Moving on from basic water treatment

[Matt]

Since resuming brewing this autumn I have made efforts to treat my water - I have been testing prior to each brew session with a Salifert kit, and adjusting the alkalinity and calcium with CRS and DLS respectively, to the recommended levels depending on the particular style.

Typically I get a Salifert test result of 285, giving a Calcium reading of 114. Mash ph has been spot on with the Brupaks treatment (although I gather that CRS and DLS are regarded by some as an 'entry level' approach).

I haven't though looked at anything else. My standard water report gives levels as follows:

Sulphate 7.3 ppm
Chloride 23 ppm
Sodium 11.6 ppm
Magnesium not known

Should I be managing any of the above? Perhaps Sulphate?

Any advice on this topic gratefully received.

Thanks,

Matt

[boingy]

If you are happy with your beers, change nothing!

And lots and lots of breweries are happy using CRS and DLS....

[Matt]

Totally fair point Boingy, but I ask because I'm seeking more clearly defined hop character - I always find it a bit vague until the beer is 3 + months old, I think there's some room for improvement. Hence the Sulphate query.

[Belter]

If you are happy with your beers, change nothing!

And lots and lots of breweries are happy using CRS and DLS....

I imagine if this was entirely the case he wouldn't be posting.

I also think its important to add the right amount of each mineral to make the beer you want instead of adding fixed amount of minerals and increasing them all instead of the ones you want.

Many micros just use Notty in every brew. That doesn't make me enjoy their beers.

I suggest you look into bru'n'water and read the notes on the website as a start. The water book is good but I need to read it again as I've read it once too quickly and still feel I could know a lot more about water treatment.

The bru'n'water spreadsheet walks you through it to some extent. If you hover over the cells it will tell you certain ranges for each mineral. After a bit of practise it gets much easier.

[Eric]

Hi Matt,

While using CRS and DLS may be considered an entry point, it is an excellent one. However, as you observe, this combination restricts salt levels.
CRS will convert the excess alkalinity to sulphates and chlorides in ratio of circa 4:3 and I think DLS will add them in a ratio of roughly 2:1.

By using CRS to reduce that alkalinity by 250mg/l CaCO3, sulphates and chlorides would increase by 120ppm and 89ppm to 127 and 112ppm respectively. That means that with DLS as the only salt addition it would be impossible to get even a 2:1 sulphate:chloride ratio.

A first step might be to replace DLS with gypsum to leave chlorides at 112ppm, meaning gypsum additions at a rate greater than 1g per 5 litres of liquor would result in a better than 2:1 ratio of sulphates to chlorides.
Alternatively use sulphuric acid in place of CRS to increase sulphates by 96ppm for every 100ppm reduction in alkalinity as CaCO3 without increase in chlorides.
You could do both but with caution lest the beer lacks any maltiness.

I have say that I've not found a great beer with fine hop flavours is just a matter of adjusting sulphate level, but it can be fun trying.

[Matt]

Thanks for the steers Eric and Belter, they are exactly what I had hoped for.

I will swap the DLS for Gypsum in my next brew, that's a straightforward means of attack that this right-brained brewer can grasp . I'll also get hold of Bru'n water - I had assumed it was off limits as I run a Mac, but I see it's an excel file, cool.

Matt

[killer]

Hi Matt,

The following represents my results over about 20 brews with just hoppy IPA's - so clearly with an aim to achieve pronounced hop flavour. I have very alkaline water, untreated it still gives me very drinkable beers, it's only when doing a side to side with quality commercial beers that I noticed that mine were not at the same level. So after about 3 brews I started chemical treatment. I tried using gypsum and CRS and that gave me fantastic beers though with clearly mineral notes - which I must admit a lot of people liked. Eventually, after trying lactic, CRS and phosphoric, boiling the water to remove alkalinity I found a balance with which I am going to stick for this type of beer...
I built a water profile which I like and was based initially on suggested profiles. It gets me around the problem posed by CRS in that it locks to a certain extent the amounts of sulfate and chloride that you have.

I start by using CRS. I add CRS to the point where the my desired final chloride concentration (in ppm) is reached. This is usually not enough to remove all the alkalinity that I'd like so I then add phosphoric to drop my alkalinity to the desired conc. I then add a small amount of Epsom salts to bring the magnesium value (very little) to where I want it. I then add gypsum to bring the sulfate to where I want it. This usually also gets me in the right ballpark or calcium - which - as long as it reaches a certain minimum, I am happy with. This has made a massive improvement to my beers - I still do a side to side taste test of all my beers against a commercial example - this is my way of calibrating my results - I also do blind taste tests against these commercial beers with my friends to make sure I am not simply fooling myself....

[Matt]

Killer, thanks for sharing that, I am seeking exactly what you describe. Interesting to read your method and how you honed your own profile. I bake bread and I know that developing something really worthwhile by slow and careful improvement using your own palate is truly satisfying. Was your final profile very different to what was first recommended? Presumably you have several, depending on the grain bill?

Cheers,
Matt

[killer]

I started out using Grahams calculator on this site. I went for the Burton profile. Without doubt it made better beers than I had been producing before, but I did find that they were minerally - not a bad thing but not exactly to my taste. I stupidly tried lactic on its on - 23L down the drain. After tasting a lot of american beers I realised that they were my favourites. They were a little cleaner - which I put down to phosphoric acid which seems to be the main acid over there for alkalinity reduction. So I got a copy of Brunwater and looked at the suggested profiles on the spreadsheet. I know that there is a healthy debate going on between Martin from Brunwater and several members on here but I view brunwater as a handy tool. The suggestions can be ignored if you like and the fact remains that it does lots of useful calculations for you. I also noted the debate about the effects of phosphoric acid on the formation of Calcium phosphates (and resultant loss of Calcium). So i reasoned that a blend of acids might work best. I can't seem to get individual hydrochloric and sulfuric acids so I decided on CRS and phosphoric... Lactic was not for me and I know the other acids can impart flavours (citric/ malic etc.). I roughly followed the suggestions on brunwater for a pale ale profile and found they were to my liking.
I do change the profile slightly depending on the malt bill - but that's mostly to control the mash pH. As such, that only really means using slightly less phosphoric acid when I use more darker grains. I emailed Martin recently and asked him if he had any plans to include multiple acid additions on brunwater as it might be useful - particularly for BIAB brewers. He said I was only the second person to ask him for that !

For other beer types (mild, porter etc.) I have completely different profiles, but most of my experiments have been on IPA's. I seem to be lucky for stouts where using even untreated water gives me very nice stouts.

[Eric]

I too have used phosphoric and CRS in combination, but in darker more malty beers. My very alkaline water comes with 100ppm sulphate but only 30 chloride which would be ideally balanced with food grade hydrochloric acid, but is unfortunately hard to obtain legally these days. Using CRS adds excessively to the already high amount of sulphates, demanding lots of calcium chloride or common salt to hopefully emphasise maltiness, hence my use of phosphoric. However, for pales I've used citric acid in combination with CRS in heavily late hopped beers where the sourness of the magnesium citrate can be lost among other flavours. I suggest it is worth trying in moderation, although you might first wish to read of magnesium citrate's common use. Calcium citrate is also virtually insoluble.

Treated with sulphuric acid, my water isn't a kick in the pants away from a Burton profile. I find there are better.

[killer]

Magnesium Citrate - ideal for an IPOO instead of an IPA....
Eric, do you find that phosphoric acid gives any distinct flavours ?
What profile do you use for heavily late hopped beers ? Do you make fruity american IPA's or more english style beers ?

[Eric]

For me, phosphoric acid leaves a flavour that I'd not previously experienced in beers, a chemical sweetness somewhat akin to that, I think, produced by sweeteners in some soft drinks. I suppose it all stems from an upbringing long ago on good local beers, and better ones from Edinburgh, with a maltiness that thrilled the tongue, opposed to the cloyingness I've tried to describe, followed by a prolonged, gentle, hop hit that had one counting coppers to see how long you might afford to stay. Beers we then had from Burton and London, while good in their own rights, only rarely hit that spot.

In those days few beers sold were in really good condition, metal piping from cellar to bar maybe couldn't be properly cleaned and little beer went back if the landlord wanted his job and the tenant his profit, so good or bad it was all sold. Today it could hardly be more different, silicon pipes and modern cleaners, pins and firkins tapped one day and drank to extinction the next, beer full of the excellence from modern sticky green hops that mostly weren't available to brewers in those days when fewer strains sat around storerooms for months in jute or coir sacks.

So, if I want a really hoppy pint today, I go down the pub. I can make a beer that will be nicely hopped, but it remains that way for a few days only. Last night we slurped the dregs of a cask brewed on August 30th, a full four months and any hop flavours that might have been were all but gone. I have found a high sulphate level in liquor can enhance hoppiness, but at the same time, on occasion, can wipe out malt flavours of paler grains and further cause astringency with even small quantities of some darker malts, which in turn mask or spoil delicate hop flavours. CRS and extra chloride can at times trump sulphuric acid plus sulphates when using large quantities of some finer late hops. To that end I'd like to experiment more with hydrochloric acid, but as most that I can get would seem to be manufacured as a byproduct of waste disposal, I'd not wish to feed others even minute portions of potential carcinogens, nor reduce my chances of enough years to reach my nineties and achieve a lifetime's ambition of being caught in the act and shot by a jealous husband. There are just a few times when beer comes a poor second.

I've yet to become a fan of American styles, yeasts that completely strip out most beer flavours don't encourage me.