Water treatment

[jbryce]

Does anyone have any recommendations for dealing with water that is very soft and alkaline? I have been using gypsum and CaCl, but the results haven't been so great. A lot of our beer has finished watery and lacks character.

[steveg]

What is your final pH of the finished beer? If you are making dark beers with low final pH then you should adjust with Calcium Carbonate in addition to or instead of Chloride and Sulfate.

Dark malts acidify the mash and so do Calcium Chloride and Sulfate. The Carbonate has the opposite effect, making the mash more basic.

Also make sure to add some salts in the kettle boil as well. A lot of your Calcium ion will be bound up in the mash and precipitated out in the form of Calcium Phosphate. You'll need to add a little more in the kettle to aid your protein break and hop utilization.

I can't recall off the top of my head what all the pH's at different stages of the process are, but pH of finished beer should be around 4.10 to 4.45 I think. The first runnings on your wort should be in the low 5s I think, but I may be mistaken on that. The pH will rise over the course of runoff, and you don't want it to go too high. Again I can't remember the exact number. Check some reference literature, and don't take my word for it! I'll check some of the literaqture myself, since obviously I need a refresher!

Having the wrong pH can really affect your clarity and flavor. It is really tricky to get the water treatment just right.

[dick murton]

The beer pH range quoted is fine for lagers, but rather high for most ales. British ales at least have a final pH or typically 3.9 to 4.1, though acceptable flavours can be obtained down to 3.75

Wort pH should be approx 5.3, but like steveg, check out the literature - I also need to check up on those details !!

Suggest you get a commercial analyst to check out your brewing liquor ionic concentrations over a number of samples taken over a period of a few months - a bit expensive perhaps, but this will tell you how much liquor treatment you need to add, and the consistency of you brewing liquor.

If you have very soft water, add CaSO4 to reduce pH and add dryness and bitterness to the final product. CaCl2 will reduce the pH to a certain extent but increase the sweet characteristics of the beer.

Add mainly CaSO4 in the mash tun / mashing liquor. As has been stated, you may wish / need to add more in the copper, in which case add CaCl2 as it is more soluble, CaSO4 being slightly less soluble at high temperatures than low temperatures.

If your water is alkaline, with a fair bit of CaCO3 (it still can, in spite of being soft) you may wish to add food grade sulphuric acid to achieve a pH of 7 prior to adding liquor salts. This will react with the CaCO3 releasing CO2 and dropping the mash and wort pH produced.

I ould have to look up exact mineral ion concentrations, I think if you rummage around in the recipe files on the web, there will be details, but from memory, aim for approx 150 ppm Ca in the mash liquor.

If that doesn't work, then you are back to the combination of quantities and types of malt, hops and yeast strain used, and fermentation conditions.

Don't forget, slow fermentations will tend to give high final beer pH and a "soft" flavour, fast fermentations will give lower pHs and slightly harsher, drier flavours.

Cheers

[Matthew Letki]

Dick has good advice, here are a couple of additions:

mash acidiification can work quite well. Mash 2-4% of your grist 24h ahead of mashing at 95@F. Hold at 95@F. add to main mash at mash in.

-- OR --

Add acid to your nrewing water: Lactic or phosphoric work well although the phosphoric is a cheaper option, usually.