Water Adjustments

I planned on brewing next weekend and decided to check out the bruin water software. If I did it right all I need is 1.4 grams of gypsum added to the mash water and half a teaspoon of lactic acid and another gram of gypsum to the sparge water. Can someone explain to me what difference a gram of anything is going to do to the mash, or a half a teaspoon to 4 gallons of sparge water. I don’t understand.

Increase acidity and create proper pH (lower). The acid is making a much larger impact than the gypsum… I would urge you to consider adding gypsum for sparge into the kettle, but add lactic acid to sparge liquor to same as mash pH.

+1

I’ve made much smaller adjustments to my brewing water and much larger ones. It depends on the style you’re brewing and you’d be surprised how much difference a very small amount of a specific salt can make.

I was skeptical too at first so I completely understand how you feel. Embrace the madness. You’ll be rewarded with better beer.

The thing adjusted is the mash pH and the resulting kettle pH. That aspect alone can have a profound effect on beer taste and quality. The remainder of flavor ion adjustments may generally be thought of as ‘seasoning’. Seasoning is helpful when the underlying dish is palatable, but wouldn’t do much good if its sh*t.

Tying on to another thread with likely another dumb question… what does this mean?

“I would urge you to consider adding gypsum for sparge into the kettle, but add lactic acid to sparge liquor to same as mash pH.”

Does this mean adjust strike water and sparge water the same, so they have the same pH? Or is there a reason you would aim for a different treatment of mash and sparge (if batch sparging)? I was following one of the Bru’nwater tutorials floating around and almost wrapped my head around it until the sparge acidification tab, which I couldn’t make heads or tails of.

Sparging water should always have very low alkalinity. However, mashing water may need to have zero (actually less than zero, sometimes) to moderate alkalinity depending upon the mash grist. You can’t always treat them to the same condition and expect to produce great beer.

One thing that brewers should understand is that adding minerals like gypsum to the kettle will still have the effect of lowering their kettle wort pH. Those phytins that react with Ca and Mg in the mash, are still present in the kettle and will have the same reaction there when minerals like gypsum or CaCL2 are added. The result may be a wort pH that is lower than you want.

[quote=“mabrungard”]Sparging water should always have very low alkalinity. However, mashing water may need to have zero (actually less than zero, sometimes) to moderate alkalinity depending upon the mash grist. You can’t always treat them to the same condition and expect to produce great beer.

One thing that brewers should understand is that adding minerals like gypsum to the kettle will still have the effect of lowering their kettle wort pH. Those phytins that react with Ca and Mg in the mash, are still present in the kettle and will have the same reaction there when minerals like gypsum or CaCL2 are added. The result may be a wort pH that is lower than you want.[/quote]

I think the penny finally dropped… alkalinity and pH are related, but not the same…

So since I use 100% distilled, I should figure out the ppm of minerals to get the water profile in range, adjust mash pH, sparge with just plain distilled, then add any remaining minerals to the kettle to get the water profile I’m after (while not throwing kettle pH out of whack too much)… I think that sort of makes sense now.

Yep; With distilled I still add acid (a tiny bit) so that the pH of sparge liquor is same pH as mash. KISS… Then salts to kettle to hit target. Personally, I think it as hard to overdo it and most brewers pH is not low enough. That said, using distilled really helps.

Yes, WATER alkalinity and WORT pH are almost directly related. WATER alkalinity and WATER pH are almost unrelated.

Separate those facets.