Advice for dissolving Gypum and Fly Sparge Practice

[BrewBoyJoe]

Hello All,
To save energy and faff, I do not boil my water to treat. Instead, and probably like most homebrewers I use CRS and salt additions / gypsum / calcium Chloride and Epsome Salts to treat my London hard water as determined using Grahams handy calculator thingy!

1. OK, so I have difficulty dissolving some salts in my liqueur, particularly gypsum. I get around this by adding some directly to the mash, and a little bit more to the boil, but if I add to the sparge water, it just sits at the bottom of the pan and then would all go in at once at the end so I don’t bother treating the sparge water with gypsum! What do most people do? BTW I fly sparge and then sometime recirculate a gallon at the end if using large grain bill, to ensure I get the sugars out.

2. Also, Grayham’s book suggests mash for 90 mins at 66 degrees, and then sparge at 80 degrees C. However, I have read conflicting advice in my various brew books. For example, “Designing Great Beers”, which I’ve found a really useful book getting into the Nity gritty a bit more than “Clone Brews”. “Designing Great Beers”, suggests sparging over 75 deg c may release some off flavours from the mash grains. What’s the consensus if there is such a thing. I noticed some experienced brewers use totally different mash and sparge temps to those outlined in Grahams book.

3. When do most add the epsom salts


Cheers

Joe

[orlando]

GW suggests using a blender to help getting it into a solution but admittedly it is difficult stuff.

As for mash temps GW's book is little entry level and the advice will still make good beer. What he has done is to keep it simple and when you are just starting out is a great confidence booster so still valif advice. But, as you have found, once you start reading around there is differing advice because manipulating the mash temps is one of the best ways of exerting some control over the out come of the beer. Mashing lower than 66 favours Beta Amylase with more fermentable sugars, mashing higher favours Alpha amylase which has less fermentable sugars. This means drier beers and fuller bodied beers respectively. It's of course a lot more complex than that but a good starting point at least.

This graphic is a useful schematic of what I've said above. John Palmer's book How To Brew goes into more detail and is available on-line.

[Dave S]

It's a good point about the solubility of gypsum. How are you dealing with sparge water additions Orlando?

[orlando]

It's a good point about the solubility of gypsum. How are you dealing with sparge water additions Orlando?

Sorry Dave not sure what exactly you are asking about. Do you mean any and all salts? Assuming you do then the first thing I do is split the addition for mash away from the sparge water and treat it completely separately. I acidify the sparge water when it is cold but usually add salts at the last minute stirring into solution and then using it to sparge. I have not read about this subject elsewhere so would be happy to hear from others on it.

[tudou]

I've had a bit of trouble dissolving salts too, most notably calcium chloride. I've just been adding mine to my boiler when I start heating up the water for mash/sparge and then stirring now and again to try to dissolve them. I think it's worked partially, but I'd love any tips you chaps have for a more thorough technique - is it better to just add them to the mash and let the acidic pH do the job?

[orlando]

is it better to just add them to the mash and let the acidic pH do the job?

Yep. Though again I would split the sparge water salts out, until someone has evidence for a better alternative. The reason I do is because I use a calculator to predict the mash pH so I don't want to compromise this in anyway, not that calcium chloride would but it just makes sense to me to keep the two things separate then I don't get confused as to what I've done.

[Dave S]

It's a good point about the solubility of gypsum. How are you dealing with sparge water additions Orlando?

Sorry Dave not sure what exactly you are asking about. Do you mean any and all salts? Assuming you do then the first thing I do is split the addition for mash away from the sparge water and treat it completely separately. I acidify the sparge water when it is cold but usually add salts at the last minute stirring into solution and then using it to sparge. I have not read about this subject elsewhere so would be happy to hear from others on it.

Yeah, that's more or less what I'm doing. I add the mash salts directly to the grain, so no problem there. It appears though that gypsum is notoriously difficult to get into solution. The only way I could think of tackling it was to stir well before adding each sparge quantity, (batch sparging). Maybe Martin could comment on this.

[BrewBoyJoe]

Yes, that's a good point! Problem solved, just give it a good stir prior to every sparge addition!

[mabrungard]

Gypsum is quite soluble at the concentrations we brewers typically work at. It is quite slow at dissolving though. I find that a couple of minutes of stirring will put it fully into solution.

Regarding the sparging temperature, I do not typically exceed 76C. That is the lore in the US. Considering that you will have fully gelatinized the malt components if you have performed a mash out step and raised the whole mash first to around 75C, there should be no need to use 80C water for sparging. However, its only a few degrees higher than the lore, so maybe its not such a big deal. I do recommend moderating that temp a bit.

[orlando]

Gypsum is quite soluble at the concentrations we brewers typically work at. It is quite slow at dissolving though. I find that a couple of minutes of stirring will put it fully into solution.

Regarding the sparging temperature, I do not typically exceed 76C. That is the lore in the US. Considering that you will have fully gelatinized the malt components if you have performed a mash out step and raised the whole mash first to around 75C, there should be no need to use 80C water for sparging. However, its only a few degrees higher than the lore, so maybe its not such a big deal. I do recommend moderating that temp a bit.

I typically don't do a mash out as like most UK home brewers I don't have a directly fired mash tun and again usually a single infusion is it. I also recirculate but not via a RIMS system so lose quite a bit of temperature during it. All this adds up to needing a higher temperature in the HLT to account for the loss in temp by fly sparging and then raising the grain bed before run off. To cut a long story short I find that the grain bed doesn't rise above circa 75c anyway.

[hommebru]

Would a good way to treat the sparge water be the add the salts to treat it to the mash once it's drained (first runnings) and before the sparge starts? If you then stir the mash to mix the water in and thereby distribute the salts into the grain evenly much like when you dough-in, would this treat the water effectively? I guess this wouldn't be suitable for fly-sparging however.

[orlando]

Would a good way to treat the sparge water be the add the salts to treat it to the mash once it's drained (first runnings) and before the sparge starts? If you then stir the mash to mix the water in and thereby distribute the salts into the grain evenly much like when you dough-in, would this treat the water effectively? I guess this wouldn't be suitable for fly-sparging however.

I treat the mash and sparge water separately so this doesn't arise.