Reducing alkalinity using acid.

[orlando]

Some of you may well have followed threads concerning water treatments and the various calculators that are available. One of the newest is by a member on here mabrungard's Bru'n Water Calculator. This calculator accommodates the use of a number of different acids which can reduce alkalinity without necessarily pushing too many salt additions that adversely affect the beer. This is a difficult area to approach and of course involves some significant potential hazards, so I thought it might be of interest to you to share some ideas and kit I've looked at to minimize this risk within a small budget. This post concentrates on adding acid to the water (and it is always that way round). There are a number of issues to this, first is to decide on which acid to use and then at what concentration and to make sure it is reagent/food safe standard. I have decided to use phosphoric acid at 75% concentration as this has the least impact on flavour and salts used and fits particularly well with my water supply. The use of appropriate gloves, eyewear and clothing are assumed. I have looked at suppliers of equipment that can handle this and there are a number of expensive options e.g. special dispensers that almost completely remove you from potential contact click. The caveat here is that this dispenser requires a dilution to 25%. I then looked at volumetric pipettes to ensure higher accuracy, these too can be rather expensive and as we tend not to use it that often I looked for something that sacrificed a little precision for reasonable cost. My reasoning here is that we are looking principally for getting the mash water within a reasonably wide range and a micro millilitre here or there, even a ml isn't going to make a significant difference. To that end I contacted a lab supplies company to obtain some advice and came up with a graduated pipette with a rubber bulb filler here and here. The 25ml pipettes are graduated in 0.2ml increments, with an accuracy of +/- 0.2ml. This means for example if the calculator calls for 4.9ml you will be able to measure to 4.8ml and know it is within the range 4.6 to 5.0ml (or choose to go over, to measure 5.0ml and know it's within 4.8ml to 5.2ml).These are handy if you dilute to 25% but are not as accurate. I want to use at 75% to reduce handling and therefore need greater precision with smaller quantities so went for the 10ml. For greater accuracy a smaller pipette is better - the 10ml versions have 0.1ml increments and accuracy of +/- 0.1ml, although this does mean you'd need to pipette twice to get volumes over 10ml.

There are of course other fillers which you will find on their site and of course others, but again they are more expensive and prone to rusting. This is a new area for me so I would be grateful for comments from others more experienced and of course any questions that I haven't covered.

[Dave S]

New area for me too, Orlando. I've just got the 'paid-for' version of Bru 'n Water from Martin and have been having a play with it. It looks good, but one thing has surprised me, and that is, after inputting my water details I found I could set the sparge and mash pH correctly with the requisite additions of phosphoric acid, (chosen because it is available from Brupaks) but no additional salts - gypsum, chloride etc were required. I can't remember ever having brewed without the addition of something. I've emailed Martin to see if this is feasible, or whether I've gone awry somewhere. It would be great is it's right though, even though I've just bought 1kg of gypsum.

[orlando]

New area for me too, Orlando. I've just got the 'paid-for' version of Bru 'n Water from Martin and have been having a play with it. It looks good, but one thing has surprised me, and that is, after inputting my water details I found I could set the sparge and mash pH correctly with the requisite additions of phosphoric acid, (chosen because it is available from Brupaks) but no additional salts - gypsum, chloride etc were required. I can't remember ever having brewed without the addition of something. I've emailed Martin to see if this is feasible, or whether I've gone awry somewhere. It would be great is it's right though, even though I've just bought 1kg of gypsum.

Hi Dave, I have emailed him with the same observation. This is my take on it, subject to his answer. There are 3 lines that need to be taken into consideration. The target profile, the difference between your water and the target profile and the "currently" finished profile. It appears to me the last of the 3 lines is measuring your recipe and alkaline adjusted water against an "ideal" range. If you hover over the red triangles the tool tips talk about the "ideal" range for that salt but not how close that is to the target. I think it is just a reference for the brewer to check how far off the target is from the "ideal", a sort of fail safe. But will have to wait for Martin's input to be sure.

[Dave S]

New area for me too, Orlando. I've just got the 'paid-for' version of Bru 'n Water from Martin and have been having a play with it. It looks good, but one thing has surprised me, and that is, after inputting my water details I found I could set the sparge and mash pH correctly with the requisite additions of phosphoric acid, (chosen because it is available from Brupaks) but no additional salts - gypsum, chloride etc were required. I can't remember ever having brewed without the addition of something. I've emailed Martin to see if this is feasible, or whether I've gone awry somewhere. It would be great is it's right though, even though I've just bought 1kg of gypsum.

Hi Dave, I have emailed him with the same observation. This is my take on it, subject to his answer. There are 3 lines that need to be taken into consideration. The target profile, the difference between your water and the target profile and the "currently" finished profile. It appears to me the last of the 3 lines is measuring your recipe and alkaline adjusted water against an "ideal" range. If you hover over the red triangles the tool tips talk about the "ideal" range for that salt but not how close that is to the target. I think it is just a reference for the brewer to check how far off the target is from the "ideal", a sort of fail safe. But will have to wait for Martin's input to be sure.

Yes, I agree. Looking at the target adjustment row it definitely looks like additions should be made, but if you make those additions lower down, the mash pH goes haywire. How odd. We'll have to wait and see what he says.

Also, the first 5 columns of the finished profile are the same as in the existing profile. There is much to confuse a simple soul!

[orlando]

In that case adjust the amount of acid. How are you adding yours?

[Dave S]

In that case adjust the amount of acid. How are you adding yours?

At the moment I've just entered random values until the pH was right, but at that point the amount is small - 0.3 ml/l. That's for a Burton profile. Using Graham's calculator for a similar profile, the amount of CRS was more like 1.2 ml/l. I suppose I could try adding the called-for salt additions before the acid additions and see how that turns out.

[Dave S]

In that case adjust the amount of acid. How are you adding yours?

At the moment I've just entered random values until the pH was right, but at that point the amount is small - 0.3 ml/l. That's for a Burton profile. Using Graham's calculator for a similar profile, the amount of CRS was more like 1.2 ml/l. I suppose I could try adding the called-for salt additions before the acid additions and see how that turns out.

No, if I take out the acid and add what looks like the required gypsum addition, the mash pH plummets to 0.9.

[orlando]

I take it you are not using CRS in Martin's calculator?

I just played with a Brown Bitter profile using just MO and crystal with a bit of black malt and was able to get the mash pH to 5.4 without reducing alkalinity using acid, so it isn't always necessary to do so, style dictates.

Edit: Of course you can't do without acid in some form as you have to reduce the pH of the sparge water so it is at least below 6.

[orlando]

In that case adjust the amount of acid. How are you adding yours?

At the moment I've just entered random values until the pH was right, but at that point the amount is small - 0.3 ml/l. That's for a Burton profile. Using Graham's calculator for a similar profile, the amount of CRS was more like 1.2 ml/l. I suppose I could try adding the called-for salt additions before the acid additions and see how that turns out.

Just reread this and realised I was misunderstood, my apologies I should of been clearer. I meant physically adding acid to the respective liquours. Plus when you say it was small (0.3 m/l) I assume you mean per litre as the calculator ramps this up to mash and sparge quanitites?

[Dave S]

I take it you are not using CRS in Martin's calculator?

I just played with a Brown Bitter profile using just MO and crystal with a bit of black malt and was able to get the mash pH to 5.4 without reducing alkalinity using acid, so it isn't always necessary to do so, style dictates.

No, I'm using phosphoric as you are. My ingredients are almost the same as yours - 3.5 kg MO, 250 g Crystal. If I remove the acid I get pH 6.0. You'll have probably got it down to 5.4 because of the BM.

[Dave S]

In that case adjust the amount of acid. How are you adding yours?

At the moment I've just entered random values until the pH was right, but at that point the amount is small - 0.3 ml/l. That's for a Burton profile. Using Graham's calculator for a similar profile, the amount of CRS was more like 1.2 ml/l. I suppose I could try adding the called-for salt additions before the acid additions and see how that turns out.

Just reread this and realised I was misunderstood, my apologies I should of been clearer. I meant physically adding acid to the respective liquours. Plus when you say it was small (0.3 m/l) I assume you mean per litre as the calculator ramps this up to mash and sparge quanitites?

Yes it's 0.3 ml per litre, still small when multipled by the total mash liquor @ 9.35 litres

[orlando]

Yep, that's one of the reasons I went for the smaller pipettes once you start using the acid at 75% and relatively small liquour volumes it gets quite small so accuracy becomes a factor.

[Dave S]

Yep, that's one of the reasons I went for the smaller pipettes once you start using the acid at 75% and relatively small liquour volumes it gets quite small so accuracy becomes a factor.

I've got a few plastic syringes at various sizes - 1, 10 and 30 ml, so I might try with those first and check out the pipettes is needs be. I just hope the improvement in the beer is worth all the faff. What fun.

[orlando]

Be careful. I would look at the material safety data sheet first, not to mention all the safety gear. It is fun; though whether it improves the beer to the extent that really justifies the effort remains to be seen. But it will

[Dave S]

Be careful. I would look at the material safety data sheet first, not to mention all the safety gear. It is fun; though whether it improves the beer to the extent that really justifies the effort remains to be seen. But it will

Should be OK, I administer CRS via plastic syringes without incident, (except the calibration scale is wearing off the syringe a bit) and that's a mix of sulphuric and hydrochloric, so we should be alright with phosphoric. I think the bulk of the effort is at this stage. Once we get clarification of what we are doing wrong, I'm hoping that things will be a lot more straightforward.