Water Adjustments

[mb83]

Hi guys,

I live in Petersham and have never thought of using brewing salts before.
I've been reading Noonan's New Brewing Lager Beer and the chapter on water quality and minerals got me thinking.

Does anyone out there in the Sydney find it necessary to tinker with their water?

I mainly brew ales, which turn out pretty good. I'm always looking to make better beer though.

Cheers,

Michael

 

[Aaron]

I don't live in Sydney but I hve started playing with water chemistry after seeing John Palmer talk at ANHC. Can't comment too much yet as have only a couple of beers to go on but it seems to be going well so far. Have a look at the link below for Palmer's overview and to download his spreadsheet for calculating adjustments.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html

 

[Bribie G]

I'm currently using tank water and can, theoretically adjust the water to whatever. I have bought all the brewing salts from a sponsor at top of page, namely Calcium Chloride, Magnesium Sulpate (Epsom salts) Calcium Sulphate (Gypsum) and Calcium Carbonate (Chalk, Limestone) as well as good old Bicarbonate of Soda from IGA.

I reckon you need a degree in Chemistry to work out Palmer's chapter on water. However I have started doing some rough and ready additions, like more Limestone for Yorkshire bitters and for Burton ales I chuck in a couple more teaspoons of gypsum and epsom salts and no bicarb.

What I do understand is that the great pale ale centres in the UK such as Burton on Trent, Edinburgh and Tadcaster require hard water so I chuck in a bit of everything with Calcium or Magnesium in the formula :icon_cheers:

London style ales (which I'm not personally interested in) can be brewed with softer waters.

As I posted on another thread, with Warragamba water off the sandstone being a really nice drop for drinking, if I moved to Sydney and started brewing UK pale ales and bitters I would definitely be 'burtonising' the water or hardening it up a bit.

 

[Trev]

Michael,

Sydney water is low in Calcium, according to Sydney Water you only have between 12 and 17 ppm of Calcium from Prospect Res'. Most texts quote 50 - 100 ppm as a required level in the mash. Calcium, and to a lesser extent Mg, is a vital component of the brew water to ensure a healthy mashing regime, enzyme protection, flocculation and yeast health. Some texts go as high as 150ppm but others argue that much more than about 100ppm in the mash may deplete the available phosphates and leave insufficient for adequate yeast health. What the heck - take a simple approach to at this stage.

Make the maths easy - assume you'll only add Calcium Sulphate (Gypsium or Burton Salts) given that you're making Ales. The alkalinity shouldn't be a real problem if you're not brewing really dark beers so let's not worry about Chalk or Bicarb of Soda right now.

If you are mashing say 4kg of grain at a water/grist ratio of 3:1 then you'll need 12 litres of treated water.

Gypsium normally has water tied up in the structure as CaSO₄.2(H₂O). This means that only about 23% of the weight of Gypsium is actually Calcium (Palmer shows the molar calcs). To add 50ppm (mg/l) to one litre of mash water would need about 217mg of Gypsium, so for 12 litres you'll need about 2.6g of Gypsium. That's maybe 1/2 a teaspoon (I think) so if you add a teasponn to the mash you'll be adding about 100 ppm of Ca.

Clear as mud in a dirty glass

Trev

 

[DJR]

Yes, as Trev has pointed out the Ca content is a little low - i usually add some CaCl2 to the mash (hard stuff to find though) - with ales stick to the CaSO4 though as it will be better with some nice bitter ale.

Other than that it is also on the alkaline side of things, but shouldn't matter if you add some more calcium and let the mash enzymes do their thing.

 

[katzke]

Yes, as Trev has pointed out the Ca content is a little low - i usually add some CaCl2 to the mash (hard stuff to find though) - with ales stick to the CaSO4 though as it will be better with some nice bitter ale.

Other than that it is also on the alkaline side of things, but shouldn't matter if you add some more calcium and let the mash enzymes do their thing.

On the alkaline side, sounds like my water, low in minerals but magically high in alkalinity. I use a program called Brewater 3.0 and then put what I get from that into Palmers program. Only thing that does not transfer well is I add canning salt and Palmer does not allow for that so I need to adjust my water profile for the additions from the canning salt. Done 2 brews so far and the first was great, second in the fermentor. I manually adjust the water in Brewater and then put the results in Palmers to check the residual alkalinity. The first one needed some tweaking to match the color but the second one came out fine

Biggest challenge is deciding what you want your brew water to be like. All the info I have found gives what the local water is like for different brewing cities. The data given is not the actual brewing water, that is like saying if you want to duplicate a great beer brewed in Sidney use the same water you are trying to fix. I did some reading and put together a set of profiles mostly from designing great beers. Can not say how well it works yet as I have only the one brew.

A different approach would be to raise the magnesium to 20, then adjust the calcium to 100-150 with gypsum or Calcium Chloride. Use gypsum for dry hoppy beers, and Calcium Chloride for malty beers. This is a basic way I got from one of your Aussie pod casts. They kind of left out the alkalinity adjustments but you could still run the results through Palmers program to check that out.

Last if you use tank water some yeast nutrient may be helpful to the yeast. Not sure how many trace minerals the rain picks up.

 

[mb83]

Thanks Trev, that's quite helpful.
Should I take sparge water into account and add gypsum to that as well?
Say the same again to 15L sparge water?

Cheers,

Michael

Michael,

Sydney water is low in Calcium, according to Sydney Water you only have between 12 and 17 ppm of Calcium from Prospect Res'. Most texts quote 50 - 100 ppm as a required level in the mash. Calcium, and to a lesser extent Mg, is a vital component of the brew water to ensure a healthy mashing regime, enzyme protection, flocculation and yeast health. Some texts go as high as 150ppm but others argue that much more than about 100ppm in the mash may deplete the available phosphates and leave insufficient for adequate yeast health. What the heck - take a simple approach to at this stage.

Make the maths easy - assume you'll only add Calcium Sulphate (Gypsium or Burton Salts) given that you're making Ales. The alkalinity shouldn't be a real problem if you're not brewing really dark beers so let's not worry about Chalk or Bicarb of Soda right now.

If you are mashing say 4kg of grain at a water/grist ratio of 3:1 then you'll need 12 litres of treated water.

Gypsium normally has water tied up in the structure as CaSO₄.2(H₂O). This means that only about 23% of the weight of Gypsium is actually Calcium (Palmer shows the molar calcs). To add 50ppm (mg/l) to one litre of mash water would need about 217mg of Gypsium, so for 12 litres you'll need about 2.6g of Gypsium. That's maybe 1/2 a teaspoon (I think) so if you add a teasponn to the mash you'll be adding about 100 ppm of Ca.

Clear as mud in a dirty glass

Trev

 

[BOG]

Michael,

I made a water profile from the Sydney Water web site. The water contents vary depending on what source it's taken from.
My is Prospect Res. I use it in Beersmith.

As a general rule I add 1 Gram of Gypsum per litre of water. This will make Burton of Trent water. You can back it off for different styles.
I use a fresh wort cubes fill them then add the salts. Yes to you question of sparge water. Just make up a batch of water.

For true Burton on Trent water you need to add to Prospect Res. Water the following to (21 Litres) :

3.25gm Epsom Salt
5.69gm Baking Soda
18.69gm Gypsum


This salt profile is for English Bitters e.g. Fullers ESB



BOG

 

[tangent]

Magnesium sulphate (epsom salt) is also an excellent oral laxative. I'll skip that addition thanks.

 

[Bribie G]

Magnesium sulphate (epsom salt) is also an excellent oral laxative. I'll skip that addition thanks.

To cure constipation via the epsom salts you would actually need to drink an entire 23L batch in one go which would probably also do the job very well without the epsom salts :lol:

On topic, for a Burton on Trent type ale I am using two teaspoons of epsom and two teaspoons of gypsum per mash but I am BIABing so there is about 35 litres of liquor before the grist is added. So I'm in the frame there.

And yes, If I was doing a three vessel brew I would add the salts to the sparge water as well because that is what happens at a brewery using well water with the minerals in it, that's what they mash with and that's what they sparge with as well.

When I taste a sample of the water in the mash tun before adding the grist.... it tastes exactly like water