The Lakes & Alkalinity!!

[rick_huggins]

Hi guys,

I'm up in the lakes at a mates and trying to test his water with my alkalinity test kit.

When I add the green KH indicator to 4ml of his water, the colour is however already pink/orange without adding any KH Reagent....

Any ideas?

[rick_huggins]

Thanks for the info Chris, I'll pass it on

Cheers
Rick

[Aleman]

Depends on what he is brewing, ther eis no need to reduce alkalinity but he will certainly benefit a lot from water treatment.

He should certainly be looking at supplimenting calcium either as Sulphate and or chloride . . .or both, and a bit of magnesium sulphate won't go amiss either

My water is drawn from Haweswater and for my malty pale ales I normally add the following to the mash liquor

2.6 g Gypsum
15.4g Calcium chloride
1g Magnesium sulphate

Hoppy pale ales get

16.9g Gypsum
4g Calcium chloride
1g Magnesium sulphate

All in 38L of liquor.

Dark beers are really tricky to brew for, as you have to somehow increase the alkalinity . . . which I am going to play with the next time I brew a stout

[Aleman]

Agreed . . . I prefer to add a smidgeon to be on the safe side though . . . as the levels are something like 1.4mg/l . . . it could quite easily be ignored

[Northern Brewer]

Aleman - I'm intrigued!

Although I am some distance to the north of you, my water also comes from Haweswater. It is very soft and contains…

Average alkalinity as CaCO3 of 12.9mg/l (Max 20.7 mg/l)
Calcium 7.56 ppm
Chloride 6.85 ppm
Magnesium .97 ppm
Sulphate 8.15 ppm

I have always taken some notice of the figures suggests here http://www.murphyandson.co.uk/BrewingAr ... ywhere.htm

Murphys produce salt mixtures for the brewing industry and suggest the following for bitters...

Calcium 170 ppm
Chloride 200 ppm
Magnesium 15 ppm
Sulphate 400ppm

I've spent many a contented hour playing with Graham's water calculator and concluded that the nearest I can get to Murphy's figures, whilst maintaining a 2:1 sulphate:chloride ratio, is...

Calcium 170 ppm
Chloride 142 ppm
Magnesium 15 ppm
Sulphate 284 ppm

To achieve the above with 38 litres I would need to add the following...

15.01g Gypsum (versus your malty 2.6g or hoppy 16.9g)
10.65g Calcium Chloride (versus your malty 15.4g or hoppy 4g)
5.40g Magnesium Sulphate (versus your 1g)

I take on-board Chris's comments regarding magnesium in the grain but I'm still interested to know what levels of salts you reckon to finish-up with with your additions and what sulphate:chloride ratios are you achieving?

Edited to spell Graham's name correctly.

[Northern Brewer]

Hi Chris - long time no speak (I've been abroad)!

I could have phrased my last line a lot better, and it was Aleman's resulting ion levels that i was interested in. That said, it was nevertheless very interesting to see your own start/end levels.

I know that you have long advocated 1tsp of gypsum in both the mash and the boil, but you have a reasonable amount of chloride in your water to start with, whereas I consistently simply have rain with a hint of sheep manure.

Historically, I have only ever treated my 12.5 litres of mashing water, with...

5 g CaSO4 (1 slightly rounded tsp), 3.5g CaCl (1 level tsp) and 1.75g MgSO4 (2/5 level tsp).

This produces...
170ppm Ca
15ppm Mg
284ppm SO4
142ppm Cl

Pretending there isn't any calcium loss in the mash, once my 12.5 litres has had a further 22.5 litres of rain added to it, then I'm finishing-up with something on the lines of...
68ppm Ca
5ppm Mg
109ppm SO4
57ppm Cl

As a consequence, I'm finishing-up with higher levels of Sulphate and Chloride, but significantly lower levels of Calcium than yourself. The beers work out just fine, and I don't see any need to change, but I do like to dabble unfortunately!

[Aleman]

Like Chris I don't try and match an 'ideal' beer or 'water' profile . . tail wagging the dog in many cases, but base water treatment on what I am trying to achieve in the final beer.

take my pilsner . . . tradition states that you use practically distilled water as that is what Plzen has . . . Unfortunately it is so low in calcium unless you are filtering the beer (Or lagering for an extended period as they used to do) it will take forever to clear, and be prone to chill haze. So you need to increase calcium to a sensible level (I normally go for around 100-150ppm) . . . if you were to use gypsum you will accentuate the already high hopping and produce a beer that is too dry and bitter, so you go with calcium chloride to produce a rounded malty beer but still with that nice bitterness.

My measured alkalinity was 26ppm so no need to treat with acidity.

Starting levels were

Calcium 17
magnesium 1.84
sodium 7.8
sulphate 29
Chloride 9

So using the malty figures to treat 38L of sparge water (calcium sulphate 2.6g, calcium chloride 15.4g, magnesium sulphate 1g) gives

Calcium 144
magnesium 5.5
sodium 7.8
sulphate 81
Chloride 204 - Sulphate to Chloride Ratio 1:2.5)

Now if I had left the gypsum out I woudl have hit 128 ppm calcium, 43ppm sulphate and have a sulphate to chloride ration of 1:4.7 . . . which probably would have been fine, but I just toned it back a little.

[Northern Brewer]

Thanks Both

Not too sure why I just treat my mashing water, but the PH works out right, and the resulting beers are clear and tasty, so I have absolutely no need to change anything.

It's funny getting back into brewing after a few months' absence. Despite having kept copious records over the years and gotten into a really good groove, suddenly I find that I'm questioning everything.

I was drawn to this thread by mention of The Lakes, which are fairly near to where I live. Aleman's figures rather jumped off the page at me, simply for being so different to my own; hence I wondered whether he'd stumbled upon something that I'd missed about our sheep-flavoured rain.

For convenience I have blended together a salt mixture that reflects my existing ratios. 2 1/2 teaspoons of this into the mash will mimic what I've been doing for years, but the blend will leave me with the option of adding some more to the boil, whilst maintaining the existing ratio that I'm content with. Having said that, I did add a few extra salts to last week's boil and I felt that the resulting wort tasted exceptionally 'hard' as in hard water. Whether this will mellow during fermentation, only time will tell.