I am planning on brewing a Festbier this weekend. I received my water report from Ward Laboratories. I have worked on a couple of the online water calculators (Bru N Water, Brewers Friend) and for the life of me, I can't get it figured out. My future son in law is an engineer and he said he would help me with it when he is in town, but that won't be for a few weeks. I swear, it's all "witchcraft" to me :-(. In the meantime, would one of you experts be willing to run it for me? I would really appreciate the help!! Here is my water report: Sodium, Na 9 Potassium K <1 Calcium Ca 14 Magnesium Mg 2 Total Hardness CaCO3 43 Nitrate NO3-N 0.2 (safe) Sulfate SO4-S 5 Chloride Cl 7 Carbonate CO3 <1 Bicarbonate HCO3 48 Total Alkalinity CaCO3 41 Total Phosphorous P <1 Total Iron Fe <1 pH 8.6 Here is the Malt Bill: MALT BILL 9 lb (4.1 kg) German pilsner 1 lb (454 g) Munich 8 oz (227 g) Victory HOPS SCHEDULE 1.5 oz (43 g) Hallertauer Mittelfrüh [4% AA] at 30 minutes 1.5 oz (43 g) Hallertauer Mittelfrüh [4% AA] at 5 minutes DIRECTIONS Mill the grains and mix with 3.3 gallons (12.4 liters) of 163°F (72°C) strike water to reach a mash temperature of 152°F (67°C). Hold there for 60 minutes. Vorlauf until the runnings are clear. Sparge the grains with 4 gallons (15 liters) and top up as necessary to obtain 6 gallons (23 liters) of wort. Boil for 60 minutes, following the hops schedule. Is there anything else needed to run this? Thanks in advance!!
Do you have targets in mind for what mash pH you want and what water profile you desire? My preferred tool is MpH and for an assumed mash pH of about 5.3 and a water profile for a medium amber lager (yes, I know you said Festbier) I would suggest for the mash: Add something like 3 grams of CaCl to get both your Ca and Cl levels up. I choose to use lactic acid to acidify so use something like 5 ml of lactic acid. You could instead use some acidulated malt instead. For the sparge: Same thing, add about 3 grams of CaCl If using lactic acid you only need 1 ml for the sparge There is no one answer here depending on your goals but you will absolutely need to take steps to acidify your water to achieve a proper mash pH. Cheers! P.S. For the grains I assumed Lovibond values of 1.7 (Pilsner), 10 (Munich Malt) and 28 (Victory Malt). P.S.S. Your water is very low in minerals which makes it a nice 'clean slate' to build up your water for a variety of beer styles. Perhaps just use your water as is to brew a Bohemian Pilsner (but acidify to achieve a proper pH value).
Based on your recipe, it looks like you're looking for 6 gallons pre-boil and (probably) 5 gallons post-boil, with one gallon of boil-off. If so, you're probably going to need more like 7.5 gallons total water. Also, I would mash with about 4 gallons (3 gallons would be a bit thick IMO), for a water to grain ratio of about 1.5 qts per lb., leaving 3.5 gallons for the sparge. I would target about 5.45 pH, fairly balanced chloride and sulfates, and an overall soft-ish profile. To the mash, I would add just 2.2 ml of 88% lactic acid. I would also add about 0.8 ml of 88% lactic acid to the sparge water, to bring it down to the same pH as the mash. To the boil, I'd add 2 grams CaCl2 and one gram CaSO4. I've marked up a screen shot from BrewCipher... Bold Red outlines show things to do. Bold Green outlines show results.
Actually, my pre-boil will be 6.5 gallons. I consistently have a boil off rate of 1.5 gallons for an hour boil (very dry here in Denver). Does that change anything?
So you'd need to bump the sparge water up to about 4.15 gallons. As it happens, with some of your minerals coming from your base water and some from kettle additions, it wouldn't change the overall profile much. But I would bump the sparge water acid up to 1.0 ml. You might want to have a look at this presentation sometime, to help make some sense out of all this stuff: https://sonsofalchemy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Intro-to-Brewing-Water-Treatment.pdf
