Add salts to mash only, or add to all water?

1

I am brewing an all grain and wondered if i add my salts to only my mash? If so, is it ok to sparge with distilled water? Or should I treat all of my 7.5 gallons of water with the same calculated salts? I used EZ Water but I can’t quite tell if it wants the salts in only the mash.

2

Depends largely on what type of sparge you’re doing as well as what system you use. When Fly sparging it is important to treat the sparge water as the contact time between sparge water and grains can raise the pH if not treated correctly. Batch sparging it isn’t as important as the pH won’t change much.
As for system- in the past I had a three vessel system that had a burner for the HLT, the MT, and the BK. So, I treated them separately. Now I use a three vessel electrical system that uses RIMS to maintain mash temps. So, now I treat all the water identically in the HLT.

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I treat my sparge water the same as I treat my mash water. In fact, I treat them together then separate out the sparge water after heating to mash temp. It can’t hurt to have your sparge water with same chemistry as the mash water.

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I’ve learned to use acid/salts for correcting pH for enzymes in the mash… Then there are additions to the BK that flavor the brew, either to enhance the malt or the hops.
Distilled/RO water is like a blank sheet of paper. Without any minerals, reaching the ideal pH without dark malt is quite hard.
Sneezles61

5

Alright I will weigh in. Like mentioned above it doesn’t hurt to just treat all the water the same and is what I do. Any water added after conversion doesn’t matter. I’m not sure it makes a heck of a lot of difference if you’re going to treat water anyway to treat some water for mashing and then some for sparging. If you do separate its important to input your volumes accurately. It’s not important what others do as it’s your decision. Maybe I’m lazy but I just fill a vessel with all the water I’ll need and treat all the same so even if I need top up water it’s treated. What Sneazles does for ‘flavor’ is something that exract brewers might do since they are not concerned with mash Ph.

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