Ezwater calc, using minerals to adjust to stout profile

[judasegg]

My water is very soft and low in carbonate...I'm tring to use something like ezwater calculator to adjust the profile for a stout, basically to ramp up the Calcium and bicarb. The question I have, in general do I add the minerals to the total water (in HLT) or separately to sparge and mash?

It makes sense to me to add to the total water, as to mimic water profile of some place well known for stout, but from what I understand some minerals don't dissolve well in sparge water and should just be added to mash.

I'm hoping to brew tomorrow, looking for some guidance to enhance my water for brewing a stout...

My water profile is:
Alkalinity as hco3 - 22 mg/ ll
Chloride 18
Hardness (total as Ca/l) 40 mg/ l
Magnesium - 5mg/l
Sodium 12
Sulphate 22
PH 7.7

Brewing 19ltr brew with batch sparge, thinking 14ltr for mash, 20 for batch/ topup.

Any help grealty appreciated

[Dave S]

My water is very soft and low in carbonate...I'm tring to use something like ezwater calculator to adjust the profile for a stout, basically to ramp up the Calcium and bicarb. The question I have, in general do I add the minerals to the total water (in HLT) or separately to sparge and mash?

It makes sense to me to add to the total water, as to mimic water profile of some place well known for stout, but from what I understand some minerals don't dissolve well in sparge water and should just be added to mash.

I'm hoping to brew tomorrow, looking for some guidance to enhance my water for brewing a stout...

My water profile is:
Alkalinity as hco3 - 22 mg/ ll
Chloride 18
Hardness (total as Ca/l) 40 mg/ l
Magnesium - 5mg/l
Sodium 12
Sulphate 22
PH 7.7

Brewing 19ltr brew with batch sparge, thinking 14ltr for mash, 20 for batch/ topup.

Any help grealty appreciated

Your mash water for a stout should be in the region of 100-150 mg/L of alkalinity as CaCO3 (122-183 as HCO3). You can adjust using Bicarnonate of Soda at a rate of 1.7g per 10L of water to increase by 100mg/L as CaCO3. Your sparge water however should have low alkalinity, in the region of 25 mg/L or less so as not to extract any harsh tasting tannins from the mashed grain. It is therefore better to treat mash and sparge waters separately. Looking at your water report I'd say you need to increase the calcium level to more than 50mg/L, (you've put Hardness as 40mg/L as Ca. Do you mean Hardness or Calcium?) . I usually aim for at least 100mg/L.