Mash water adjustment for chocolate stout

You don´t need to use RO water for a Stout, you need carbonates in your water to counteract acidity of dark grains . I think it is preferable to use tap water, if you don´t know what your tap water mineral content is, then you will need to be prepared to add salts to low or rise Ph of the mash to get a Ph value between 5,2 - 5,7 .

Take a look here :

http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3/understanding-the-mash-ph/what-kind-of-water-do-i-need

 

What do you mean when you say sucks?. Is it too hard - too alkaline?

 

If using RO water you will 100% need to make adjustments.

My suggestion would be to download the EZ water spreadsheet. It allows you to plug in the water volume and the grain used in the recipe. From there you can play around with the additions (gypsum, calcium, etc) to dial in the profile that you are after.

I would also suggest you avoid mimicking a water profile that calls for extreme levels of salts. It's always a good idea to adjust water with a light hand and then fine tune for next batch based on your tasting notes.

As for PH, you may want to shoot for a mash PH of around 5.4 ( I wouldn't go much lower). Too low of a PH on a dark beer like this will make it taste thin and will detract from the malt profile.

Another option would be to use half RO and half tap water. To do this, you need to know the profile of your tap water so that you can plug it into the spreadsheet. There is an option that allows you to specify what percentage of RO water was used.

Hope this helps a little

 

Using MpH Water Calculator, I estimate a distilled-water pH of ~5.3 for your grain bill. Adding 2.5 grams of baking soda to 4.0 gallons mash water, for example, will raise the pH to ~5.5, which is a good target for a stout.

If you sparge, distilled water with no treatment is fine.

It is often assumed one needs highly carbonate (i.e., alkaline) water to brew a dark beer. Generally, the mash water for a dark beer needs to have more alkalinity than that for a light colored beer in order to hit the proper pH, but the proper alkalinity levels are usually well below those suggested by Palmer.

Cheers!

 

I will try my best here...

Generally speaking brewers will use water chemistry to balance PH and to accentuate certain aspects of their beer. For example, a brewer may want to enhance the perception of maltiness or on the flip side, enhance the hop flavour and expression of bitterness.

Keep in mind this is a pretty big generalization but you can use the Chloride to sulfate ratio as a general guide to either enhancing maltiness or the bitterness.

In general a chloride to sulfate ratio of below .77 (or around there) can enhance the bitterness of the beer. On the other hand a ratio of above 1.3 (or around there) can enhance the maltiness of the beer.

There is a catch though... The ratios mentioned above will only work if you add enough chloride and enough sulfate to achieve a perceptible difference.

I'm going to link you to a power point on my Homebrew club's website to give you some real world examples of how these ratios play out: Intro to brewing water

Good luck and welcome to the wonderful world of water chemistry!

 

If you click on the MpH Water Calculator link that @utahbeerdude kindly provided above there is a tab of Water Profiles within the MpH tool.

For a Medium Brown/Black Ale the table lists ranges for:

• Calcium: 50-75
• Chloride: 50-150
• Sulfate: 50-150

If you are looking to tailor your water mineral content for a given beer style (i.e., Chocolate Milk Stout) the above would make sense.

Cheers!

 

don't tell anyone…but a touch of table salt maybe a good thing too...