Increasing Alkalinity in "Soft Water"

[simple one]

A bit of background. I have tried almost all the methods to try and achieve an increase in alkalinity. I have used:

Bicarbonate of soda - Worked, but had a mineral taste come through in final product
Precipitated Chalk - Didn't make the impact on the liquor I expected (I have read that you may as well roll a dice to see how much is taken in to solution)
Bottled Water - Managed to get a good measurable result, but a relatively expensive

I have searched the internet and many forums, but rarely do I find any great solutions to this problem.

I want to use salts to do this because it'll be cheaper! Also I would prefer to get them in to solution in the Liquor prior to brewing, that way I can test the water to see if the uptake is successful. How are brewers getting the correct amount of precipitated chalk in to solution? I have heard of using acids, but will this not just "rob peter to pay paul". I have heard some brewers use pickling lime to increase alkalinity, anyone use this? I have used Evian as a "diluting" water to increase alkalinity, is there anything which has a higher concentration of CaCO3?

Any help really appreciated.

[Eric]

Come with a big container and you can take highly alkaline water from my tap. Having said that its alkalinity has halved to 160 mg/L recently. What are you after achieving?
As you have found, calcium carbonate won't go into solution, it is naturally there after acid action on limestone as calcium bicarbonate. It exists only in solution and I suspect in relatively low concentration. Calcium carbonate precipitates when that water is boiled.
Might I suggest you try fine calcium carbonate extremely well mixed amongst your grains might do the job? Can you measure pH? If so, try a mini mash, half a litre of water at 72C with 200g of pale at 20C to measure the pH after a damn good stir and five minutes. If you were to include 150 to 200mg of precipitated chalk evenly mixed through your grain, I'll bet you'll get a pH reading of around 6.

[WallyBrew]

Take 1 cornelius keg
add 5 litres of water and 25g to 50g of precipitated chalk (adjust as required but use 5 to 10g/L)
Pressurise to 20psi with carbon dioxide and shake occasionally whilst still applying pressure so that the pressure remains at 20psi (this shouldn't take no more than 5 to 10 mins)
Leave overnight
Release pressure and decant water.
Degas some by filtration or much shaking and check alkalinity
Alkalinity should be at least 800mg/L as CaCO3

Degas amount required.

If the unused water is kept it will precipitate calcium carbonate as the carbon dioxide is lost from the system

[simple one]

Now that is an interesting way of doing it. How quickly does it precipitate out? Will it last a few hours once degassed for testing and warming in the HLT?

[WallyBrew]

It should last a few hours when degassed as the bicarbonate stays in solution in equilibrium with carbon dioxide. You will lose most of the carbon dioxide by shaking but retain sufficient to keep everything in equilibrium. If you test immediately and then add the amount required to your mash liquor everything should be ok as I doubt your looking to exceed 200.

If you need a regular supply then you could fill the keg and discharge only what you need whilst maintaining the pressure. Any calcium carbonate not in suspension readily settles out.

[simple one]

Thanks Eric and Wally, that will be my next method. The best thing is that I can check the alkalinity prior to the introduction of the grains.
Will report back,

Cheers

[alix101]

I knew I, shouldn't look at this section...mind boggling

[Aleman]

If you need a regular supply then you could fill the keg and discharge only what you need whilst maintaining the pressure. Any calcium carbonate not in suspension readily settles out.

That is what I've taken to doing . . . . Although A cheep 3L PET bottle of beer, emptied and used with a carbonator cap means that I can have 3L of High Carbonate Liquor 'on tap' which even for my 150L system gives me more than enough alkalinity (I rarely want to go higher than 100ppm for the mash)

[simple one]

Well even though I said that I would try the carbonated method to dissolve CaCO3 on my next dark beer. I didn't. I tried a different method of beating the low pH problem of dark beers.

I took a tip off a podcast (possibly Beer Smith?) and did a light beer mash. Doing only pale malt on it's own. And steeped all the dark grains separately. I also did a separate boil with the dark fluid/wort and chilled and added to the fermenter at pitching temps. It's a bit fiddley, and It's harder (near impossible) to accurately calculate the colour versus the abv versus expected taste.
Now the finished beer tastes good, and has no acrid/acidic taste I get from a dark beer with no water adjustments. So that's good, but I wonder if it really is higher in pH... (no pH meter)

Would the science back this method up?

[BlackRocksBrewery]

Hi - I have very soft water and according to pH papers I have very acidic water. Where are you and do you have a similar problem with acidity? My local water authority, Severn Trent tell me all is well and my water is around 7pH.
I would really appreciate knowing more about your problem.

Stephen
Black rocks brewery

[simple one]

Hi - I have very soft water and according to pH papers I have very acidic water. Where are you and do you have a similar problem with acidity? My local water authority, Severn Trent tell me all is well and my water is around 7pH.
I would really appreciate knowing more about your problem.

Stephen
Black rocks brewery

My issue with my water is it's ability to buffer the acidic nature of a dark mash. So the mash and beer pH is in the correct ball park. In other words I have a very low alkalinity (lack of carbonates) (around 25 ppm CaCO3). This is different to the initial pH of water which bares no relation to pH. There are loads of previous threads on this subject.

Due to this I have used two methods which have both worked well.

1. Use high alkalinity bottled water and (un)dilute the local water.
2. Do a dark malt tea, and add to the FV.

There is the third option above dissolving CaCO3 in carbonated water, and (un)diluting or using it neat. But I haven't done this yet.

The only points I measure pH is in the mash and in the final beer. I would use these figures to tinker with my additions/dilutions.

[orlando]

Deleted

[orlando]

There is a 4th option that Gordon Strong advocates and one that might suit you as he has soft water himself. His approach is to start with a level playing field and use reverse osmosis water, buying it or fitting a system into your domestic supply (there are some relatively inexpensive ones for our needs). This effectively strips just about everything out and allows you to then just add the salt additions needed for the style you wish. He tests for total dissolved solids to see if he needs to measure his strike water pH adjustment, treating with phosphoric acid to get it to 5.5. Interestingly Sierra Nevada treat ALL their water this way so they are always using a known profile and adjust accordingly. He also makes the point that as your water profile can change during the year unless you are regularly testing it you can end up making unnecessary additions which end up fighting each other (a sort of robbing Peter etc).

He then adds salts to the mash based on the underlying beer style (malty or hoppy), sometimes adding salts to the boil. I haven't done this yet myself (spent quite a lot recently and I keep hearing mutterings, particularly as the leccy company has just written to say they need to put our monthly leccy payments up by £20 a month ) but it makes sense and seeems to me a much simpler approach to this fiendishly complex subject.

[Wolfy]

There is a 4th option that Gordon Strong advocates and one that might suit you as he has soft water himself. His approach is to start with a level playing field and use reverse osmosis water, buying it or fitting a system into your domestic supply (there are some relatively inexpensive ones for our needs). This effectively strips just about everything out and allows you to then just add the salt additions needed for the style you wish. He tests for total dissolved solids to see if he needs to measure his strike water pH adjustment, treating with phosphoric acid to get it to 5.5. Interestingly Sierra Nevada treat ALL their water this way so they are always using a known profile and adjust accordingly. He also makes the point that as your water profile can change during the year unless you are regularly testing it you can end up making unnecessary additions which end up fighting each other (a sort of robbing Peter etc).

He then adds salts to the mash based on the underlying beer style (malty or hoppy), sometimes adding salts to the boil. I haven't done this yet myself (spent quite a lot recently and I keep hearing mutterings, particularly as the leccy company has just written to say they need to put our monthly leccy payments up by £20 a month ) but it makes sense and seeems to me a much simpler approach to this fiendishly complex subject.

Obviously by using RO water you are creating the exact situation the OP is asking about - very soft water - which I also have here.

I've not read the new Gordon Strong book (yet) - which is where I assume he has outlined the water-treatment-approach - but are you suggesting he uses RO water and does not add salts to the mash unless they are required for the underlying beer style and instead just uses phosphoric) acid to adjust the ph?
Or does he add salts to the mash for every beer, but adjusts the balance of those salts according to the beer style, then adds the required portion of acid to ensure the mash pH sits within the recommended range?

[orlando]

There is a 4th option that Gordon Strong advocates and one that might suit you as he has soft water himself. His approach is to start with a level playing field and use reverse osmosis water, buying it or fitting a system into your domestic supply (there are some relatively inexpensive ones for our needs). This effectively strips just about everything out and allows you to then just add the salt additions needed for the style you wish. He tests for total dissolved solids to see if he needs to measure his strike water pH adjustment, treating with phosphoric acid to get it to 5.5. Interestingly Sierra Nevada treat ALL their water this way so they are always using a known profile and adjust accordingly. He also makes the point that as your water profile can change during the year unless you are regularly testing it you can end up making unnecessary additions which end up fighting each other (a sort of robbing Peter etc).

He then adds salts to the mash based on the underlying beer style (malty or hoppy), sometimes adding salts to the boil. I haven't done this yet myself (spent quite a lot recently and I keep hearing mutterings, particularly as the leccy company has just written to say they need to put our monthly leccy payments up by £20 a month ) but it makes sense and seeems to me a much simpler approach to this fiendishly complex subject.

are you suggesting he uses RO water and does not add salts to the mash unless they are required for the underlying beer style and instead just uses phosphoric) acid to adjust the ph?
Or does he add salts to the mash for every beer, but adjusts the balance of those salts according to the beer style, then adds the required portion of acid to ensure the mash pH sits within the recommended range?

In effect both. He adds them to suit the style, adjusts the mash pH to 5.5. For him it is all about getting the mash pH right. When you think about it if you don't get this right how do you recover? A small example, there is a lot of talk about sparging too low and extracting tannins from the grains. As long as the sparge liquour is under pH 6 this doesn't happen, it's an argument for not bothering with a refractometer to quickly check for gravity below 1.010; why bother?

Excellent book by the way, as it does reflect current science and thinking about making beer by one of the most decorated home brewers.