Creating a Brewing Water Calculator - the "Water Pro[pH]iler"

[PeeBee]

This is a follow-on of my "Water Defuddler" project, as started off here. But I wanted a less cryptic title and a "clean slate" to document progress on this calculator. It should perhaps be entitled "Treating Water with a Low Alkalinity for Brewing" as there's a "sticky" one in this section ("Brewing Liquor") for "High" Alkalinity: Those with "Low Alkalinity" (Extreme West and North of England, most of Wales, plus Scotland excluding the Central Belt) are often skipped over because only 5% of the British population live there (and because a good chunk of the 95%, who are brewers that is, don't understand that Low Alkalinity brewing waters create problems too).

But this project only starts with low alkalinity water because I live in Wales, I'll get around to high alkalinity later (but I will be covering "reverse osmosis" water early on, because it is "low alkalinity", often "very low alkalinity", water).

There, that'll do as an opening gambit for now ... I'll start collecting some points to kick off properly from ...

[PeeBee]

Apologies! The "I'll start collecting some points to kick off properly" is taking longer than I anticipated! But the project is still live, and I will come up with something soon. (And it will be worth the wait ... well, I would say that wouldn't I?

[PeeBee]

Meanwhile (Firstly?): I now realise why I wasn't getting much assistance with this venture, or even sympathy that I was stuck with very low mash pHs (<5.0). I was attempting to build high TDS water profiles from a base of low TDS water. High TDS profiles aren't very "trendy" these days and people with low TDS water (most of Scotland, most of Wales, far north and western fringes of England) aren't very numerous. I couldn't understand why the hordes of RO Water users (which is Low to very Low TDS) didn't chip in, but RO Water users are typically in the "craft beer" camp, which I've categorised as "trendy". If I want assistance in this project, I'm going to have to smudge those boundaries!


As I'd determined in the preceding thread (link in OP) I've to split the water treatment (and quantity calculation) of the Mash Water and the Sparge/Boil Water. The Mash Water can be low, or very low, TDS. It will need only enough Calcium to fulfil its purpose in the Mash and contain the Alkalinity required by the Mash. The "Sparge Water" (or boiler water if convenient ... i.e. a "no-sparge" mash) contains the remaining brewing salts.

The purpose of this split is so as not to have to deal with plummeting pH in the Mash (due to adding Calcium/Magnesium salts).

[PeeBee]

Before attempting to create a suitable brewing water, it's a good idea to have some grasp of how (or not!) pH is predicted in brewing water:

First off, it's not a direct conversion! (i.e. If you have x, y, z of something it won't mean you will get a pH of a, or b. or c). Don't believe anyone who tells you it does! There's plenty of argument on the Internet to back this up. My solution is however, "fool-proof"! ... Despite the chosen name, it won't be trying to predict pH accurately! It'll only attempt to indicate the value will roughly be in the right area of about pH5.2 to 5.7. Approximately the upper of that range ("dark beers) or the lower (light beers). Squeal if you want, but it's just not possible, nor is it particularly important. That should be obvious when people say calculator "A" always returns the correct answer whereas others say calculator "B" returns a much closer answer and calculator "A" is rubbish.

Most calculators have pH prediction based on calculating "residual alkalinity" ("RA"). Paul Kolbach, a German chemist, possibly coined the name during his work on the matter in the 1930s to 1950s (his original work was lost during WWII, so he redid it in the 50s). He was working with the old water analysing technology - "Hardness", plus "CaCO3" equivalents no-doubt - and for an entirely different "endpoint" - "out of the boiler" not "into the boiler" like calculated today. Despite that his work was "modified" into modern units ("Calcium" and "Magnesium" salts with Alkalinity along for the ride) and written into a modern-day formular:

RA in mEq/L = bicarbonate in mEq/L – (Calcium in mEq/L)/3.5 – (Magnesium in mEq/L)/7

"Milliequivalents" (per litre, or "mEq/L") expresses a particular element or compound in the same way as other elements (all effectively having the same "atomic weight", with electrical data, or "valence", rounded accordingly), such that it becomes a tool for calculating bonding between elements and compounds; (positive "cations" and negative "anions"). A specified amount of calcium will react with malt phosphates to release one equivalent of hydrogen ions which will neutralize one equivalent of Alkalinity. Magnesium has a similar effect but only half as effective (requires twice the amount compared to calcium). Kolbach determined in his work the amount of calcium (in mEq/L) divided by "3.5" would release that many hydrogen ions.

Kolbach was also responsible for providing a formula predicting the shift of pH from what could be measured from a mash in pure (zero alkalinity) water. In mEq/L that would be: pH shift = 0.084 * RA mEq/L

If you want to see a modern-day discussion of predicting pH of worts, try: Question about differences in calculated Mash pH shift due to mineralization - Homebrew Talk. Warning, it can severely play with your head (but it's the best summary of the subject I've seen lately).

That's a 20 year old paper. If you want something a little more recent and have no concern for your mental health, try (more recent? Couldn't find owt, so ... ): Alkalinity, Hardness, Residual Alkalinity and Malt Phosphate: Factors in the Establishment of Mash pH - themodernbrewhouse.com. A.J. deLange again.



Right enough of all that! Hopefully you take away with you the utter futility of attempting to tie down the pH to accuracies of two-decimal-places! (Often expecting to achieve it with a cheapo Chinese "pen" tester). Sometimes you'll get close to a "predicted" value, but not on the other occasions. Don't beat yourself up over it. If you're getting within 0.1pH of a "predicted" value, you are doing extraordinarily well! Spend your time trying to attain target alkalinity levels, Calcium levels and Magnesium levels in the Mash (the last two aka. "Hardness" if you still wear that millstone round your neck) ... that is attainable ... well of course it is, when compared with trying to attain the impossible!

[PeeBee]

As part of coming up with a simple calculator, I've got to keep in touch with the "complicated" discussions to try and ensure I don't wander too far off-track. This is a reading list, mainly for my information, no need to read them (or you might 'cos they're interesting? But they can make your brain hurt ... mine does):

Data taken into account in Brewers'Friend and BrewFather vs the data exposed by the work of Riffe and Spencer in 2018 - Homebrew Talk

Hmm ... perhaps I need to reverse my "easing off" on "RA" if it is so solidly set to a specific definition? This doesn't sit well with my assertion "RA is a thing". (Not really "my assertion" anyway, 'cos I nicked it from somewhere).

Test mash that examines the effect of strike pH on mash pH - Homebrew Talk
... Cloer to home:
P.h before mashing in




On the way to getting this far, I was posed with the following conundrum:

Indeed, your beer color (actually the malts used) influence the RA, but the RA is not a predictor of beer color.

In mathematical words: RA = f(colour) is a function, but the inverse, colour = g(RA) is not a function.

(A different forum ... THBF ... by user "Chthon"). It seems to contradict itself. But my best guess is because the "classic" Kolbach "RA" equation is missing a large chunk of information. The acidity of the grains being mashed (Kolbach only studied one grain, probably a Pilsner malt?), and grain acidity can alter greatly between grain type, due to growing conditions, and due to malting practices. The "pHDI" carry-ons mentioned in the links above are supposed to level this up, but maintaining such information is not easy! So, you can't predict colour from RA without this information, but the missing information can be determined from the final colour (after-the-event!).

The post exampled here is also suggesting "RA is a thing". Gheesh, gets complicated doesn't it!

[PeeBee]

Here's another: A Homebrewing Perspective on Mash pH - sonsofalchemy.org

I'm sure I'll find more before I'm finished (which won't be soon enough for some of you). But I need to get on (and brew some flippin' beer). What I hope to have transferred - because I'm having to come to terms with it too - is that there's a hell of a lot to predicting the outcome of Mash pH, and it takes a lot more than knowing the amounts of this and that salt and "alkalinity". You can't really rely on one person's simplified "secret formula" to judge the pH outcome; they can't even agree on a global pH range to aim for! Most will follow their "homebrew god" and believe they must aim for pH5.2 to pH5.5. Another bunch will say pH5.4 to 5.7. Depends on what part of the world you stand on, who's "gang" you belong to, how open you are to the suggestion of strangers, etc.

So, I won't be trying to tie down pH. A nice "empirical" solution (translate as "suck it and see") with some means of "tuning" the prediction (perhaps automatically?) to meet the actual outcome? Such "tuning" will need to be continually adaptable, because pH outcomes will change with time. But just get away from the "I hit target pH bang-on" brigade who are following a particular "homebrew god", because they are talking complete bo$*&%$.

But the important thing to remember, the pH is unlikely to fall into a range where the mash fails. Brewing has been successfully carried out in the past with no idea what "pH" is. We only really need to have some control over it so we can better (roughly) predict a certain outcome, and, most importantly, can be smug about the achievement.


So. You will need to get pH in the right "ballpark". To assist in that I'm taking the following steps (these are my current aims and may be subject to change because ... I may have grabbed the wrong end of a stick, etc.):

STEP 1: Divide "Batch Volume" into arbitrary amounts ... the "Mash Water" (I'm currently working on 1/2 batch volume, 2/3 batch volume and full boil volume or 1/1 batch volume); "Sparge Water" makes up the remainder (if any). The "fixed" volumes are only virtual, they'll need some additions (like "boil off", etc.) but working with these two virtual volumes will make things easier. This approach throws away any precise control of "mash thickness", but it's a vastly over-rated variable (I can hear the screams already) ... the main reason to alter "mash thickness" is "what then mash tun can handle" closely followed by "financial" (what scratches the most pennies from a given amount of grain); the former is becoming a thing of the past for homebrewers (many have "all-in-one" brewery systems now) and the latter has very limited meaning for all but the most penny-pinching home brewers.

STEP 2: Maybe modify the "Mash Volume" to account for losses. The intention is the losses are simply carried over (to boil losses) and the 1/2, 2/3, 1/1, cuts will be able to accommodate most scenarios (may need tweaking?). The important losses are "dead-space" (which is zero for an "all-in-one") and the "grain absorption" which is variable and only notable when using "full-boil-volume" mashes.

STEP 3: The water used for mashing will be "plain" (RO Water, Distilled water, Deionised water) or low mineralised water, be it tap, bottled, etc. (<35ppm Alkalinity as CaCO3). Apportion Calcium and Alkalinity salts to suit (remineralisation, see later). The amount of "Alkalinity" will need to be fairly carefully planned at this stage with Calcium (and Magnesium) limited (35ppm?) along with "Alkalinity" (35ppm as CaCO3?), hence recommending low mineralised water sources (dealing with high mineralised water sources can wait until later!).

The use of fixed mash volumes, low mineral mash water, controlled alkalinity, should be becoming apparent. The proposed calculator must deal easily with this stuff, and the result should be quite unlike other approaches (without shutting doors to approaches that might yet be useful).

STEP 4: Modify the "Sparge Volume". The most significant addition will be for "boil off", and it will depend on the system you use (and batch size? Some boilers can't keep up with boiling larger quantities too well). The boiler will also have its own "dead-space losses" to account for (including hop absorption, but less the likes of sugar, flavouring and extract volumes). The boiler will also have recoverable "dead-space" which you won't have to account for (drained hoses, squeezed hop bags, etc.). There are differences in volume due to temperature, and planned fermenter top-ups to account for too. The advantage is that the boiler volumes are more for convenience, not affecting the beer so much as with Mash Tun Volumes.

STEP 5: Unlike mineralising the mash water, dealing with the boiler water is much simpler. The majority of the salts go in at this stage; no "Alkalinity salts", possibly no accounting for Calcium added earlier. If having used a lightly mineralised water for mashing, possibly no accounting for that either (needs reviewing?). The water might be heavily mineralised water, diluted and/or mineralised as appropriate (needs reviewing?). Existing "Alkalinity" may need reducing/neutralising (acid?). And dosing of additional salts might be applied only to a presumed batch volume (i.e. post-boil)? all much easier and without the effect on mashing pH (fermenter pH might need reviewing?). Salts added direct to boil (no sparge) or to the sparge water (losses to sparged grain unimportant?).



That'll do for now (flippin' hope so ... have I seen the size of it!). All so I know what I'm doing next! But if, anyone sees anything missing ( ) I hope they'll chime in. Next, I need some "boundaries"; a "field of play" you might call it, so I can knock up some "real" examples. (Could do with a bit of colour round here too.

This is complicated while I try to link it all together, but the intention is to boil it all down into a "stroll in the park". 'Cos that's about all I'm fit for these days. And along the way get rid of all the accumulated junk from years of home-brewing ("Mashbag" will know what I mean, even if he is utterly bemused by how I'm approaching it!).

[PeeBee]

Apologies. I've been neglecting this post, due to 1: Christmas! 2: A number of awkward "realities" that this project keeps throwing at me.


I'm perhaps targeting to a very limited group of people that, like me, have very low TDS in their water but want "firm" beer structure. That's "firm" in John Palmer's "structure" sense of the word ... but he's American and declares he only knows two beers in the "firm" category with one of those being "Burton Ale", which is like counting "Lager" as only one. An example of water for the "firm" category is just about every "water profile" Graham Wheeler has ever published.

It does indicate an even bigger potential problem: If those that want to use "firm" "water profiles" inexplicably switch to RO Water. (And homebrewers do like doing inexplicable things!). Especially if, like me, they fail to notice all the extra Calcium they are adding is nudging up the "alkalinity" salts ("chalk" included!) to worrying levels. So, they fail to add all the extra "Alkalinity" (I know this because, that's what I did!). Result: pH plummets (that's the "complicated" bit; associating Calcium with Acidity in a mash).

Solution: Hold back most of the Calcium (and Magnesium) until after the Mash.

I'm not suggesting depriving the beer of Calcium. Only the mash. But not deprive the mash of Calcium completely either, just keeping Calcium at a manageable level in the mash.

[guypettigrew]

Solution: Hold back most of the Calcium (and Magnesium) until after the Mash.

I'm not suggesting depriving the beer of Calcium. Only the mash. But not deprive the mash of Calcium completely either, just keeping Calcium at a manageable level in the mash.

Numbers, please PeeBee. Thanks.

Guy

[PeeBee]

... Numbers, please PeeBee. Thanks. ...

Thank you, Guy.

Okay. I'm being poked back into action. Not that I've been inactive (on this topic), I was "researching" elsewhere (or more likely, "diverting my attention to something easier"). And I not going to get on with "numbers" this time, more waffling, the next post will start on "numbers". Even the last post was a "cheat"; a rewrite of a PM I created (apologies to the original target of it ... if you're reading this).

So, this calculator development ... the "Pro[pH]iler (I'm bored of that name already, doesn't carry the infamy and notoriety of the "Defuddler" ... which is undergoing modification BTW, so the link in my signature to it is broken for a short period. The "Defuddler II"? Anyway, the calculator is being built on to the "Defuddler" because it makes a solid base for the water calculations.

This calculator will be very different to others, because it covers users with low mineral concentrations in their source water as well (In one of them!). Don't they all? No, they don't! Neither do they get good advice from brewing forums. This calculator will not be discriminating against users of such water. Such users are in the minority, living in areas like the western and northern fringes of England, most of Wales (not the SE), most of Scotland (not the central belt) and a good section of Northern Ireland. It also includes the swelling ranks of "Reverse Osmosis" water uses. But the most critically under supported of those are those attempting to brew with highly mineralised brewing water, "traditional" British beer, not "insipid" waters users for Craft Beer" styles (which covers nearly all the "RO Water" users).

But! This calculator isn't to be discriminating. And "RO Water" is certainly being supported. At the moment "RO Water" (and bottled water and other low mineralised waters) is the only way I can support people with high mineral content source water (often described "Hard Water").

Do you have low mineralised tap water? You can often tell because water calculators tell you to add alkalinity minerals (Lime, Chalk, Baking Soda, etc.) to the brewing water, in some cases even if you attempt to brew a Lager. And, because of years of (unintentional) "discrimination", you feel reluctant to add all/any of those minerals you're being instructed to add. Adding Calcium alkalinity minerals might even exacerbate the problems! That summarises the problems I had to deal with: No help from others because they could not understand the problems I was having (statistically they were most likely "hard" water users or "Craft Beer" brewers).


When I began considering creating my own water calculator, I consulted Larry Sayre ("Silver_Is_Money", the author of the "Mash-Made-Easy" water calculator), intending to pursue the complex "DIpH" (distilled water mash pH) plus "BC" (buffering capacity) route. He talked me out of it (intensionally?) and I switched to the blindingly simple Chris Colby approach (teaspoon of this, teaspoon of that).

Unfortunately, Chris Colby's Website now appears to have gone, and his books don't appear to mention "proportional" measurements (of alkalinity especially), and "proportional" hides a lot of complexity! It's exorcising that "hidden" complexity that has caused the pause in my writeups (or, more accurately, paused my motivation!), but I've kept copies of his Web articles.

All-the-same, I'll skip past the alkalinity stuff for now, and go straight onto the easy stuff (boil water adjustments) ...

[PeeBee]

Mash liquor quantities: To make things easy I'm working with three, chosen as appropriate, 50% Batch Size (at ambient temperature), 66.7% and 100% (the latter for "full-boil-length-mash"). No extras (obviously, I don't believe "'optimum' mash thickness" makes any appreciable difference). For the 100% the boiler losses might be tagged on to the mash quantity. Mash losses will be grain absorption and any unrecoverable mash tun dead space (the latter is zero for an "AIO" setup).

Boil liquor quantities: Will be the recoverable mash liquor, plus what is needed to make it up to Batch Size, plus Boiler dead space, hop absorption, and other losses ... including the biggest loss, "boil off" and allowing for subsequent shrinkage due to cooling (phew, I think that covers them all).

All adjustment salts are added to the boiler. Except the alkalinity salts which are added to the mash (along with a small top up of calcium ions). For the mash, it appears that the amount of "alkalinity" added depends on the quantity of grains, and the amount of calcium added depends on the quantity of water (with known calcium and alkalinity content). For the boiler; we're on longer attempting to align "precise" parameters (i.e. "Mash pH"), in the boiler it's only "subjective" parameters from salt additions like "taste" and "mouthfeel". So, "anything goes", and the additions I'm suggesting here are based on Chris Colby's suggestions (teaspoons!). First "mash". No quantities, just multipliers of the quantities to be described in a later post:
.

Multiplier.jpg (25.04 KiB) Viewed 8730 times

So, If I'm adding 1tsp of alkalinity salts (e.g. Sodium Bicarbonate) to a full-boil-length mash (one Batch length of water **) with 1tsp calcium salt (e.g. Calcium Chloride) and then decide to mash with half the batch length of water (and include a sparge), I'll still add 1tsp of alkalinity salts but only 1/2tsp of calcium salt. On second thoughts? Perhaps the minimum calcium in the mash does depend on the amount of grain, not the amount of water? Anyone with any insight?

** "Full-boil-length" mash-water is going to be somewhat more than "one Batch length of water" but that'll be sorted out before finished.


Enough for now, so "Second, boil" will be described in a later post too. Bear with me, this is all wordy and necessarily "complicated", but it's working towards a very simple solution. Honest. [Have I said that before? Doesn't matter, no-one believes me anyway.]

[PeeBee]

Humm ... That last post (above) really wasn't right! The illustration contradicts other stuff in this thread that I'd written!

Bear with me. I'm busy sorting it out in the background and I will sort out a straightforward solution eventually ... honest! (Where have I said that before?).


Things were so much easier when we all mashed to a "standard" mash-thickness; all sparged/boiled to a "standard" batch size (five gallons); and most of us either didn't really understand much about water additives or even bothered to add water additions at all. Full-Boil-Length-Mahes, pH meters, Reverse Osmosis Water ... eh? Sodium Bicarbonate! I used to make beer, not cakes. And didn't we make beer as good as we do today? ... Well, no actually. Or at least I didn't. So, I'll keep bumbling along at it.

[PeeBee]

I wasn't being lazy, I just wandered off to the "Home Brew Forum" (American) to see what I could pick up. Back now!

Splitting the water salts across "Mash" and "Boil" seems to be successful, but when modelling this scheme earlier I wasn't properly purging the mash of "concentration" units (in this case amounts described as ppm or mg/L). A reminder of where I was up to:

The intention is to use distilled water (or RO water, or suitably low TDS tap water) and treat it only with salts that directly affect the mash by directly reacting with Malt constituents ("Alkalinity" salts and "Hardness" salts). All other water salts (providing flavour enhancement and the like) are added to the boil (or sparge) where they can't impact the mash. This should allow a more predictable mash and simplify salt additions. This project was sparked off by repeatedly arriving at Mash pHs of less than five-point-one (that no-one I could find could explain to me why 'twas so).

Water quantities are to be fixed whatever the ratio of Mash Water to (finished) Batch Size ... 1:1 (full-boil-length-mash, like BIABers would use, 1:2 (close to the "standard" mash amount, as might have been used by homebrewers in the past) and 1:1.5 (a half-way-between "ish", just a bit off-centre to more clearly depict how the figures were changing).

Some of the calcium salts for the mash react with mash grain components. They CANNOT be described as "water concentrations" amounts, they are explicit amounts and quite independent of the amount of water used (for a mash of, say, 4Kgs grain the amount a Calcium salts will be "X" grams whether 12 litres of water is used or 25 litres). The amount of "alkalinity" salts may be variable depending on the acidity of the mash grains; again, the amount is explicit and is not connected to the amount of water used.

Fortunately, there are no other salts connected with mashing. All other salts can be expressed in relation to the amount of water used (i.e. as "concentrations") including "hardness" salts (calcium and magnesium) that have no direct connection with the mash, but will dramatically affect the pH of the mash, those "other" salts are best added after the mash to make for a more predictable mash outcome. This policy could lead to "boil" (and later "fermentation") pH being pushed off "optimum" (if there is one) ... this possibility can be reviewed later.


So, out goes any substances measured as "concentrations" or similar amounts "relative to something or other". This will hopefully make the mash easily predictable as to its outcome, that it can be described very simplistically. No hopelessly measuring salts to hundredths of a gram, or chasing Mash pHs to hell and back.

Hopefully?

Such a simple solution must have been tried before? If this solution is correct, any suggestion that a mash should contain water with, say, a calcium content of 50-150ppm Calcium ions (etc.), is complete, utter, garbage. That would cause some folk to squeak a bit. (You can see why'd I'd like some confirmation to what I'm suggesting). Before dismissing this as the rantings of a loonie (and those that know me also know I really am a NHS recognised loonie!); a few years ago, we all had an idea of the best "mash thickness" to be using. Now we use this, or a "BIAB", or dozens of other systems using radically different mash thicknesses ... the "maths" doesn't work out the same for all of them!

[PeeBee]

Battling my way through this caper has always worried me in that I'm describing something blatantly obvious, but getting no support for it. Perhaps I'm getting it mixed up? Then today I come across this:

What Calcium ppm is required.jpg (323.01 KiB) Viewed 2591 times

... a thirteen-year-old post on the same path! Okay, the person asking the question and the repliers are still muddling up what "ppm" means, but it's pretty much all here: (What Calcium ppm is required in the mash for alpha-amylase stability and mash efficiency? - Stack Exchange).

Now I've found one supporting post, I guess I'll find dozens? But if this stuff is known about, and therefore isn't me just going off on one, why do we continue plugging nonsensical comments like "you need 50ppm calcium for your mash" etc., etc.?

[PeeBee]

Fired up with supporting evidence, I'll bang off another "rant" post:

You've determined you need "50ppm" calcium in your mash. "Ppm" is almost identical to "mg/l", as long as you're dealing with solutes that are fractions of a percent in water. So, if you mash with ten litres of water with 50mg/l calcium that's (10x 50)mg of calcium ions. That's (10x 0.050)grams, or, 0.5grams of calcium ions ... damn, can't seem to buy calcium ions, 1.39grams of anhydrous calcium chloride then (that's 0.5g of calcium ions with 0.89g chloride ions).

The mash needs that calcium because "Calcium ions protect the enzyme a-amylase from inhibition by heat". It'll lower the pH a bit as it also reacts with some malt elements (the malt also contains calcium, but we won't go there).

But ...

I want to brew this in my BIAB setup! It will need 20 litres of mash water for a "full-boil-length-mash". But I've already calculated that the ten litres of (distilled) water with 1.39g of calcium chloride (anhydrous) supplied the calcium my mash needed, so I only need to add ten more litres of (distilled) water.

Except ... that will make 20 litres of water with 25ppm of calcium! That's not 50ppm? But the book said I need 50ppm? ...

I was caught in this "mass hysteria" too. There's evidence of it earlier in this thread!


Don't get trapped by this on-going Mass Hysteria! Haul yourself out this mire of nonsense now! Do not mix "concentration" measurements (like "ppm", "mg/l", "Kg/m³") with "explicit" measurements (like "milligrams", "grams", "ounces").

How the hell did we get sucked into this mire? Or, ... Is anybody going to try and defend it ?



[EDIT: Added wider range of measurement units to emphasis differences a bit better.]

[PeeBee]

... How the hell did we get sucked into this mire? Or, ... Is anybody going to try and defend it?

Not that difficult a question: Once-upon-a-time we all mashed to an approximate mash "thickness" and after a time the mash was drained and sparged (or topped up) to an approximate pre-boil quantity. From this very forum site's "help" info is:

A ratio of 3 litres of water per kilogram of grain is a good target [Mash Thickness], with the practical range being from about 2 to 4 litres/kg.

A five-gallon brew (23 litres) of about 5% ABV can be created from a little over five-kilos of malt grain mashed in about sixteen litres of water (a mash thickness of "3 litres of water per kilogram of grain"), sparged with just short of eighteen litres. This would yield 30L wort to boil down to 23L in 90 minutes of boiling. For this you'd expect to have about 30 ppm of alkalinity (as bicarbonate), a mash pH roughly about 5.4-5.5. Calcium would be expected to be 50ppm and within the "50-150ppm" documented boundaries. This example was created using an "Amber Balanced" water profile in "Beersmith".

All just peachy! The only thing I'd have to grumble about is few people bother to treat the sparge water, so the "50-150ppm" calcium isn't necessarily carried through to the finished beer wort. But that's not the mash. The mash is ... "just peachy" ... and "ppm" units are being mixed with kilos (malt) and litres (water). So, what's the problem? ...

Move on a few years and lots of people are using "BIAB". "No-sparge"! I do too; I hate AIO machines for claiming they are "All-In-One" when they are not! You need a second boiler to heat the sparge water. I use my AIO machines "no-sparge" so they are AIO! Rant ... grr (stop it, that's getting off subject!). "Beersmith" is rather good for this, because I can keep the above recipe and simply turn on the BIAB mode! Allow "Beersmith" to recalculate the water additions (for "full-boil-length-mash" now) and ...

The salt additions for the mash nearly double (as you should expect). There's no option to ignore the additions for the sparge now ... 'cos there is no sparge! The Calcium additions nearly double (for the mash) because it was calculated to a "concentration" amount, there's more water, so there's more calcium to keep up the "50ppm". More Calcium creates more acidity (reacting with malt constituents), so the amount of alkalinity salts rockets up to more than double ... in this example it went from about 0.6grms to 1.7grms for a 23L batch. Mixing "concentration units" (ppm) and "explicit units" (litres and kilograms) is not so easy anymore!!! (But you do get, potentially, 50-150ppm calcium in your wort now 'cos you can't skip adding it to your "sparge water"!).



Sorry. Another rant. I'll get on producing useable numbers now. But I'm very aware this is a single-candidate campaign. Apart from some "off-line" whisperings in my ear (which are proving to be most helpful). Homebrewers are measuring water salts out to "one hundredths-of-a-gram" thinking that they are making things more accurate (yes, I did used to be one of them!) ... yet if they were measuring things to the nearest ten grams, they wouldn't be less accurate than they are currently.

But. It's your beer; carry-on ignoring what I'm saying. Just keep listening to your house-elf and you'll be all right.