Hardness Question

What's your CA at?

 

120 ppm of total alkalinity won´t be a big issue to get a proper ph mash for a light colored beer, you will need to add some acid(lactic ,citric or phosforic(preferable).It would be interesting to know the other ions :Sulfate , Chloride, Sodium otherwise you are going to fly blind in regards what salts additions you need.

 

Use acid. Acid + carbonate CO3 = CO2 gas. Alkalinity go bye-bye.

 

The addition of Ca to the mash drops pH, acid also drops pH. Both neutralize the HCO3, that is what drops the pH.

 

Oh, a water chemistry question. Not an area I know much about. Based on the thread title alone, I was about to suggest seeing a doctor after 4 hours.

 

Small Brewery of the Year winner at GABF 2016 (IIPA, American Wheat beer Gold) has water with alkalinity close to your's with moderate Sulfate and calcium levels. I talked to the head brewer a bunch about water chemistry and he is in the boat of your water gives your beer it's unique traits. According to him all he does for his pale beers is treat with Phosphoric to get PH to 5.2 and that's it.

Get a good PH meter, treat it well, and calibrate it often. Use Bru'n water of something similar.... and experiment. Try just acid, try acid/salts, try just salts. Try drastically different profiles on the same recipe. It's a bit of a rabbit hole but it can be fun. Mash Ph is the most critical but I would suggest monitoring PH through the whole process (mash, sparse, final runnings, boil, fermentation, final beer) and see what you get along the way.

 

Phosphoric acid is ideal because it has pretty much zero flavor. Lactic acid is great too. However, I tend to use citric or even vinegar and it always turns out just fine. A rough "glug" (probably like 2 tablespoons) of regular ole vinegar in the mash can take pH down by roughly 0.2-0.4, and it's such a tiny amount that you can't taste it later anyway.

 

Nope, that`s not how things play. Acidification doesn`t remove CaC3, it just counteract its buffering power, we call buffering power to the power of a given salt to raise pH, but those carbons will remain being there in your water.

 

I think you are tweaking the right variables. I recommend using a program such as BruNwater (an excel spreadsheet, really) to help guide you, but basically it, will tell you to adjust sulfate and chloride according to the hoppy-malty balance that you seek. You'll probably make that adjustment with calcium chloride and calcium sulfate. Calcium exchanges with the hydrogen ions (i.e., the essence of acid) in phytic acids and other organic acids in malt. The amount of calcium you add will influence how much lactic or phosphoric acid you need to add to lower the pH. Once you have all the variables entered in the program, it estimates your final pH. You can go back and adjust the lactic or phosphoric addition to lower the pH to where you like or adjust the bicarbonate addition to raise pH).

When brewing pale beers, you will likely adjust with gypsum, calcium chloride, and acid.

 

The carbon in your source water is mostly in the form of the bicarbonate ion HCO3- (unless your pH is significantly above 8, in which case there will also be some carbonate CO3(2-)). Flavor wise HCO3- is a nonissue. Bicarbonate is typically the major source of alkalinity (which is really code for buffering capacity). Hence, the problem is that HCO3- is an effective buffer that will result in a mash pH that is too high if something is not done to neutralize it. When you add acid the H+ from the acid binds with the HCO3- to form carbonic acid H2CO3 (neutralization!). Concurrently, the pH drops. When brewing a pale beer the grain bill also typically contributes alkalinity with respect to the ideal mash pH. Thus one must add enough Ca, Mg, and/or acid to overcome the alkalinity of the carbonate and the malt. A detailed discussion of the neutralization of carbonate can be found here. Cheers!

 

I have hard water. One thing I quickly learned is that dark beers were usually more successful than light.

I can say that I tried the gypsum/calcium chloride/ph meter route to improve my results. But I have had as many failures as successes. At this point, after getting my water tested - I am using acidulated malts to get my PH in the right ballpark and using Bru-n-water to adjust the salts.

 

@pweis909 - I use the water tab in BrewCipher for my water estimations, is this relatively similar to BruNwater?[/QUOTE]

I haven't used BrewCipher but I would be surprised if the two programs steered you in significantly different directions. Vikeman comes across as careful and thorough in his posts, and everyone seems to like his spreadsheet.

Regardless of which program you choose to use, just remember that brewing calculators are guides, and you should allow experience with measurements (e.g., pH meter) and perceptions (e.g., taste) help you make adjustments with future batches. .

 

BrewCipher gives generally similar but often slightly different results than Bru'nWater, because it uses a more sophisticated and (IMO) better model. Although I'd love to take credit for it, the water model in BrewCipher is actually the MpH model developed by @utahbeerdude, to whom all credit and honor are due.

If I were going to use a standalone water model, it would be -> this one <-. On the same site are @utahbeerdude's white papers on various aspects of mash/sparge water chem. They are technical in nature, but understandable by the layman willing to invest some careful thought. If someone has read and understood the Bru'nWater "Water Knowledge" pages, @utahbeerdude's papers would be a great next step. I learned enough from his papers that I could probably have reproduced the model, but thankfully I didn't have to!

The only thing BrewCipher adds to the utility of MpH is that the two are integrated, so that you don't have to enter your grain bill and related information twice or enter what kind of malt (Base, Crystal, etc.) each malt in the bill is.

 

I use a Milwaukee MW101, which retails for about $120, but you can find it cheaper. I would avoid the cheap no-name meters.

Get a quality meter, take care of the probe properly (cleaning and storage), measure pH at room temperature rather than mash temperature, and it will last a long time.

 

5 gal all grain batch: RO/ drinking water
Light pale ales = 4oz acidulated malt
Dark/caramelly beers = 1tsp baking soda
normal brewing/salt addition procedures
Done...no pH meter required as long as you don't care about being exact/anal

 

Agree with this! If you are just starting getting into water chemistry your PH level is the first step.
After knowing your water you can make adjustments with help from Bru'n water and the like. I've struggled with lighter colored beer but had no trouble with the dark so after testing my water I finally understood why