Brewing With Soft Water

My house is on a well and I have a water softener. I bypass the softener for brewing water because everything I have read says that the softener removes calcium and puts salt in its place and can increase the sodium too much in the beer. I have not tried brewing with the softened water to see if I can taste a difference

 

Same here. I read somewhere early in my brewing exploits that soft water should not be used, so I bypass my softener for my brewing water. That is the extent of my water knowledge.

 

I've lived in the country most of my life. I won't drink water that has been treated by a water softener, much less brew with it. The salt taste is overwhelming to me.

If you have an outdoor hydrant it likely is not being run through the softener. If your well water is otherwise good I would just use that.

 

Yeah, I would not recommend brewing with water that has been treated with a water softener. For reasons already stated. Try your next batch without and you will be very pleasantly surprised with the difference.

I have well water with softener. I used it once, not good. I know buy RO and treat it.

 

Also, if you have well water- chances are the campden tablets are doing nothing. Chlorine is usually a bigger issue with city water.

 

I've been using softened water is that a likely reason my brews so far have seemed pretty thin and almost muddled in taste?

 

I haven't read the book, but I think some clarification is needed... Calcium in an ideal world would be around 120 ppm in mash water for controlling beer stone buildup, it's a co-factor for sacchrification, and it aids in yeast flocculation. For many beer styles, I target 120 ppm for those reasons and then I adjust my sulfate to chloride ratio within those parameters.

However, for a German style Pils, I will use 20 ppm. I believe the flavor stability comment to be a reference to beer stone and possibly flocculation.

 

Soft water has the Ca and Mg reduced through ion exchange with Na. So the hardness goes down (Ca and Mg), and the Na goes up. If the hardness is high, you get enough Na to be detectable to taste. Alkalinity is not affected, so the Residual Alkalinity goes up.

Hardness is not bad for all grain brewing, Alkalinity is bad, amounts depending on the grist composition.

 

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I don't fully understand this approach as applied to homebrewing.

The beerstone thing I get in principle, but I've never encountered it, and it seems like more of a concern for a commercial brewery. However, I admit maybe I've just gotten lucky, or my experience can't be generalized for some other reason. Would welcome other people's thoughts.

But on saccharification, I really don't get it, except maybe in situations where you are using a lot of adjuncts and so the diastatic power is marginal. Are those the circumstances in which you might worry about insufficient calcium? In other words, if your malts are fully converting during the mash, is there any independent reason to worry about the calcium level? (I understand the need for calcium in the finished wort, but for that purpose you could simply add the salts directly to the kettle. My question relates to the need for calcium in the mash in particular.)

A few months ago someone mentioned that calcium is helpful for the mash, beyond its effect on pH, and when I consulted Water I found that this is true. But since then I've wondered whether it really makes sense as a thing to worry about, which is why I'm asking the question now.

 

Sure, you can do that. Or you can do better using any of several free spreadsheets. It's not very difficult.

 

I really like the ease of use that Brew Cipher has. Put your grain bill in. Put your RO water pH in. And adjust as you like. Make sure you use phosphoric or lactic acid to adjust you sparge water pH. Brew cipher tells you how much acid to add. All you need is a decent scale and small paper plate, or small glass bowl to weigh out the salts.

 

Bru'n water is also good, but I think you need to adjust the salts in grams per gallon, and I don't like that. I would rather adjust grams per batch.

 

I mean...what if you brew an amber ale? I agree with with vikeman, download a good spreadsheet like MpH or BrewCipher (both created by guys on this forum) and start playing. Also call your water department and see if they have any info.

 

Yeah, I really think people psych themselves out about water chemistry. With the spreadsheets that have been mentioned above, it's really manageable.

There are basically 4 things you want to cover. The first is having good, pure, chlorine- and chloramine-free water. Since you're starting with RO water, you've got this base covered. The second is picking and achieving your desired level of flavor ions, the third is ensuring enough calcium for yeast health, and the fourth is mash pH.

Achieving the right balance of flavor ions is way easier than it sounds. The three main flavor ions are chloride, sulfate, and sodium. For most styles, sodium isn't in play (an obvious exception being gose), so you're down to two ions to worry about. Chloride emphasizes the sweet, malty character of the beer. NEIPA recipes tend to ramp chloride up really high. Sulfate emphasizes the dry, bitter, crisp character of the beer. These ions are measured in parts per million, and you can look up style guidelines to find appropriate levels. Or just ask on these forums, "I'm brewing a ___________, what would be reasonable chloride and sulfate levels to aim for?" Once you've picked your desired chloride and sulfate levels, it's as easy as plugging calcium chloride and calcium sulfate (gypsum) additions into your spreadsheet until you hit your target. (By the way, I recommend investing in a scale that can measure to the tenths of a gram.)

You also want to get calcium into a good range for yeast nutrient purposes. The lucky thing here is that you've probably already done that with your flavor ions, since the other half of each of those salts is a calcium ion. If by chance you still don't have enough calcium (the advice I've seen is to aim for at least 50 ppm), then reconsider the levels of your flavor ions. Just dial them up a bit until there's enough calcium! (I should mention here that for some styles, in particular some light German beers, a lower level of calcium may be appropriate. But this is not something to concern yourself with at the beginner level.)

There are debates about the necessity of augmenting the magnesium levels. I am in the camp that believes the malt provides more than enough magnesium for the yeast. If you find yourself in the opposing camp, you can add some magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) to dial up the magnesium level. Just bear in mind that you are also adding sulfate, a flavor ion (covered above).

In review: So far we have secured a good, clean source of chlorine- and chloramine-free water (trivially easy in your case thanks to reverse osmosis). We have also calculated our calcium chloride and calcium sulfate additions in order to achieve our target balance of flavor ions, making sure along the way that we've achieved at least 50 ppm calcium (and for the loonies, whatever amount of magnesium they think is required). We're basically done! Now we just look at the spreadsheet and see where our estimated mash pH is. Is it within the optimal range? Then you're done! (You can tell because your spreadsheet will indicate the optimal range, which I think is around 5.3 to 5.5. But I don't even really know off the top of my head, because it's right there in the spreadsheet, so I never have to think about it.)

But wait, what if the pH is too high? In that case add lactic acid or phosphoric acid or whatever, in an amount that the spreadsheet should help you determine. You're done! (Personally I use acid malt because of force of habit. Probably if I were learning it all over again, I would use food grade lactic acid.)

Wait, what if the pH is too low? (This would be common with dark beers.) Well, you can hold back some of your salt additions until the kettle. Calcium has the effect of lowering the pH of the mash, so by lowering the amount of calcium in the mash, you might bump up the mash pH to a good range. (You still want the salts, because you still want the flavor ions and the calcium for the yeast. But by adding them to the kettle, you avoid the mash pH effects of the calcium.)

Mash pH still too low? Maybe pull out some of your dark roasted grains and steep them separately from the mash. Dark roasted grains have a strong pH-lowering effect on the mash, but they don't have to be mashed, they can be steeped. In fact some people recommend this anyway, because it allows you to do things like cold-steeping the roasted grains. But that's a topic for another thread.

People take various other steps, like adding sodium bicarbonate (bear in mind, sodium is a flavor ion, don't push it too high!). But if you're really struggling to get mash pH high enough, I would call it an advanced problem, one that you should come back to the forum for help with.

I hope that was all clear! Once you've done it once or twice, you will be amazed to think that you ever found it daunting. It's a fun and easy part of recipe design once you know how to do it.

[Edited to add: I should mention something about measuring mash pH. First, everything I've written above is meant to refer to the modeled mash pH, that is, the mash pH that your spreadsheet predicts. I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that if you follow your recipe, and the spreadsheet indicates that your recipe will result in a within-range pH, you do not need to worry further. However, some people want to measure their mash pH to make sure the model is accurate (or accurate enough). I'm not going to say much about this except that (A) pH strips are pretty useless - hard to read and known to be inaccurate, and (B) pH meters are, unless they indicate otherwise, meant to be used at room temperature. You should not measure your mash at mash temperature. The pH that your spreadsheet uses is the room temperature pH of the mash - that is, the pH that you would find if you measured it at room temperature. The pH is different at mash temperature, but this is of no concern to you because you should only be measuring it at room temperature, and this is what the spreadsheets are calibrated for.]

 

Excellent post! I wish this was presented so easily for me a year ago when I started all grain brewing.

 

Really good write up. Pretty much what I am doing.

Ca of 50 ppm or more aids yeast flocculation. Great for Ales. I you are doing a lager, it can be lower, as time and low temperature drop the yeast out.

Phosphoric acid is a good one to use for lowering pH, as it is flavor neutral.

Another thing to raise pH is pickling lime, Ca(OH)2, which is flavor neutral.

I use my pH meter to check the mash pH every time. Some base malts are more acidic than the models predict, and I have had mashes come in lower than predicted. Rahr 2 row is one example, about 0.3 low. I had a bag of Best Pilsner malt that was 0.25 low, and it turns out they had a lot that was contaminated with acid malt. So that is one thing to keep in mind if the measured pH is lower than predicted.