Water targets for beer types

[rob-63]

Thanks again Eric.

Right, enough of the theory, I'm going to go with adding the hydrochloric to reduce alkalinity to 140, and calcium will be 112. All salts added to the HLT.

Will probably brew on Monday, so will see how it goes.

It's been a very useful thread.

[killer]

I would be inclined to dilute your 33% acid. At that conc. it can fume a bit which is unpleasant if you are opening it every few weeks. You might make a litre of 2 Molar (using distilled water as diluant) at which point it is slightly more manageable, fumes less and is less aggressive on your skin if you spill it. At that concentration it will still last a year or more at the rate you will use it and you won't need to repeatedly open the more conc. stuff. If you do decide to dilute it remember to add the acid to water (not the other way around) bit by bit.

[Eric]

I would be inclined to dilute your 33% acid. At that conc. it can fume a bit which is unpleasant if you are opening it every few weeks. You might make a litre of 2 Molar (using distilled water as diluant) at which point it is slightly more manageable, fumes less and is less aggressive on your skin if you spill it. At that concentration it will still last a year or more at the rate you will use it and you won't need to repeatedly open the more conc. stuff. If you do decide to dilute it remember to add the acid to water (not the other way around) bit by bit.

Good advice.

Rob, how do you sparge?
140mg/l CaCO3 alkalinity in mash liquor will likely be countered by the combination of darker grains and added calcium salts, but a point may come during sparging when those calcium salts and the darker grains are depleted, then alkalinity would raise the pH to cause harshness in the beer. You might consider using some acid to further reduce that alkalinity.

Good luck.

[rob-63]

I would be inclined to dilute your 33% acid. At that conc. it can fume a bit which is unpleasant if you are opening it every few weeks. You might make a litre of 2 Molar (using distilled water as diluant) at which point it is slightly more manageable, fumes less and is less aggressive on your skin if you spill it. At that concentration it will still last a year or more at the rate you will use it and you won't need to repeatedly open the more conc. stuff. If you do decide to dilute it remember to add the acid to water (not the other way around) bit by bit.

That seems like a good idea.

But as always it throws up another question, this time for how much to dilute by - Looking at this molarity converter tool http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/chemistry/s ... lator.html

It gives hydrochloric acid as 37% weight. Do I change this figure to 33% for my acid, or to 33% of 37% (12.33%) ?

One would be approx 200ml acid to 800ml distilled water, and the other 500ml to 500 ml.

Thanks.

[rob-63]

I would be inclined to dilute your 33% acid. At that conc. it can fume a bit which is unpleasant if you are opening it every few weeks. You might make a litre of 2 Molar (using distilled water as diluant) at which point it is slightly more manageable, fumes less and is less aggressive on your skin if you spill it. At that concentration it will still last a year or more at the rate you will use it and you won't need to repeatedly open the more conc. stuff. If you do decide to dilute it remember to add the acid to water (not the other way around) bit by bit.

Good advice.

Rob, how do you sparge?
140mg/l CaCO3 alkalinity in mash liquor will likely be countered by the combination of darker grains and added calcium salts, but a point may come during sparging when those calcium salts and the darker grains are depleted, then alkalinity would raise the pH to cause harshness in the beer. You might consider using some acid to further reduce that alkalinity.

Good luck.

I fly sparge, with a rotating spage arm.

For this first brew I will probaly just take a reading at the end of sparging and hope that the pH level has stayed ok. Are you suggesting just upping the amount of acid to all the water in the HLT to reduce the starting alkalinity, or at some point adding more acid to just the water remaining for sparging?

Thanks Eric

[Eric]

HCl is a gas. It will dissolve in water to a maximum of about 37%. Any attempt to get more into solution will cause a similar volume of gas to be liberated. At 37% it is awful stuff to handle as it will be constantly giving off gas.
Your acid is said to be 33% and will not be so volatile, but still won't be nice to have on the bench with the top off.
Get a suitable container, either transparent or translucent, weigh it and then fill it with distilled water to a suitable and marked level a determine the weight of water.
If my calculations are correct, if you were to remove 19% of the water and slowly replace it with that hydrochloric acid you will have 2 molar, of which 1ml would neutralise about 100mg of CaCO3 alkalinity. If you used just tap water it would be slightly less and still fit for our purpose. Best practice is always to measure alkalinity after treatment, eliminating errors due to variations in acid strengths and alkalinity of water supplies.

Alkalinity in liquor raises pH, acidic components of the grist and calcium in combination with malts lower pH, so pH will reduce with time as the reactions in the mash get underway and in the opposite direction while sparging as the contents of the mash tun are diluted.
pH is a measurement in liquid and initially that liquid is your water with a pH value of say between 6 and 8. Once the mash gets going you would hope to have a pH of, shall we say, 5.1 to 5.5. At the end of such a mash, pH of the first runnings would likely be 4.8 to 5.1. During the sparge, pH of the runnings will rise towards that of the sparge liquor to a level dependent upon speed and duration. If you don't oversparge or use some acid to reduce the alkalinity of the sparge liquor, that pH can be kept to or below 5.8, avoiding extraction of items that would cause astringency in the beer.

Of course nothing is simple, astringency in a very delicate beer with light floral or similar notes would spoil the style, while, depending upon your preferences, could just add that extra dimension to a darker, more complex, beer if it was at a certain level. No wonder there's lots of disagreement about how beer should be made.

[killer]

It's actually 33%. Not 33% of 37%. As Eric mentioned the molarity is about 10.5/ 10.6. As such you would want to take about 188 mL of the acid and add it to say 300 mL water, then top it up to a final volume of 1L (Ideally, that would be distilled water - as there would be no alkalinity in it which would ever so slightly drop the acid strength). In reality the strength of the acid and the relatively low alkalinity of the tap water you would use won't really affect the concentration much.