So......got my Alkalinity figure.....now what?

[adm]

I finally got Thames Water to admit to knowing what the TA figure was for my water (after much cajoling and threatening)....

Anyway. It's 108mg/l expressed as CaCO3.

Now, I've never doen any water treatment before other that chucking a teaspoon of Sodium Met into the liquor the night before.

I do 5G brews, and heat up 46l of water, which gives me plenty to do everything, plus a bit left over. So - presumably I should base my calculations on 46l and treat the water in the HLT, not adding anythig to the mash etc??

So - If I use Graham's calculator (superb - many thanks!) and target a Dry Pale Ale, I get the following results. (I don't have a Mg figure, or a Ca figure, but I do have a Total Hardness CaCO3 number, which if I plug it in seems to calculate a Ca and a CO3 number for me).

CRS Required (for 46l) 22.1ml
Mineral Additions Required:
Calcium Sulphate (as gypsum): 10.04g
Calcium Chloride: 8.62g
Magnesium Sulphate: 1.43g


Or.....if I target a Stout, it gives me:

CRS Reequired (for 46l) 22.1ml
Mineral Additions Required:
Calcium Sulphate: 0
Calcium Chloride: 13.82g
Sodium Chloride: 10.69g (adding common salt???)

Anyway... do these numbers sound in the ballpark? I just want to check I've got the hang of this before I go and deploy chemical weapons against my next brew!

Finally - should I still add the Sodium Met?

[steve_flack]

Yes, still use the sod met - it's removing chlorine. None of the other salts will do that.

What I've been doing is using CRS to treat the entire volume of the water you use for brewing so that alkalinity is less or equal to 50 (some go lower). For darker beers the figure is a bit higher (can't recall what it is though). For bitters I also use DLS. For this I treat the brewlength volume (so in your case that's 5G). I add the correct proportion of the DLS to the mash (so if you use 2G in your mash then use 2/5 of the DLS). I add the rest of the DLS to the boil. Unless your Calcium levels are really low you could probably skip the DLS and just see what CRS does on it's own to start off with.

[adm]

Thanks Steve,

That clears it up nicely.

To summarise:

CRS for all water used - in HLT
Also add Sodium Met as per usual

DLS in the mash and the boil
Split by % of water used in the mash/boil
i.e. for 5G brew length using 2G to mash with, split DLS 40%/60% between mash tun and boiler.

That seems pretty straight forward. I thought the water treatment black magic would at least involve some chicken entrails and a silver pentagram!

[Scooby]

I live in a TW area and my calcium level is 114.5mg/l. I adjust the alkalinity
of the total volume to 20-50, as Steve said I rekon the calcium level is high
enough not to make any additions but as a trial I'm going to add 5ml of
gypsum to the boil in my next brew to see if it makes any difference

[adm]

To revive this thread again......

I've now got some CRS and various other bits and pieces to adjust my water with. However, I have not been able to get a figure for Magnesium or Calcium from the water company. They say they just give the total hardness as CaCO3 (which is 145 mg/l CaCO3)

So when I use Graham's calculator, I enter the Alkalinity, plus the total hardness figure and it calculates a value for Ca for me. But how do I find a figure for Magnesium - and is it really required? Does the Mg quantity make much of a taste difference at all?

Anyway.....ignoring the Magnesium for now......if I put my numbers into the calculator and select a profile for Porter, I get the following:


I have set the volume to 46 litres, which is my total liquor volume for a 23 litre brew. So this tells me the right amount of CRS to add to the 46l of tap water as i want to CRS treat all the water used, but as my actual brew length is only 23l, do i then just halve the mineral salt additions it lists and add that to the mash and boil split by percentages of the water used for the mash and boil respectively?

Apart from the Mg number - am I missing anything essential here?

Thanks!

[Graham]

That looks fine to me.
Magnesium does not affect flavour in the quantities we are talking about, but yeast needs it as a co-enyme / co-factor, but is only needed in trace amounts.

Usually the magnesium present in water is around ten per cent of the calcium figure, which is sufficient in your case, but could also be zero.

It would not hurt to add 5 or 10ppm magnesium to the mg column in your target water, and add the resulting quantity of Epsom salts to your wort boil.

[adm]

Excellent! Many thanks Graham.

[Subsonic]

I have been looking at that link as it is pretty good and better than my spreadsheet. My latest water report said I had:-

CaCO3 293
Ca mg/l 117.2mg/l
°Clarke 20.51
°French 29.3
°German 16.41

I know the water is hard, I figured the 293mg/l is temporary and the 117 is permanent. Do I plug the 117 into the Alkalinity bit of the table? Cheers for any info. its a good table! Subsonic.

[Graham]

I have been looking at that link as it is pretty good and better than my spreadsheet. My latest water report said I had:-

CaCO3 293
Ca mg/l 117.2mg/l
°Clarke 20.51
°French 29.3
°German 16.41

I know the water is hard, I figured the 293mg/l is temporary and the 117 is permanent. Do I plug the 117 into the Alkalinity bit of the table? Cheers for any info. its a good table! Subsonic.

It looks to me as if the CaCO3 is your hardness figure expressed in CaCO3, not actually the carbonate itself. If you put 293 into the hardness box, you will observe that it puts 117.3 mg/l of calcium into the calcium box, which more or less confirms it.

[Subsonic]

Graham,

many thanks for that. I am going to use it on my next batch that I will be running this weekend. Excellent link. Subsonic.

[jimw86]

Sorry to drag up an old thread but I have a question that I cant seem to find a complete answer to. Once you have used Grahams water treatment calculator and you have found out what you need to add when do I add the different bits?

I know to start with the CRS but when do I add my gypsum, calcium chloride ect? Do i add it to the mash or to the boil.

Cheers

Jim