Post Mash Water Adjustment

I can't remember the source, but I read some time ago that if your water composition is suitable for your beer pre-boil, then your water composition should be suitable in your finished beer as well. As a result, I've gotten in the habit of adding all of my salts and acids to the mash, (plus acidifying the sparge water) and so I've never found the need to add anything to the kettle.

Now I'm wondering if there would be an advantage to srategically omitting some of the salt and acid additions from the mash and move them to the boil kettle instead. Anyone out there doing so and could you explain your rationale when you do?

Thank you.

 

Thanks for the reply.

This is the same boat I'm in. I guess I'm wondering if there is any advantage to keeping some of the salt additions out of the mash (say beyond a certain quantity for the benefit of the mash chemistry) and using them in the boil instead.

 

I'm glad you responded VikeMan. I kind of became curious about this because of BrewCipher. There is an input for both mash and kettle additions. For my water and recipes personally, I never saw the need for pH / water flavor adjustments outside of the adjustments that I make in the mash. Is there a situation that you could think of where a salt addition would be detrimental to the mash, but beneficial to the boil/finished beer product?

ETA: Would you agree with one of my original statements that if the water composition of mash is suitable for your beer style, then the water composition should be suitable for the finished beer product as well?

 

So this is what I've been doing, perhaps not the best approach:

I build from distilled. I add CaCl and CaS04 to get where I want flavor-wise. Sometimes this gets me where I need to be pH-wise, sometimes it doesn't and I need to add acid. The amount of CaCl and CaS04 that I add are based on what I want in my final water composition, not just the mash. In other words, I do not try to match my sparge water composition to my mash water composition. I sparge with distilled water only, acidified only where necessary to match the calculated pH of the mash.

 

Good to hear, thank you for walking me through that VikeMan.

Back to what @utahbeerdude mentioned earlier:

"It might be, for example, that you want a lot of sulfate in the finished beer, but adding enough CaSO4 to the mash water to achieve that end might make your mash pH to low"

Based on my decision to add all of my salts to the mash instead on both mash + boil - is it possible through BrewCipher to know when I'm affecting my mash pH negatively, to the point where it might affect the fermentability of my wort ?

 

I believe I do stay within the normal mash pH range, although I'm not 100% sure. Does Brew Cipher calculate where the pH lands separately for mad and boil?