Hello, I am going to adjust my salt and acid additions for the mash of the beer I'm brewing on Saturday, and I'm going to add the balance of the salts in the boil rather than dealing with the sparge. Do I need to do the same thing for acids? Or does the acid just have to do with the mash? If anyone can provide assistance, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Sorry about that. I've been playing around with Palmer's spreadsheet and I think I have it figured out where I don't need acid, but it'll be good information to have. I was adding some lactic acid to hit my RA and lower pH. I was going to add my salt additions with lactic acid to hit the RA, but it was just for the volume of mash water. I was going to sparge with my regular tap water, and then make the salt adjustments for the sparge water in the boil itself. I wasn't sure if I need to do the same with lactic acid since the mash is over. I'm a rookie with water adjustments, so I'm sorry if these questions are incomplete or stupid, but just trying to learn a little bit at a time.
Be careful adding salts just to hit a residual alkalinity target. Playing around can cause you to possibly end up going way overboard with certain salts (e.g. adding 400 ppm calcium and 550 ppm sulfate, or enough magnesium to make your brew a laxative, just to throw out arbitrary numbers). It's fine to use the salts for RA reasons, just be certain to keep track of how much of each you're adding, to stay reasonably within the recommended ranges so you don't end up with an undrinkably harsh mess. Or to put it another way, the total ppm of individual minerals is every bit as important as your RA, perhaps more so. By the way, one of the main reasons to add acid to sparge water is to bring the pH down, so you're less likely to leach tannins from the grain husks. Using tap water (typically around 8.o pH around here) is usually fine, especially for batch sparging, but if yours is way out of whack, well, there ya go.
I'm a rookie with water adjustments, so I'm sorry if these questions are incomplete or stupid, but just trying to learn a little bit at a time. Need to answer the following to get solid advice. What is your water profile? What is the beer's grain bill? What is the mash adjustments? What are you doing for the sparge - fly or batch -and adjsutments? What are you adding to the boil? It can all vary, and you must say what you are doing.
I recently got into water chemistry and am I glad I did. I agree you should post your profile so you can get better feedback. And listen to hopfenunmaltz his input stopped me from probably destroying a stout.
