Jim's Beer Kit

The problem with heated water is that if it has much Temporary Hardness, the heating may drive off a portion of the Temporary Hardness (aka: Alkalinity). If you have calculated your acid addition based on the alkalinity of the tap water, then you will likely over dose the water with acid. Now, if yo...

Yes, a negative RA is necessary for most pale beers. For example, an all Pils grist mashed in distilled water will produce a mash pH of around 5.7 to 5.8. That distilled water has a RA of zero. You have to add a bit of acid or acid malt to push the mash pH into the 5.2 to 5.4 range and avoid tannin ...

If your water source uses chlorine for disinfection and not chloramine, then the pre-boiling can serve as a dechlorination step. If the water has a lot of Temporary Hardness and Alkalinity, then the pre-boiling can also serve to reduce those levels. However, you need to pre-boil for about 15 minutes...

I use those 5500w elements in my kettle and HLT. Very quick heating capability. You will need a way to modulate the power. I use a temperature controlled PID for the HLT and a pulse-width modulator for the boil kettle. Yes, the hole in the wall is a normal one-inch diameter. The squigley element is ...

Hardness is primarily a product of the calcium and magnesium content of the water. Alkalinity is primarily a product of the carbonate and bicarbonate content of the water.

You are trying to 'fill in the gaps' with another source and its possible that some of the error comes from that. If you are confident in the values from Murphy's, you can just adjust the remaining major cation (Na) to make the ions balance. However, the bottom line that I see is that your water is ...

Paul, if the beer was pale, that level of alkalinity (carbonates) could easily have been too high and the resulting mash pH was also. High pH tends to produce 'dull' beer flavor. What style was that beer intended to be?

Be careful! Brewing without any contact with copper in the process has tripped up several brewers. Copper provides for several yeast and reductive processes in brewing and you DO want them. An important thing that copper provides is the removal of sulfide and other sulfurous compounds. If you do go ...

paulg wrote:thanks martin
so if the bicarb is next to zero never mind ,add phosphoric acid to get 5.5 mash ph and add gypsum etc to get as close as possible to the green targets

regards Paul

Exactly!

If you are confident in the alkalinity/bicarbonate value from the test kit, you could perform a quick evaluation of your acid strength using the acidification calculator. Plug in your resulting test kit alkalinity into the calculator and then figure out how much 75% phosphoric you would need to add ...

There really is no 'target' for bicarbonate. That is just a starting point. Adjust the bicarbonate content of your mashing water to the point necessary to produce the pH you want.

Having just plodded through that Chemistry of Beer course, I now have a better understanding that mashing at a beta amylase temperature (say in the upper 140F range) is ideal for producing maltose. So excepting for creating more body and mouthfeel components with a higher mash temp, it doesn't appea...

You do need to include the nitrate value in the summation. It is a major anion in that report. That does close the difference significantly between the cation and anion sums. Your assumption of 13.3 for the Na may be off in this case. If the rest of the ion concentrations are correct, it may be that...

Aleman wrote:
Alkalinity is the one parameter that you should measure each and every time you brew!

Good advice unless you are positive that your water source and quality never changes! Alkalinity has the greatest impact on the resulting mash pH and it warrants high vigilance.

Its a bit of a jump to assume that the sodium content is only paired with the chloride. I'm not sure that 16 ppm is the right value. This does seem to be a significantly unbalanced water report. The anion total is rather high. The fact that the lab result is substantially different from the field te...