Beginners Guide to Water Treatment (plus links to more advanced water treatment in post #1)

[strange-steve]

Steve hope you can be of assistance, my water comes from Northumbrian water and have been told their water report unless for brewing. I have the two kits you mentioned for testing the alkalinity and calcium. but i keep reading about other people adding epsom salts and other minerals to their mash water. Am i missing some other test kits for obtaining these results. I have attached a copy of my report if that helps. Thanks

The most important aspect of water treatment is getting the correct mash pH through alkalinity adjustment. To do that you obviously need to know the alkalinity of your water which isn't on your report, hence the Salifert KH test kit.

Secondly, you want to make sure you have sufficient calcium. Again this isn't on your report so you need to test for it. Somewhere around 100ppm is a decent guideline for calcium.

As for additions of other minerals such as epsom salts, it's not really necessary. Even if you used distilled water, the malt adds sufficient magnesium to the wort to make epsom salt (magnesium sulphate) additions unnecessary.

It's easy to over complicate this subject, but if you stick to the 3 main points in the OP (chlorine removal, alkalinity adjustment, calcium salts) then you'll be on the right lines.

 

[strange-steve]

I have historically used the BF calculator. But since I have been taking a more personal interest I have been comparing calculations from steves post Vs BF.

The results have varied quite a bit. Mostly on the allowable range and affect of gypsum additions. BF seems to indicate it thinks that if I add 0.15g/l of gypsum in a beer (which is what SS calcs would point towards) BF says it's too bitter and the SO4/CL ratio is too high.

Something similar on acid additions to achieve desired Ph targets too.

So I'm playing around to see who's right [emoji6]


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I've never used the BF calculator, but most of the figures used in the OP are from Bru'n Water, although obviously much simplified. But there are a few things to bear in mind.

Firstly, this guide isn't intended to be the be all and end all of water treatment, but rather a stepping off point. The method here works fine, I've used it successfully for quite a while, but more important than the method, is the reasons behind the method. I'm a firm believer that understanding why to do something is much better than simply understanding what to do.

Another thing is that even the experts in this field don't agree on the details. One example is the sulphate:chloride ratio which I purposefully left out of this guide. The reason I left it out is primarily for simplicity, but also because some people think it's ******** or at least not as significant as is made out (that being said, I did do a thread on that subject here). Charlie Bamforth, AJ Delange and Martin Brungard have all suggested that too much emphasis is put on this ratio, and that if it is important at all then it's only under certain conditions (see here).

Linked to this concept is the fact that we all have different tastes. So while one person may love a dry, sulphate-heavy finish, another may prefer a softer, fuller, chloride finish. So individual preference should be the main concern when it comes to chloride/sulphate rather than going by what a calculator tells you it should be. There is a really interesting blog post on that subject here which I recommend reading.

Another point of disagreement is the disparity between British and American attitudes towards water mineralisation. Someone like Graham Wheeler might say that the American approach is overly cautious of what they call over-mineralisation. For example Bru'n Water recommends that if sulphate is high then chloride should be low and vice versa and that 40ppm calcium is an acceptable minimum, AJ Delange takes it further, using RO water with only a very small calcium chloride addition for many styles. Many brewers this side of the pond will tell you that that approach will give you a bland, flavourless beer and I've seen recommendations of 150 or even 200+ppm calcium as a target.

Another issue is that it is nearly impossible to accurately predict mash pH, and spreadsheets such as Bru'n Water or BF can only give an estimate (fwiw my last brew had a Bru'n Water predicted mash pH of 5.2, measured with a calibrated meter at 5.35). The correlation between beer colour and residual alkalinity is also not too well established. Even John Palmer who wrote extensively on the subject of RA said that it is "at best a hand wave".

I'm rambling now, but the point is that just like with most aspects of brewing, there are as many opinions on the correct method as there are brewers and so I have tried to take a happy middle ground with this thread, which certainty won't be a panacea, but should get you roughly where you want to be while keeping it relatively simple. Hopefully it will encourage people to look into the subject a little deeper so that they can then tailor their beers to their own taste.

Phew, sorry for the long post!

 

[BREWERS DROOP]

Planning my brew on Monday using additions for the first time,so hoping for some good results especially with the stability of the PH.Really enjoyed reading this thread SS and the time and effort you have put in has been brilliant in explaining it in laymen terms.

 

[private4587]

Hi Steve I am thinking of brewing the ESB from Greg Hughes book, what should i be looking at as far as water treatment for this ale. I have an Alkilinty of 32.22ppm and 40ppm Calcium Chloride. Hope you can be of assistance

 

[MagnusTS]

Great post and thread @strange-steve. Lots of info making my head spin...

So in my 1st lumbering steps at fiddling with water treatment, I used this excellent online calculator,

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/water.php

and I looked up the stats for my local (North Leeds) water - attached

I have a couple of questions, and I apologise in advance if these have already been asked in this thread:

Question 1:
I looks like I can fill in everything in the calculator apart from Sulphates (SO4) which don't appear on the water stats. Can anyone hazard a guess, or anyone from Leeds area know what a rough value might be for this? Does it matter what the sulphates are if I can fill in the other details? I'm not after perfection, just a quick fix for mash pH and hopefully slightly better brews.

Question 2:
Also on the spreadsheet there is a box for chloride (Cl). The water report gives residual Chlorine (Cl2) = 0.32 free, and = 0.44 total. Do I use one of these values in the chloride box? I don't really understand what 'residual', 'free', and 'total' mean.

Thanks for your help and patience.
Magnus

 

[strange-steve]

Hi Steve I am thinking of brewing the ESB from Greg Hughes book, what should i be looking at as far as water treatment for this ale. I have an Alkilinty of 32.22ppm and 40ppm Calcium Chloride. Hope you can be of assistance

An addition of 0.4g/L of gypsum and 0.1g/L of calcium chloride would probably be a good start for a bitter, you shouldn't need to do any alkalinity adjustment.

 

[strange-steve]

Hi @MagnusTS
To answer your first question, the sulphate won't effect any required alkalinity adjustments, however you have no way of knowing what adjustments are required with that water report because it doesn't have a value for alkalinity. That's really the most important value so getting that should be your first priority.

As for your second question, chlorine and chloride aren't the same so you can't use either of those values I'm afraid.

Once you find out the alkalinity then you'll be in a better position to start water adjustments, because you have the other important value, calcium. You can then simply follow the instructions in the OP and that'll get you on the right track.

 

[MagnusTS]

Hi @MagnusTS
To answer your first question, the sulphate won't effect any required alkalinity adjustments, however you have no way of knowing what adjustments are required with that water report because it doesn't have a value for alkalinity. That's really the most important value so getting that should be your first priority.

As for your second question, chlorine and chloride aren't the same so you can't use either of those values I'm afraid.

Once you find out the alkalinity then you'll be in a better position to start water adjustments, because you have the other important value, calcium. You can then simply follow the instructions in the OP and that'll get you on the right track.

Thanks @strange-steve. I'll have a look for alkalinity value, and will re-read the OP. It's all confusing stuff though, I knew I shouldn't have switched from chemistry to molecular biology!

I'm thinking of maybe even shelling out the £32 for the Murphy and Son water analysis and just following their recommended additions. Save my brain from over-heating. :)

 

[strange-steve]

Thanks @strange-steve. I'll have a look for alkalinity value, and will re-read the OP. It's all confusing stuff though, I knew I shouldn't have switched from chemistry to molecular biology!

I'm thinking of maybe even shelling out the ��£32 for the Murphy and Son water analysis and just following their recommended additions. Save my brain from over-heating. :)

:lol: Well I'm an electrician with GCSE level chemistry so you've got a better chance of understanding it than I do!

I haven't used Murphy's but I have seen lots of complaints about their recommendations. All you really need is a Salifert KH test kit which you can get on ebay for less than a tenner.

Ps. With your background in molecular biology, do you do any yeast wrangling?

 

[MagnusTS]

:lol: Well I'm an electrician with GCSE level chemistry so you've got a better chance of understanding it than I do!

I haven't used Murphy's but I have seen lots of complaints about their recommendations. All you really need is a Salifert KH test kit which you can get on ebay for less than a tenner.

Ps. With your background in molecular biology, do you do any yeast wrangling?

Many thanks, I've just ordered one of the fish alkalinity test kits.

I was just reading through the posts on your water treatment sticky and saw a number of negative comments about the commercial water testing. So I think I'll save my £32 and work from your OP - which I think is just about starting to sink in now. A bit.

So if I understand correctly: if I get the alkalinity from the fish kit, and I already have Calcium from the water report, I can work out how much CRS to add to strip the alkalinity back to a decent level for pale ales. And I don't need to worry about sulphate, chloride, Magnesium and other salts for now. I'll maybe save that for if I ever get around to getting a more detailed water report.

PS. I like the sound of yeast wrangling. I work on humans, but I know there is a ton of molecular biology work going on in the world of yeast. There are labs doing mass-matings of yeast strains, and they can brew 2000 or so parallel fermentations with a different yeast variety in each. The batch size for each fermentation is 20 picolitres! Not enough to get a gnat drunk, but enough for their mass spec machines to analyse flavour and aroma. Amazing stuff really. Then there is the gene editing technology. banned in humans and foodstuffs of course, but brewing is maybe a grey area since technically you don't eat the synthetic organism, just it's by-products. Not sure there would be much of a demand for GM craft beer mind you...

Sorry, I'm rambling on. I'll stop.

 

[private4587]

An addition of 0.4g/L of gypsum and 0.1g/L of calcium chloride would probably be a good start for a bitter, you shouldn't need to do any alkalinity adjustment.

Hi Steve thanks for your advice, I'm sure i have read somewhere possibly from yourself on how to divide between gypsum and calcium chloride but for the life of me i cannot remember where. If it was yourself could you point me in the right direction.

 

[strange-steve]

Hi Steve thanks for your advice, I'm sure i have read somewhere possibly from yourself on how to divide between gypsum and calcium chloride but for the life of me i cannot remember where. If it was yourself could you point me in the right direction.

Maybe it was this thread? Put simply, gypsum is generally used for hoppy beers and calcium chloride used for malty beers, and for a more balanced beer a combination of both can be used.

 

[MagnusTS]

Hi @MagnusTS
To answer your first question, the sulphate won't effect any required alkalinity adjustments, however you have no way of knowing what adjustments are required with that water report because it doesn't have a value for alkalinity. That's really the most important value so getting that should be your first priority.

As for your second question, chlorine and chloride aren't the same so you can't use either of those values I'm afraid.

Once you find out the alkalinity then you'll be in a better position to start water adjustments, because you have the other important value, calcium. You can then simply follow the instructions in the OP and that'll get you on the right track.

Finally got the required values for my water.
Yorkshire Water were very helpful and sent a detailed report with everything I need except alkalinity, and I bought a Salifert kit to measure that.

Here are the magic numbers:
Alkalinity 77 ppm
Calcium 45.6 mg/l
Chloride 22.6 mg/l
Sulphate 67.7 mg/l

So, if I understand your OP correctly, I need to add 0.3 ml/l CRS to reduce the alkalinity by 57 to get 20 ppm alkalinity (for a pale ale).

And if I add gypsum at 0.3 g/l, I should boost my Calcium to 115 mg/l.

Do those numbers sound OK to you? I was expecting the alkalinity to be much higher. I'm not sure why, just assumed my hard water would be very alkaline.

 

[strange-steve]

Yep spot on :thumb:
I would have expected slightly higher alkalinity too, going by the calcium level, but case in point, you can't always go by that.
Your numbers sound ok, but I'd maybe replace a little of the gypsum with calcium chloride, something like 0.1g/l of calcium chloride and 0.25g/l of gypsum. That'll give you something like 130 ppm calcium and a decent sulphate:chloride ratio for a pale ale.

 

[MagnusTS]

Yep spot on :thumb:
I would have expected slightly higher alkalinity too, going by the calcium level, but case in point, you can't always go by that.
Your numbers sound ok, but I'd maybe replace a little of the gypsum with calcium chloride, something like 0.1g/l of calcium chloride and 0.25g/l of gypsum. That'll give you something like 130 ppm calcium and a decent sulphate:chloride ratio for a pale ale.

Brilliant. Thank you. :thumb:

 

[MagnusTS]

Yep spot on :thumb:
I would have expected slightly higher alkalinity too, going by the calcium level, but case in point, you can't always go by that.
Your numbers sound ok, but I'd maybe replace a little of the gypsum with calcium chloride, something like 0.1g/l of calcium chloride and 0.25g/l of gypsum. That'll give you something like 130 ppm calcium and a decent sulphate:chloride ratio for a pale ale.

Thanks for all your help and patience with this.

Yesterday I did my first brew with treated water, so fingers crossed.

I checked the mash pH with a litmus strip. I'm not sure how accurate these things are, but it looks like I am in the right ball park. Or maybe gone too far towards acidic? What do you think?

 

[strange-steve]

@MagnusTS that does look a little low however I'll quote from the expert, Martin Brungard:

Plastic pH strips (ColorpHast-trade name) typically used by brewers are reported to miss-report mash pH by about 0.2 to 0.3 units lower than actual. Brewers should use caution when using pH strips to measure mash pH. Without another means of pH verification, brewers are advised to accept a pH strip reading that is about 0.2 units below their targeted mash pH to avoid overshooting the pH. A pH strip reading of about 5.0 to 5.2 should indicate an appropriate room-temperature mash pH of around 5.3 to 5.5. pH measurement by a calibrated pH meter is recommended. Since pH strips function based on their interaction with the ionic content of the solution, the relatively low ionic strength of typical brewing water does not produce a rapid response by pH strips. Leaving the strip submerged for at least a minute in the cooled wort is recommended by the manufacturer of the ColorpHast strips. Common paper pH strips are not recommended for brewery use since they are reported to have less reliability and accuracy than plastic pH strips.

 

[MagnusTS]

@MagnusTS that does look a little low however I'll quote from the expert, Martin Brungard:

Thanks Steve,
What do other people use to get a more accurate measurement of mass pH?

 

[strange-steve]

Thanks Steve,
What do other people use to get a more accurate measurement of mass pH?

I have a Voltcraft pH meter which is great though a bit pricey. I did a comparison between it and a cheap eBay pen type pH meter, and after calibration they were very close. As far as I know the biggest problem with the cheap meters is that they don't hold calibration, but if you calibrate it every time before use then it should be fine to use.

 

[MalvernDan]

Hi Steve,

Firstly thanks for the thread, I read the lot over a couple of nights whilst dining by myself in a Premier Inn...oh the rock and roll lifestyle I lead! :whistle:

So I wonder if you would check my numbers. I don't have any water analysis report because I collect my brew water from the Malvern Hills and if it makes any difference then I am a Brew in a Bag brewer, so all my water is in the mash and I don't sparge..all part of the BIAB process.

Also my total water is 25l and so I have assumed I am treating the full amount in my calculations.

So I have been testing some water from the hills, just to have a play around with the testing kits and the chemicals that we use.

So firstly Alkalinity, I had a reading of 0.76 on the thin syringe, I think I have messed that up already...see my footnote later. So looking at the paperwork with the kit that is 3.5 on the scale and multiply that by 17.9 I get 62.65ppm. My next brew will be an amber ale/bitter and so I want to reduce the alkalinity to around 35ppm.

Because the reduction is fairly small I thought Lactic Acid would be better suited, so looking at the table I am thinking that I use 0.05/litre, total of 1.25ml lactic acid to be added, to bring it down to 36.65...good enough in my eyes.

Now on to calcium, again I used the kit and got a reading of 0.84, looking at the chart that equates to 80ppm, so I need to acheive 100ppm and I will be brewing an english bitter/amber ale so I think use of both Gypsum and Calcium Chloride would suit the style. So using the table I should add 0.05/litre of Gypsum and 0.04/litre of Calcium Chloride equating to the following:
Gypsum: 0.05*25=1.25g
Calcium Chloride: 0.04*25=1g

Finally I could only obtain Campden powder, from my LHBS and so a quick search on the internet informed me that 1 level teaspoon of campden powder is the equivalent of 10 Campden tablets. For 25l I thought I would need just 1/2 tablet and so I measured 1 teaspoon of the powder, and divided it by 20 giving a weight of 0.18g.

Would really appreciate your thoughts on the above to see if I have understood everything correctly.

Thanks :thumb:

Dan

Footnote: I think I have messed up on reading the thin syringes. When i was drawing up the activator I stopped when the black rubber of the syringe first touched the 1ml line. Having done some further searching on the internet I think I should have kept going until the last part of the black rubber touched the 1.0ml line. The kits instruction are really not clear on that and they could do with some images to confirm and because Photobucket have messed up your photos on your thread about using the kits then at the time of testing I didn't have anything to check against