Water additions for hoppy IPA

I'm surprised no veteran, well-versed home brewers have responded to this. However, I'm not one of them. Water is very important, but it doesn't have to be so exacting and precise. There is room for experimentation, trial and error, etc.

I've brewed a really beautiful Citra APA using some f*ckin Gerbers mineral water for babies and CVS spring water and it tasted phenomenal. It's okay to go with your gut. More than likely you have a really solid idea of the chemical compositions and their effect in different stages of the brew process. Brewing is mostly chemistry, but it's also intuitive.

Sorry for my filthy two cents, but the gamble of playing around with your instinctual water levels is always worth trying.

 

Use a water calculator like EZ water or brewcipher. I use brewcipher for everything and it's free. Just search the homebrew Forums and you'll find a link.

The malts used will determine the mash ph so you can't just make a blanket statement like use 1 tablespoon of x.

If brewing a pale beer and using 100% distilled/RO you'll only need two or three additions. Calcium Chloride, Sulfate and lactic acid. Target a ph of 5.2 - 5.4. Do you have a ph meter? Are you checking it or just trusting the water calculator? If using just the calculator target 5.3/5.4 so it's a safe spot.

For the most part there are two schools of thought for an IPA.
1) have a much higher sulfate ratio to chloride, which will enhance the bitterness, in a pleasant way, and help the hops pop.
2) the more "new school" way is having a higher chloride to sulfate ratio to give the beer a more round bitterness and softer mouthfeel like the "New England" IPA

For option 1 I would shoot for
Something like 150 ppm of sulfate to 50/75 ppm of chloride. You can go over 200 ppm on the sulfate too. I've gone as high as 250. For the softer mouthfeel shoot for something like 100ppm of chloride to 50ppm sulfate. If you're going to the full juicy New England style I would recommend 180ppm chloride to 100ppm sulfate.

I use the salts to dial in my profile and then use lactic acid to hit my ph target. Also if using RO I recommend yeast nutrient for some zinc.

I can't speak on the sparge water as I do full volume sparge so I treat all my water.

 

I will say that water adjustments will make a good beer great but won't make a bad beer good.

I recommend dialing in your processes and when you can brew good beer consistently then it's time to fine tune it with water adjustments.

 

Don't add salts to your sparge water. Straight RO or distilled is perfect. Make flavor adjustments to your kettle.

 

My suggestion is to ignore those dudes and use @VikeMan 's IPA water profile:
Ca-115, Mg-0, Na-0, Cl-59, SO4-201, HCO3-0

If ambitious have your local water tested, it might be suitable to just add salts to achieve your target.

I use acid malt to adjust pH, but phosphorus or lactic acid should accomplish the same. Brewcipher or Brewers Friend (both free) will help with fine-tuning the pH. When my pH meter went kaput I never replaced as the software was getting me PDC most every time.

 

The water calculators I use you plug in your grain bill and water characteristics and if gives you the mash ph, I personally only focus on mash ph not kettle. Then I add my salt additions and it adjusts the mash ph and mineral content. Try bru'n water.

 

H2O is the easy part...what's the rest of your recipe?

 

My philosophy:

- Use RO water
- Use acidulated malt or lactic/phosphoric acid to adjust mash pH to desired level. Mash.
- Add salts directly to boil kettle when sparge is complete.
- Focus on SO4:Cl ratio.
- Higher ratio favors more west coast style IPA with bitterness and crispness, lower ratio favors more soft body New England style IPA.
- Don't worry about adding bicarbonate, Mg, Na, Ca so much. You will get some Ca contribution from Gypsum and CaCl. Malt inherently contains varying levels of other minerals, so rdwhahb.

Cheers!

 

MpH Water Calculator (which can be used to estimate mash pH) has a tab with suggested water profiles that have been gleaned from various sources.

Cheer!