Water profile for BCBS inspired beer using RO water

Download and plug in the recipe in BrewCipher 3.5 and adjust water using water tab.

 

At least 50 PPM calcium, favor chloride over sulfate, add enough carbonate to keep the pH towards the high end of the mash range. Some sodium from baking soda would be fine. You can add 10 PPM magnesium if you want.

With bigger/darker beers the main point is to prevent the final pH from falling too close to 4.0, where they take on an acridness I find unpleasant. Exactly how you treat the water depends on your water-to-grain ratio, how dark your specific malts are etc. making it impossible to just give you a perfect profile.

Since I switched to no-sparge, I've found I don't need to treat my water for moderate gravity stouts because there is so much more of it to buffer the dark malts (conversely it takes much more treatment for pale beers because I'm essentially adding the acid that would have gone into the mash and sparge).

 

Assuming you are going to use 13 gals for mashing and 20 for sparging of RO water I would add these salts :

Mash :

CaSO 4 grams, CaCL 6 grams, MgSO 1 gram, Baking Soda 3 grams, Chalk 2 grams

Sparge :

All the above items x 1.5

This way you will end up with (aprox. obviously):

75 calcium , 5 magnesium, 25 sodium, 65 chloride, 60 sulfate, Effective Alkalinity 64, Residual Alkalinity 11, Mash Ph 5.40

 

Conventional wisdom is not to add any baking soda or chalk to sparge water, because you want the pH of the sparge water to be low enough to avoid extracting tannins from the grain. Also, chalk is not very soluble and it probably doesn't achieve much to use it in sparge water.

 

Also, wait a minute, why are you assuming 13 gallons for mashing and 20 gallons for sparging? That would require quite a bit of boiling to get down to 5.5 gallons in the fermenter.

 

The Dublin water profile found here is a preset within a calculator and it works well for stouts:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/

This calculator makes water chemistry fairly easy.

Ca = 110
Mg = 4
Na = 12
Cl = 19
SO4 = 53
HCO = 280

 

IMO, that profile looks pretty low in Chlorides for general use in stouts, from a flavor perspective.

 

Okay, your grain bill from the OP, with 9 gallons of RO/Distilled Mash water (which BTW is going to be pretty thick) is going to land your mash pH pretty low. If I were brewing this recipe, I would probably add 4 g of pickling lime (Ca(OH)2)) to the mash to bring the pH up into the 5.4 range (estimated). No Gypsum or Calcium Chloride in the mash, as they would work to undo your pH adjustment. But you still need some Cl and SO4 for flavor, and some more calcium for yeast flocculation would be good, so I would add approx... 6 g CaCl2, 4 g CaSO4, and 2 g NaCl ... to the kettle. (Not to the 4.5 gallons RO/distilled sparge water itself before sparging.) This would bring your total ion concentrations (PPM) to about...

Ca: 93
Mg: 0
Na: 15
Cl: 80
SO4: 44
HCO3 (equiv): 129

Note that you got some of your Cl (for flavor) from NaCl, so the Sodium (Na) also enhances flavor a little. Also note: If you want some Mg (I almost never do), you can substitute some MgCl2 for some of the CaCl. (You have Calcium to spare, from a yeast perspective.)

ETA: I have never had BCBS, so I have no idea about how the above would help (or not) to get you there.

 

If you're lucky, maybe the canning section of a grocery store. Otherwise, online. Amazon has it. It goes by a few names... Calcium Hydroxide, pickling lime, slaked lime, even "cal" I think.

 

For anyone else that might need it, this is what I bought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0084LZU1Q/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Martin Brungard had a good article Zymurgy that showed they probably use less alkaline water to brew stouts in Dublin.

Most brewing city water profiles are probably not what the brewer uses.

 

I'm aware brewers modify their water. I've used the Dublin water profile in big stouts and it produced good results. Using more chloride and less bicarbonate should also produce a good result.

 

Most places that sell canning supplies will have it. I see it in many but not all grocery stores, hardware stores, walmart, kmart, etc.