I am brewing an IPA tomorrow and have always heard you need calcium added if your water is low in Calcium to lower my Residual Alkalinity which is about 112 My water is: Ca: 41 Mg: 12 SO4: 9 CL: 13 I need to bump the Calcium to 100 or so no?
Chicago water? Use gypsum to boost the Ca and SO4 for an IPA. There are many water tools available now, I use Brunwater.
Just a suggestion.. for an IPA, you'll probably want to add most of your calcium in the form of Gypsum and less in the form of Calcium Chloride for an IPA. It will enhance the perception of crisp bitterness.
Actually we get our water from Evanston. Only difference is they use Chlorine not Chloramine. Although I still use Campden to pre-treat the water overnight. So. Does Brunwater give you an amount of Gypsum to add? I messed around a bit with that spreadsheet and Palmers and of course got a bit confused. I couldn't see where it gave me an amount to add.
I like to use EZWater. Palmer's sheet is basically obsolete. EZWater and Brunwater share a more precise model. Since EZWater does everything I need it to, and it's a single tab, I haven't used BrunWater much. Either will get you to the answer you're looking for.
For my chicago water I like to use Gypsum because of the sulfate for the crispness and I use lactic acid so that I don't need to over do the calcium.
So. It looks like adding 20g of Gypsum to my mash and 13.5g to my sparge puts my PH at 5.54. Which I think is good. But that gives me 281ppm of Ca and 599 of SO4. Too high no? Am I just adding to much?
IMO yes. Don't forget that you can use acidulated malt or an acid solution to lower mash pH beyond what your ideal mineral profile will.
I just use the Palmer graph. I also agree that you might be using too much ca. I can't remember but I think you want lower than 150, I bring mine up to around 100 and then use acid to lower the ph to the level I want.
Palmer's Nomograph? Thats sees almost too simple :-) OK. I will adjust my amounts to try to hit 150. Thanks everyone for your help.
Palmers work is based on color of the beer. The malt acidity and color is very nonlinear, so you must take the grist composition into account along with the water chemistry. Should have asked it the water is from Lake Michigan, as it looks like any water from the Great Lakes. As for the Ca level, you want around 50 ppm minimum. The book IPA has levels for some current IPAs in the 150 to 200 range in the recipe section. If one targets higher levels of SO4, you are going to have higher levels of Ca using gypsum - I would not use Epsom salts to boost SO4 as high Mg can cause more problems than Ca.
It is too simple. It's the same model that the (obsolete) Palmer spreadsheet uses. Nice for its day, but better models are available.
