Water profile help

Your best route is to use one of the available spreadsheets/webpages for doing water calculations for beer. These include EZ Water, Brun Water, MpH Water Calculator, and a page at the Brewer's Friend website. If all you want to do is do the ppm <--> grams conversion, then EZ Water is your best bet, as it is the simplest. Cheers!

 

Mark, would the process be to guess at varying mineral salt (Epsom salts, Calcium Chloride,...) additions to end up with the desired water mineral profile? An iterative process?

Cheers!

 

Assuming you are going to brew 5 gals of beer and according your desired water profile(too much sulfateIMHO) for a water/grain ratio of 1,5 qt/lb you will need to add :

7,5 grams of Gypsum
1,5 gram of CaCl

These additions will give you a Ph mash between 5,5-5,6 using RO water and a grist for an IPA.
The other minerals do not need to be adjusted.

 

Esteban, how is he going to achieve "mg 18" with just those two mineral salt additions?

Cheers!

 

Quick futzing around, I came up with
0.5341 g/gal Epsom Salt
0.2405 g/gal Canning Salt
2.0505 g/gal CaCl2

That gives you
Ca 147.5
Mg 13.9
Na 25.0
SO4 55.0
Cl 300.0

Not quite your targets but close. You can tweak it from there. Just multiply these amounts by the number of gallons of water you are using to get your total additions in grams.

 

But his target is
"sulfate 300
chloride 55"

Cheers!

 

This is Randy Mosher´s IPA profile. I´ve being using it with great results.

Man, get Bru' Water spreadsheet. But, so you do not have to study everything now, tell me How many Gallos you will use at mashing and Sparging and the salts you have in hands that I can tell you how many grams of each to use.

 

Damn...this water has a hiiiigh sodium and bicarbonate...so, if you are not distiling your water you going to have 40 of sodium.

As you only have gypsum and Calcium Chloride you will not be able to adjust the Magnesium (you would need magnesium sulfate for that, AND, as both salts have calcium, to achieve 55 of Cl and 300 os SO4 you will get a very high amount of Calcium (186), so as we know that amount higher than 150ppm for calcium is not that beneficial I would adjust th Cl and SO4, keep them a little lower to get 150ppm calcium max.

So, the closest you can get is by adding:

Mash: Gypsum (6,1g) Calcium Chloride (0,2g)
Sparge: Gypsum (9,1g) Calcium Chloride (0,2g)

With this you´ll get a profile of:

149,7 calcium 10 magnesium 40 sodium 228,3 sulfate, 42,8 chloride, 261 bicarbonate

I would suggest this adjustment.

 

Just to double check, you previously posted:

"I'm using RO water from my local brewery".

So, the mineral profile above (what you labeled as "existing water)" is RO water from the brewery?

Cheers!

 

Yep. Disregard my numbers.

 

Would you mind recalculating since @sooners3210 is using RO water (just assume zero for all minerals?).

Cheers!

 

aaaaa...

So lets begin again. being a "0" water you, with your current minerals, will no be able to adjust Sodium or Magnesium. Get baking soda at the market...this way you can adjust the sodium.

Here is the new sugestion:

Mash: Gypsum (7,6g) Calcium Chloride (1,5g), Baking Soda (1,4)
Sparge: Gypsum (11,4g) Calcium Chloride (2,3g)
Boil: Baking Soda (2g)

With this you´ll get a profile of:

143 calcium 0 magnesium 25 sodium 280 sulfate, 48 chloride

What you could to is to get Magnesium Sulfate (Epson Salt - MgSO4)..this way you could get closer to your desired profile by adding:

Mash: Gypsum (6,2g) Calcium Chloride (2g), Baking Soda (1,4), Epson Salt (2,7g)
Sparge: Gypsum (11,4g) Calcium Chloride (2,3g), Epson Salt (4,1g)
Boil: Baking Soda (2g)

With this you´ll get a profile of:

130 calcium 18 magnesium 25 sodium 300 sulfate, 62 chloride

 

Jack, ` The other minerals do not need to be adjusted.`

 

That is not the case.

@MLage provided the correct answer here:

"Mash: Gypsum (6,2g) Calcium Chloride (2g), Baking Soda (1,4), Epson Salt (2,7g)
Sparge: Gypsum (11,4g) Calcium Chloride (2,3g), Epson Salt (4,1g)
Boil: Baking Soda (2g)"

Cheers!

 

You don`t need to bother using Epsom salt and Baking soda, besides the numbers of the mineral content of his water were posted after what I had posted. It is not very advisable to get such a huge Sulfates content in a water with high levels of sodium(harsh bitterness), but if the OP wants to take the risk is up to him.

 

I'm new to chemistry... what would be the ppm that you would consider high for a hoppy beer that would give the harsh bitterness?

TIA

 

More than 350 ppm, but you must consider that it is not very accurate the way we can weight salts, so i would avoid going to the edges:Starting from RO water you could add just what I have posted before without risking your beer. There is no need to match perfect ppm numbers of the differents ions in the water for brewing, in fact as I said it is not possible for us to do so with our homebrewing equipments and tools. I prefer doing things more simple, I think simple beers are the best.