Time to work for water treatments

[f00b4r]

A few questions around timings for water treatments that i struggled to find the answers for:

1 - How long does CRS/AMS take to work (even Murphy and Sons' web site says give adequate time for the reactions to take place but then make no effort to quantify it at all), are we talking minutes, hours, overnight or days (okay maybe a bit ridiculous with the last one)?

2 - I guess the same question with time for reactions to take place but with regards to the other treatments (gypsum, calcium chloride, epsom salts, salt, calcium carbonate, etc)

3 - Can you add all water treatments at the same time or should they all be added individually and allowed time to work to prevent them reacting with each other?

4 - What the best way to dissolve the salts, add them to a smaller quantity of water (heated?), whisk them till dissolved, then add to the rest of the water?

Oh as an aside the Salifert kit is great and showed me this morning why I should test my water each time i brew; I found my alkalinity dropped from 76ppm to 50ppm, putting me in the right range for the bitter I was looking to brew.

[Wonkydonkey]

1. It's really the temp and the amount of stuff in your water it has to react with. Ie winter tap water v summer or somewhere in between.
And if you stir it it with happen a bit quicker. As well as heating it, it will happen quicker
So somewhere between mins and hour.
2. As above
3. I'm guessing you could dump them in all at the same time. If they were going to react with each other they will do it in the water. Although if you were worried you could add them 1by 1. but that's not meaning dump crs ams with anything else.

4. If you were to do it in a small pan of heated water, you may just get to the saturation point,of some of the salts added ie it will not fully dissolve. So I,d just stick them in the big pot of brewing water

So after saying this.....I'm sure someone will come along and correct me if I'm a bit wrong. but is my understanding of it.

[Aleman]

I suppose that technically the time for acid to reduce alkalinity, is when the alkalinity reaches the point you want it to be

I run my water into the brewmeister the evening before I brew, and add the acid . . .when I'm ready to brew the alkalinity is neutralised.

As far as the salts are concerned, once they are dissolved they are ready to use. People in areas that have high levels of calcium my have difficulty in getting gypsum to dissolve in small quantities of water, but for those of us where the calcium is not very high, the it dissolves quite easily. (The max solubility of gypsum is around 2.0-2.5g/l, so you will not get 5g of gypsum to dissolve in 1l of water Heating it makes it less likely as it's solubility falls with increase in temp)

calcium chloride is readily soluble.

So for me, I get up in the morning, and turn the BM on and add my salts to my already acid treated water, when it's at strike heat everything is done and I'm ready to go.

I did the same sort of thing when I was using the 3V system

[f00b4r]

That kind of ties with what I was thinking but I didn't want to assume as that makes an ....oh wait maybe not appropriate given your username
It also then makes a lot more sense to prepare the water the night before.
I guess we will see if anybody comes up with reasons not to go with that.

[sbond10]

The only reason I'd think of is if your an out door brewer. Also doing the treatment the night before could mean in morn you can do another alkinlity test to really make sure

[Aleman]

The only reason I'd think of is if your an out door brewer.

I am

Soing the treatment the night before could mean in morn you can do another alkinlity test to really make sure

alwayd do a before and after, although as I know the strength of my acids are correct (I have them made up for me by a friendly lab tech, who also titrates them against a standard NaOH solution to check) then I don't really have to, but it's always better to be sure

[sbond10]

Ok Aleman what I mean is my job involves me lifting loads and assessing the risk of lifting said load. So my area is full of wonderful scrapman that remove any metal within half a second of it being outside so a 100 litre pan would dissappear very quickly.
So I'd have to fill my pan with around 45 litres of water then carry it ten metres thru a 90 degree corner and a narrow hallway. Oh without using the pan handles. I'll have no back left lol

And with the checks I mean a triple or quadruple check. So do it at start,at 75% then 100% if needed then the following morn