Some newbie questions

[f00b4r]

Okay so I have made the jump to AG and although I know there are more important things, like temperature control (sorted) and other aspects of fermentation (will come with experience), I wanted to make sure that i was not brewing with water that was at the extreme end of the scale and causing me fundamental issues.
I ordered a Salifert test kit and my water is currently showing to be 74ppm, which I understand is a bit high to be brewing anything but the darker end of beers and maybe not high enough for some of them.

For what it is worth, my local water company's report can be found here.

I am planning about 6 brews over the coming few months (Malt Miller's Punkie IPA, Barnsley Brewer's Old Bernard bitter, a schwarzbier brewed with an ale yeast, a pseudo lager, GW's Old Peculiar clone and GW's Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild clone) as, after lots of reading and gathering of kit, I need to brew some beer and learn by doing.

From what i have read (mostly Eric and Aleman's posts) I believe I should be looking for the following alkalinity values

Lagers 10-20ppm
Pale beers (low/no crystal) 30ppm
Bitters (with pale + darker malts) 50-60ppm
Stouts 100-125ppm

I will be brewing full volume BIAB and will treat the water with a campden tablet to remove chlorine and chloramines but have a number of questions that I would love someone with experience to help with:

• 1 - Can i get away with just treating the alkalinity and adding some calcium for now (unless this is going to upset any balances of the other factors)?
  2 - What would values you recommend for my brews (the schwarzbier and dark mild certainly confuse me)?
  3 - I am confused as to if there is any value in my 2013 water board report with regard to e.g. the cation/anion values and if not how would I have any idea of what to do with regard to calcium additions, or can i just add an amount to ensure I am in the ball park?
  4- The usage of cation and anoin values in GW's water calculator confused me as to whether it was giving me correct values for CRS and gypsum additions if they and my initial calcium values were missing (although I have seen the "1ml CRS will neutralise 183 mg/l CaCO3 alkalinity" and "for every 100mg/l reduction in alkalinity using CRS, sulphates will be increased by 48mg/l and chlorides by 35.5mg/l." posts on here and the Craft Brewing forum they do not really help in my understanding of where I should be with regard to calcium additions as I am not sure what my starting value is). Any help to clarify this would be appreciated.

[BenB]

74 isn't that high- our water here is usually 200+! It's an age old question- do you try and do full water treatment from the beginning or do something like CRS/DLS treatments. I think it's easy to get bogged down in water treatment and screw up on the basics of AG so I'd go for CRS/DLS (but I know not everyone on here agrees!). If you want to do it properly with a water calculator the Calcium is approximately 0.4*the alkalinity.
Those alkalinity levels are quite conservative- I've seen up to 150ppm stated for stouts and dark bitters (e.g. milds) being 100ppm.

This is what brupaks say:

Bitter and Pale Ale. Alkalinity as CaC03 - up to 50 p.p.m. Calcium - 180 to 220 p.p.m.

Mild Ale. Alkalinity as CaC03 - 100 to 150 p.p.m. Calcium - 90 to 110 p.p.m.

Porter and Stout. Alkalinity as CaC03 - 100 to 150 p.p.m. Calcium - 100 to 120 p.p.m.

Pale Lager. Alkalinity as CaC03 - up to 30 p.p.m. Calcium - 100 to 120 p.p.m.

[chris.laws.54943]

+1 to checking out brupacks website. Certainly has helped me work through the maze that is water treatment.

[Goulders]

You can get your total hardness from the water authority's website and then determine your calcium as BenB pointed out. Also see this post with Eric's comments.

Calcium can be raised by adding gypsum or calcium chloride flakes. You water appears to have low chloride and adding AMS/CRS will increase the sulphate anyway, so I would increase that by adding calcium chloride flakes as a starting point. The amount of sulphate to chloride ratio determines the hoppiness or maltiness of the ale.

1g of CaCl2 adds 272mg/l of Ca and 483mg/l of Cl.

Using Tesco Ashbeck water as an example:

Ashbeck has 10mg/l of Ca, so to achieve 100mg/l you would need to add 90mg/l (your water will probably be higher and you may not need to add 90mg/l). Let's assume you treat 40l of water.

You will want 40x90=3600mg of Ca.
Amount of CaCl2 to add = 3600/272=13.23g

But this would also increase the Cl (13.23*483)/40=159.7 mg/l

You can substitute figures according to your own report, and increase/decrease the amount of calcium to add as required. I am sure Eric will be along to help you out at some point!

[f00b4r]

Thanks for the info so far it is helpful, just for reference my postcode gives the following (I should have put this in the first post):

slightly hard at 47 mg / litre as calcium (117.5mg / litre as calcium carbonate)

[Eric]

Thanks for the info so far it is helpful, just for reference my postcode gives the following (I should have put this in the first post):

slightly hard at 47 mg / litre as calcium (117.5mg / litre as calcium carbonate)

Same water supplier as for me, their figures are not much help and always out of date, but from your alkalinity measurement and those Northumbrian Water numbers, you've not a great amount to worry about compared to many others.

As already said, alkalinity at 74ppm CaCO3 is not so difficult as many other waters can be and less than half what mine is at present. Your pale beers would benefit by reducing it to the sort of level you know, but I wouldn't get concerned about lack of alkalinity when brewing darker beers for the present, you'll not find great problems at that level.

You'll be wise to at least double that calcium level, have a read of this and compare what they advise based on your water having about 45ppm calcium, 74 alkalinity, 14 chloride and 68 sulphate.

Good luck.

[f00b4r]

Fantastic stuff and that has helped get my head around it a lot more, I will go away and do some calculations and then order the necessary items.
I guess I only really have one outstanding question and that is how do i treat the schwarzbier, although it is a lager it does have darker elements as the grist below shows?:

Munich 1 - 55%
Weyerman Pilsner - 34.9%
Chocolate malt - 3.7%
Caramalt - 2.8%
Carafa - 1.8%
Roasted Barley - 1.8%

[Eric]

How to treat for a schwarzbier? Don't know. I'd probably do a mini mash and measure pH with alkalinity adjusted to 50ppm CaCO3 plus 1/4g calcium chloride flake per litre, then make adjustments according to the findings. To be honest, with your water I'd suggest just adding the flake, concentrate on the rest of the brewing process unless you are all geared up with pH meter and an urge to get deeply involved at an early stage.

27% of calcium chloride flake is calcium, 48% is chloride and the rest water. So adding a quarter gram of the stuff to each litre of your water would boost the calcium by 67.5ppm to a bit over 100ppm and increase chloride by 120ppm to give a 2:1 chloride to sulphate ratio providing a more a malty profile.

Similarly with gypsum, 23% is calcium and 56% is sulphate, so in that case 1/4 g added to each litre will also lift calcium to 100ppm + and lift sulphate levels to above 200ppm and extremely biased in its favour, too much in my opinion.

Enjoy the brew.

[Goulders]

Have a look at this thread be Aleman on another forum, where he talks about water profiles half way down the page. I know the thread is about lagers, but the comments on Kolsch equally apply to a Schwarzbier, ie you want a soft malty profile.

Basically with the amount of sulphate in your water you don't want to be adding to that at all if possible, so just adjust your water and go with calcium chloride flakes as Eric suggests. In an ideal world you would adjust alkalinity with hydrochloric acid so as to not add any sulphate at all, but with the low alkalinity of your water (compared to mine and Eric's which is over 200ppm) adjusting with CRS/AMS will be fine.

[Dave S]

(although I have seen the "1ml CRS will neutralise 183 mg/l CaCO3 alkalinity" and "for every 100mg/l reduction in alkalinity using CRS, sulphates will be increased by 48mg/l and chlorides by 35.5mg/l." posts on here and the Craft Brewing forum they do not really help in my understanding of where I should be with regard to calcium additions as I am not sure what my starting value is). Any help to clarify this would be appreciated.
[/list]

Just to add, CRS will neutralise 183mg CaCO3, not per litre.

[f00b4r]

Thanks for all the info guys, I think I am sure of what to do going forward now, just need to do the calculations