I got my water profile, and it’s very soft.
Alkalinity 40.5 MG/L
Calcium 4730 UG/L
Chloride 250 MG/L
Hardness 14.4 MG/L
Magnesium 822 UG/L
pH 9.5
Sodium 33.5 MG/L
Sulfate (SO4) 9.7 MG/L
Specific Conductance 197 UMHO/cm
Total Dissolved Solids 103.0 MG/L
I was going to do a big barley wine, and I ran it through bru’n water and figured an adjustment of:
0.6 gm/gal Gypsum
.15 gm/gal Cal Chlor
WIll this work well? I’ve only ever just used tap water.
What is your grist types and amounts.
What is your water to grain mashing ratio/ or how much water will you use to actually mash with?
What is your sparge amount in gallons.
Also most all municipal water utility’s use chloramine. Do you already have a method of filtering using an activated charcoal filter? Better yet if not already plan to use campden(tablets of potassium metabisulfite) to eliminate chloramine concerns using 1/4 tab per 5 gallons/ 1 tablet per 20 gallons.
Amounts corrected for consistency:
Ca: 4.73 mg/ l
Cl: 250 mg/l
SO4: 9.7 mg/l
Mg: 0.8 mg/l
Na: 33.5 mg/l
Alk: 40.5 mg/l
HCO3: 49 mg/l
The only item of issue I see right away is your Chloride if reported correctly is extremely high and may warrant some dilution. I have to believe this is an error as your anions to cations are way out of whack. IE: 0.22 as shown on Brunwater the agreement should rest within 0.95 to 1.05
If I enter a value of 25 mg/l for Cl, just for example the agreement is 1.03
[quote=“ITsPossible”]What is your grist types and amounts.
What is your water to grain mashing ratio/ or how much water will you use to actually mash with?
What is your sparge amount in gallons.[/quote]
Grist is roughly:
16lb 2 row
1.5 lb caramunich
.5 crys 60
I’m going to partigyle, so I’ll be doing a single infusion at 153 with 8.75 gallons of water for the first runnings.
Then I’m going to use 6.5 gallons for the batch sparge for another batch.
Yes it is an error, and you were right to correct it as you did. Should I still use campden tablets as a matter of practice, for every batch?
Is 0.6 gm/gal Gypsum and 15 gm/gal Cal Chlor a good figure?
Yes, I use campden every batch.
Ok, the fact that your doing partigyle changes things a bit.
For the barleywine what is your planned amount collected preboil? Are you certain 8.8 gallons will yield enough first runnings to hit this amount?
What flavor profile do you want to end up with balanced, bitter, super bitter, malty, real malty?
For the second beer what is planned amount collected preboil? Also 6.5 added to drained down grist makes me question if you’ll collect enough again, for both these amounts its best to be liberal than having to top up the kettle if you fall short.
What flavor " "
If a third same questions apply.
Bottom line your planned additions are way too low and really does you no good. Your PH with base water is fine but your calcium is way too low and flavor ions may not be where you want them. I have some numbers in mind I just need clarification on the above.
Yeah I’m pretty sure I’ll be at 6.5 gallons, in both batches with pre-boil gravities of 1072 and 1023 respectively. Perhaps the second runnings should be more like 7.5 gallons anyway, even if just to get more of the small beer.
The barleywine is bitter, with 3 ounces of CTZ/Chinook front loaded, with a final ibu of 160.
The small beer will be hopped with EKG to get around 50 ibu, probably in 3 additions.
Hmmm, I am going to just give you some round about figures for the 6.5 gallon pre-boil as its good to understand what to adjust when using brunwater and you can use the 8.8 g mash, 6.5 g preboil and 6.5 g sparge as a jumping point for use later as it seems this may be a case of jumping in the cart without a horse or wheels, also I will leave the actual flavor ions balanced in my numbers given because I think your unaware of this aspect of water manipulation yet so it best to let you execute differently as you come to understand it better and will sum up some reflections about this below too. But I think some other investigating about boil quantities and volume adjustments are in order first and foremost then you can use the values given to work within the desired parameters found at that time.
I am not going to get into extreme detail as volume/ boiloff etc… is something you have to learn on your own depending on your exact setup. But FWIW if I were to boil only 6.5 g I will lose 1.25 gallon to boil off and cooling and also lose about .75-1.0 gallon to trub and deadspace with lightly hopped beers(eg: 1-3oz). So this means I would end up transferring only 4.25g or so to the fermenter and when transfering to keg it would be 3.5> see where I am going here. Not sure how far down the path you are with the hobby but attending to things like volume etc… may be more in order before you finish planning a full blown partigyle without knowledge of what goes down otherwise your brewday will be hectic to say the least. My statement about liberal water use is the best advice here. Also as shown below you may not even start with 6.5 gallon so give er some reflection so it all comes together primo is all I want to lean on today. If you decide to “wingit” dont say you weren’t warned> :mrgreen:
IE: 8.8g to 18# of grist will equal a full runoff of 6.5gallons without accounting for dead space also which will be anywhere from .25-1.5 gallons depending on equipment parameters. Also if you only add 6.5 gallons of sparge I am not certain if you will see a full runoff of 6.5? Batch spargers could speak to this, I am unsure as I continuous sparge(fly sparge)for all my runnings.
Back to water then:
Now as-is without adjustment your sampled room temp PH of the mash would be 5.7 which is fine as the actual mash PH would be 5.4-5.5 due to the temperature shift. But the mash will not contain any calcium which is beneficial for reasons other than just PH. Also the SO4:Cl ratio vears towards very malty. It is the actual kettle SO4:Cl ratio that matters but as shown in brunwater an addition of just Calcium chloride in the mash would cause too high of Cl without even hitting the proper Ca and you can temper this then by using an addition of both calcium chloride and gypsum to keep the Cl in check and at the same time establish a ratio desired.
Before adjustment:
Ca: 4.73 mg/ l
Cl: 25 mg/l
SO4: 9.7 mg/l
Mg: 0.8 mg/l
Na: 33.5 mg/l
Alk: 40.5 mg/l
HCO3: 49 mg/l
Mash PH at 5.4( Room temp reading of 5.7PH)
SO4:CL ratio of 0.4 (very malty)
Adjusted:
Add 4.4 gram gypsum, 2.6 gram calcium chloride.
Ca: 57
Mg: 1
Na: 33.5
SO4: 84
Cl: 63
Alk: 41
HCO3: 49
Mash PH at 5.2( room temp reading of 5.5PH)
SO4:Cl ratio of 1.3 (balanced)
[color=#FF8000](I would also add 1.3gram of lime actually to raise the PH back towards 5.4(room temp 5.7PH)
and this also brings the Ca content up to 78ppm. But this addition is just semantics and personal choice, any mashing PH of 5.2-5.5 is just fine. In addition my thoughts are a balanced to slightly bitter SO4:CL ratio will be appropriate and balanced right now will give you a baseline for both beers going forward.)[/color]
Also now you are not sparging just using first runnings, so what happens is a majority of the calcium will not make it to the kettle so a small addition of 0.7 grams of gypsum and 1.3 grams of calcium chloride will ensure the kettle is at/around 50ppm calcium. Calcium in the boil does many things also, all around calcium is very beneficial) the other thing is because the calcium chloride adds Cl as spoken to above, you add a touch of gypsum to keep your SO4:CL ratio right around 1.3(balanced)
For the second beer add the following minerals either to the kettle or sparge water of 6.5 gallons to do the same as stated above:
3.3 grams of gypsum and 2.0 grams of calcium chloride.
Then one thing to do to the sparge in addition is add either 9.5ml phosphoric 10% or 1.5ml lactic acid 88% to lower the alkalinity and drop PH of the sparge water to 5.6-5.7 to keep final runnings under 6.0PH
Thats very helpful. Thanks.
I’ll go with your suggestions for the water, and double-check my volumes to make sure I have enough beer, especially the bw which I’m going to want a lot of.
Its unlikely that the 250 ppm chloride level could be correct. The ionic balance is way off as pointed out by the OP. In addition, if that chloride level is correct, the water is not suitable for brewing in the first place. Keep chloride under 100 ppm. So the correction to 25 ppm Chloride looks appropriate.
With that resolved, adding either gypsum or calcium chloride (or both) would be a good approach to water adjustments for this water. I’d suggest that all that’s needed for a Barleywine is to bring the calcium to about 50 ppm and balance the chloride and sulfate to encourage the taste goals. An American BW might benefit from more sulfate while an English BW might benefit from less.
