Adding Salts To The Boil Query...

[Mrobson]

Just started treating my water, I have a question about the figures that the water calculator gives on this site.

It mentions to treat mash and boil water separately. When it states to add to the ‘boil’ is that before heating and sparging with it or literally in the boil after sparging?

Cheers in advance!

 

[Drunkula]

If you were using bicarb or chalk then not in the sparge water as they'll make it more alkaline, but gypsum or calcium carbonate fine. Otherwise throw them in the kettle any time, while it's heating is fine.

 

[IainM]

I think there may be some confusion here. Do you mean to treat the mash and sparge water separately? All additions are added before the boil, either to one load of water that is used for both sparge and mash, or separately to two loads of water, one for mash and the other for sparge. The calculator does have an option to pre-boil, i.e. boil the water before mashing and sparging in order to remove calcium carbonate. In this case, the calculator assumed that the additions are made before the pre-boil.

 

[strange-steve]

Just started treating my water, I have a question about the figures that the water calculator gives on this site.

It mentions to treat mash and boil water separately. When it states to add to the ‘boil’ is that before heating and sparging with it or literally in the boil after sparging?

Cheers in advance!

You can add the salts to the boiler after the sparge, however any acid treatments, CRS for example, are added to the full volume of water before heating.

The easier way to do it, the way I do it, is to collect the full volume of water required for both mash and sparge, then treat the whole lot together. The only exception to this would be if you have to increase the alkalinity, because as drunkula says, this should only be done with the mash water.

 

[Mrobson]

Brilliant! Answers my question, thank you!