water adjustments

Thanks - that's an excellent overview, which is only missing the importance of the Sulfate to Chloride ratio. I've been studying how brewing water adjustments are calculated over the past couple of weeks, and came to the same conclusion regarding which standalone calculator seems most accurate (mPH). The accompanying articles by the author of the spreadsheet are the most complete and easily understandable overviews of how the calculators work that I've been able to find.

 

Drew Beechum has an article on the basics of water chemistry in the Feb/March issue of Craft Beer and Brewing magazine.

"If you do nothing else, remove the chlorine and/or chloramine from your water."

"I use a small dose of Campden--a single tablet will neutralize 20 gallons pretty instantaneously."

"Just throw in that small dose of Campden, stir, wait a minute, and you're set. Trust me...This one painless step will improve 85 percent of the world's homebrew."

See https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/campden-tablets-sulfites-and-brewing-water.361073/ for a more thorough explanation.

I do this for every batch of beer.

 

Thanks! I considered including a discussion of the Chloride/Sulfate ratio, but ultimately decided against it. IMO, too much is made of the ratio, and not enough about the individual levels, i.e. what each ion brings flavor/feel-wise. My issue with ratios is (for example)...

20 ppm Cl + 20 ppm SO4 <> 100 ppm Cl + 100 ppm SO4

...even though both have a 1:1 ratio.

I agree. The MpH models are also in BrewCipher. @utahbeerdude compared the results of the major models to real life mash data and found the current version of MpH to be the most accurate.

 

But that's why the ratios are so important. Beyond a certain minimum amount, it makes little difference if the ratios are 1:1. But it makes a big difference to the hoppiness or maltiness if the ratios go one way or the other.

 

Ok, for the sake of easy discussion, let's call Chloride "malty" and Sulfates "hoppy." So...

This is where I disagree. When I say..

20 ppm Cl + 20 ppm SO4 <> 100 ppm Cl + 100 ppm SO4

...I mean that these two beers will not taste the same. They may be "balanced" between malty and hoppy "the same," but the second beer will be more malty and more hoppy. IOW, they can "balance" each other, but they don't really "cancel" each other.

It's kind analogous to balancing between a malty/sweet grain bill and IBUs. You can't just escalate both sides and expect the beer to be the same. That said, with chlorides and sulfates, we're talking about something much more subtle than that.

 

But again, back to my point about a "minimum" amount. Although I've seen no studies on this, and I stand to be corrected, I assume that there might be a minimum point with the 1:1 ratio where it becomes increasingly difficult to taste the difference, just as with high levels of IBU. For example, is the difference between 150 ppm Cl + 150 ppm SO4 and 200 ppm Cl + 200 ppm SO4 noticeable?

 

Do most major breweries adjust the mash water the same as the sparge water, or are they treated differently? Also, do they adjust the boil for acidity?

 

I've had some hands on experience in some breweries, but I wouldn't really call any of them "major." The biggest was a 15 barrel (per batch) brew house. But from what I've seen, the focus for mash additions is usually adjustments to hit a target mash pH. Some, but not all, treat their sparge water, but it's not treated the same...it's treated to acidify the sparge water to a target pH (usually a ph that's close to the mash pH). Even though the target pH in each case may be the same, the treatment is, of course, different, because moving a mash pH and moving a water pH are two different problems.

Not that I've seen. But hopefully one or more of the pros who occasionally drop by here will chime in.

 

I'll try to explain why I'm interested in how the breweries adjust their water, although it's a little difficult to clarify this.

I'm currently trying to understand how water adjustment calculators work, and two of my main questions are:

1. where do the recommended target water profiles come from?; and
2. should the mash and sparge water be treated differently in terms of salt additions and pH?

Most sources seem to suggest that the target water profiles come from the breweries themselves, whether directly, or assumed from the source water they use, which makes some sense. But if that's the case, then the water calculators for homebrewers should address the adjustment of the mash water and sparge water in the same way that breweries do. But that doesn't seem to be the case, since the calculators adjust both the mash water and the sparge water separately (salt additions as well as acid additions), whereas, as you have pointed out, based on the breweries you have familiarity with, they seem to focus almost exclusively on the mash water, although the pH of the sparge water (and not the salt additions) may be of concern.

So, does that mean that the target water profiles used in the calculators do not actually come from the breweries, but are a sort of backward engineering, based on trial and error, where the actual results from the recipe dictates the adjustment of the target water profile? Or is it a bit of both, and if so, then that creates an inconsistency issue with regards to how the mash water and sparge water are to be treated.

I hope this explanation is understandable.

 

@OldBrewer, it will vary from calculator to calculator, but when you see something called, e.g . "Dublin" or "Burton," you can probably assume the profile is based on one or more water reports from that locality. One caution about using a water profile from a locality and assuming that the famous beers brewed there used that water... unless a brewery tells you, you don't know if/how they are treating that base water.

As far as water profiles coming from breweries themselves, I don't know if I can recall ever seeing a water profile published by a brewery. It's probably happened, but I don't recall it.

When you see a profile called something like "Malty, Pale," I'd say that's likely some combination of the profile inventor's personal taste and/or calculated to get close to some target mash pH with a typical grain bill for that style.

I've even seen some recommended profiles that are impossible to achieve, chemically speaking. I'd say those are being pulled from a place the sun doesn't shine.

But really, if you want to know where a recommended profile comes from, you could ask the publisher. Send them an email/pm. I bet most would be happy to tell you.

 

The target water profiles seem to be one of the main keys to using a water calculator. Many of the old water profiles have been discredited, but there seem to be few new ones that can be trusted. I suppose this is one of the areas in homebrewing that is just developing, and already recipes are starting to include the target water profiles. However, the profiles that I've seen only address the total water profile and none that I've seen specifically address how the mash and sparge water is to be treated separately.

There are also those that add the sparge salts to the boil rather than to the sparge water, since the grain bed could strip some of the salts from the sparge water. However, I would have thought that the total water profile already includes the loss of salts due to the grain bed, as well as other factors such as the concentration of the salts during boiling, when water evaporates.

 

I never add salts to sparge water. If I want salts beyond what was added to the mash, I add them to the kettle.

Some ions are certainly left behind in the grain bed, but so is the wort that contains them, so there's no change in concentration for most of the ions. The grains themselves aren't snatching ions out of solution. (But...some of the calcium has reacted with phosphates from the malt to produce protons (which is why calcium lowers pH) and insoluble phosphate salts, and so that portion of calcium won't be available anymore in the wort. My recommendation is to not worry about this, and pretend you never read it).

I don't think I've ever seen a calculator that calculates ion concentrations based on increased density after the boil. Because they don't do this, and people don't usually think in these terms, when you see a recommended profile, you can be pretty sure the author is talking about a "pre-boil" profile.

 

Now we've zeroed in on the the very fundamental theoretical basis of the water adjustment calculators, and one of the very questions I've been struggling with - does the recommended profile represent the "pre-boil" profile, or the "pre-mash" profile?

If it represents the "pre-boil" profile, then any loss or change of ions caused by passing the sparge water through the grain bed, would already necessarily have been accounted for, meaning that the salts should be added to the sparge water, not the kettle. If they were added to the kettle instead, then the resultant beer would contain more salts than intended (it would include the addition of the assumed loss or change through the grain bed).

If, however, it represents the "pre-boil" profile, then the loss or change of ions does not need to be addressed, and it therefore should have to be a necessary condition of the calculator that the salts be added to the kettle and not to the sparge water.

It can't be both ways, unless it was specifically stated what the profile actually represented, which I have never seen done.

 

It is said that roughly 50% to 60% of calcium vanishes within the mash via precipitation, and there may exist a similar case for some other minerals. Plus the grist is loaded with minerals to begin with. So in a very real way it is impossible to project the mineral content for the end product beer, boiled or otherwise.

 

I appreciate your thoughts, but that seems to totally miss the point. If we include all the normal reactions that take place in the mash (which is addressed in the water profile), there is still more or less a direct relationship between the pre-mash water profile and the resulting beer profile in terms of ions and acidity. There is similarly, also a more or less a direct relationship between the pre-boil water profile and the resulting beer profile in terms of ions and acidity. Thus we can ignore what happens either in the mash or in the sparge, depending on the definition of the water profile (i.e. whether it's pre-mash or pre-boil). This more and more demonstrates the importance of defining whether the target water profile represents pre-mash conditions or pre-boil conditions. To date, I have never seen this distinction addressed.

In other words, more simply, the pre-mash water profile can represent the water profile needed to result in the beer profile, including all the reactions that take place in the mash and sparge as well as the boil. Or the pre-boil water profile can represent the water profile needed to result in the beer profile, including the reactions that take place in the mash and boil.

 

I've been thinking about your comment since you posted, @Silver_Is_Money and now I see that you have made a very important point that actually supports my comments. I saw one study that indicated (once you subtract for the concentration of ions due to the loss of water through boiling), that the grist does absorb (in that experiment) about 54% of the calcium in the initial mash water (although some of that loss could also be through precipitation in the boil). All the other ions show a very significant increase after mashing, which is only partially due to the concentration of the wort through evaporation, but primarily as a result of the ions extracted from the grains and hops.

Unfortunately, I have not seen any studies which indicate how much of the final ion concentration in the beer comes from the hops as opposed to the grains, but it could be substantial. I say this because I saw another study whereby only base grain was mashed in distilled water and subsequently boiled. Compared to the study mentioned above, the amount of ions that came from the malt alone seemed relatively insignificant. Thus (apart from some fundamental differences which seem relatively minor) the majority of the ions must come from either the hops or the specialty grains.

I sure wish someone with the proper facilities and some group funding (for the lab tests) would take this seriously enough to conduct experiments to see what the actual contributions are, from both the hops (in general) and from some of the commonly used specialty grains. It would make for a very important and significant study for anyone wishing to do a thesis through a beer-brewing related course through an educational institute - a study which to date has hardly been addressed at all, and which seems never to have been seriously considered. This is almost virgin ground.