pdf

 

[kahlerisms]

Thanks Manticle.

Does it matter what sort of acid I add? Where can I learn more?

 

[manticle]

Needs to be food grade. Also needs not to leave a discernible flavour.

I use phosphoric or lactic when I need to which i buy from grain and grape. 88%, one bottle lasts a very long time. I'm not sure that yours should need it on first glance though if you get calcium within range. The grist shouldn't be too far away (darker grains add acidity).

You could also add a bit of dark grain to drop pH - say some choc malt if that didn't throw your recipe out although i would be tempted to do pale + crystal + calcium only if possible.

Can give you some links for more reading/learning - anything specific you are after?

 

[kahlerisms]

Can give you some links for more reading/learning - anything specific you are after?

ANything that'll help me learn more about water chemistry including salts and acids would be beneficial. I've read the pages in How to Brew and the MelbBrewers write up above - time to start actually playing with it in the real world I think.

I'll get some lactic acid from G&G and some salts. Rockin. thanks.

 

[manticle]

Post #11 here has my take on it which is still a work in progress: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/46120-ahb-articles-water-chemistry/ I aim to go back and use in-text referencing at some point but there are some references at the end (mainly hard copy texts)


There's a great lot of stuff at the brun water knowledge page: https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/water-knowledge


Braukaiser has 3 good articles on mash pH:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=An_Overview_of_pH
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_pH_affects_brewing
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Mash_pH_control

 

[tiprya]

I use acid malt. Get your calcium/sulphate into the right ranges for the style of beer, then use acid to correct the pH.

I use the malt because measuring and storing it is easy.

 

[TSMill]

Data suggests you are mashing with 40 gallons of water. I reckon dropping that down to litres will help.

 

[manticle]

Good spot.

 

[GuyQLD]

On the acid note (and hopefully not off topic) I notice most of the calculators offer only acidulated malt or Lactic acid (88%) in their tools. Does anyone know how to calculate for citric acid? I know it comes in powdered form but I've as yet not found anyone who seems to know how much to use?

I suppose Lactic would be the prefered option but I haven't found it up here.

 

[kahlerisms]

Data suggests you are mashing with 40 gallons of water. I reckon dropping that down to litres will help.

Hmm?

Sheet shows 40L/10.57G

 

[manticle]

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 40
Total Grain (lb): 10.4

 

[djar007]

Thanks for the info. The more I think I am making decent beer the more I read and discover how far off the mark I am. But my next battle ground is correcting my pH. So thanks for the great links and info