Brewing with Sodium Chloride

I have used non-iodized table salt a few times, when I wanted to add chloride without adding calcium, and also wanted to enhance the malt flavors a little. It takes a lot of it before you can detect a salty flavor.

 

I brewed a gose using approximately 1/2 ounce of sea salt (which is almost entirely sodium chloride) in a 2.5-gallon batch. The saltiness was noticeable but not overwhelming. I definitely think it enhanced the sweetness of the beer, which along with the sourness and the fruitiness contributed by the coriander and US-05 made for a very nice result.

 

I use BrewCipher, which has @utahbeerdude's water models in it, so I don't think about it. But the mass ratio of Na : Cl is approximately 65%.

 

@VikeMan I too am interested in the ppm Sodium for added maltiness w/o any salty flavors.

EDIT: BrewCipher doesn't state the ppm range.

 

You mean a recommended range? No, it doesn't. I didn't think that's what @hoptualBrew was looking for. But here's a link to the thread where I reported on my dosing experiments. (And I never did do the follow-on experiments or finalize the recipe. Guess I got distracted by something or other.) http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/im-out-of-pretzels.158079/

 

So in terms of adding some data points, I added 1/2 ounce to 2.5 gallons, which works out to about 5.7 grams per gallon. The saltiness was, as stated above, noticeable but not overwhelming.

In his gose, @OldSock added 14 grams in a 5 gallon batch, which is 2.8 grams per gallon. He stated that the salt was a little light and added some more at bottling. However, he presumably meant "a little light" relative to what you might expect from a gose.

Both of these cases are probably way more salt than you are considering adding, but maybe it helps to have an upper bound in gaming this out.

 

Did Jack send you that link a couple hours ago...

 

These numbers are right.

 

You don't want "almost entirely sodium chloride". You want to get as close as you can possibly get to pure sodium chloride. Canning salt is your best bet - even purer than kosher salt.

 

I hear what you're saying, but I think a lot of people have successfully used sea salt when brewing gose. Yes, its composition seems to be a bit heavier on other ions than I would have thought, but I don't think a little sulfate (when compared to the vast amount of chloride) or potassium is going to cause much of a problem. I do think it's probably a good idea to stay away from iodized salt. Also, I wouldn't use pink salt, which gets its color from iron oxide. But I thought the sea salt tasted fine and I would use it again.

 

Tasting fine is fine. But consider that chocolate tastes fine. That doesn't mean it is a good addition to beer (yes, it could be, but bear with me!). Canning salt is as close as you're gonna get to pure sodium chloride. And its widely available. If you're looking fpr sodium chloride, that's what you want. Sea Salt gets its unique flavor from impurities. Think about it.

 

I am kegging my Coffee Porter tonight, and now you have me thinking... Once the coffee notes are where I want them and it is all carbed up I will be doing some dosing with Canning Salt to 50/97 (ppm, Na/Cl), 75/135, and 100/174 in the glass to see what it does for the beer. If I enjoy the results I will scale up on my next rendition of this one.

 

According to Palmer...

"At levels of 70 - 150 ppm it rounds out the beer flavors, accentuating the sweetness of the malt. But above 200 ppm the beer will start to taste salty."