More Advanced Water Treatment

[strange-steve]

Steve, the table printed on the first page, whereabouts would you put wheat beer.
Is it balanced ratio?

Personally I would put it in the malty category.

 

[Hoddy]

I was wondering why it would appear no one uses citric acid. That's all I've ever used in conjunction with my other minerals for water treatment.

@strange-Steve thoughts?


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[strange-steve]

I've never used citric acid myself, but as long as you only need a relatively small alkalinity adjustment then it's fine to use. I think what puts people off is that it has a lower taste threshold than other acids, it's less than half that of lactic acid for example. That being said, the fruitiness that it imparts might actually work well in some beers.

 

[Hoddy]

That's a really interesting point about citric that I had considered before. Naturally it would give a citrus taste. And I hadn't thought about it having a different threshold than CRS or lactic.

I've never been able to find a max recommended dosage rate (per g/L) for it either.

The most I've had to dose at is 0.22g/L for a really pale beer to get the ph down to mash @ 5.4.


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[strange-steve]

That's a really interesting point about citric that I had considered before. Naturally it would give a citrus taste. And I hadn't thought about it having a different threshold than CRS or lactic.

I've never been able to find a max recommended dosage rate (per g/L) for it either.

The most I've had to dose at is 0.22g/L for a really pale beer to get the ph down to mash @ 5.4.


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According to Brun Water the taste threshold for citric acid is around 150mg/L, but that is very subjective. And in something like an IPA or APA it's possibly a welcome flavour.

 

[Ajhutch]

I know there are several water addition calculators around but since I started paying attention to water treatment, I've used these two threads by @strange-steve as my guides. As I prefer to be in control of my processes rather than trusting to the output of an online calculator, I've built myself a spreadsheet that does the work for me based on an input of my starting and target water profiles. I've attached as an example the water additions for a Belgian dubbel I'm going to be brewing this weekend.

View attachment Belgian dubbel water.zip

 

[BREWERS DROOP]

I have lactic acid in powder form not liquid,what's the quantities in grams?

 

[strange-steve]

I have lactic acid in powder form not liquid,what's the quantities in grams?

Not a clue, never used powdered lactic acid. It's easy to figure out with a little test run. Take a litre of water, test alkalinity, add 0.1g of lactic acid, retest alkalinity.

 

[johnbarleycorn]

Evening ....
Going to use east London tap water for a light beer/lager type thingy- anyway I've tested it and its coming out at 248ppm CaCo3. I want to remove 230ppm per liter. I have 81% phosphoric acid to use.
Am I right that each 0.14ml of the acid removes 100ppm of CaCo3 per liter of water ?
If my calcs are right then I need 9.66ml of phosphoric acid for 30liters of hard as nails Thames water....?
Thanks folks

 

[strange-steve]

Evening ....
Going to use east London tap water for a light beer/lager type thingy- anyway I've tested it and its coming out at 248ppm CaCo3. I want to remove 230ppm per liter. I have 81% phosphoric acid to use.
Am I right that each 0.14ml of the acid removes 100ppm of CaCo3 per liter of water ?
If my calcs are right then I need 9.66ml of phosphoric acid for 30liters of hard as nails Thames water....?
Thanks folks

Yeah all your calculations look correct, and that should be well below the taste threshold for phosphoric acid. That being said, I'm of the opinion that dilution of alkalinity is better than neutralising, especially for a lager. If you went half and half tap water with RO or Ashbeck or something similar, then you would only need half as much acid.

 

[johnbarleycorn]

Cheers Steve- I appreciate your answer....brew day tomorrow... Ta.

 

[BeerCat]

There's a nice neat looking little RO system on eBay for �£46, looks very similar to the one I use. I installed it under my kitchen sink and I love it.

I have just realised that they dont need a tank. How do you go about collecting the water? I can get about 5l at a time if the tank is full whith takes about 10mins. Problem is i walk offf and it goes everywhere.

 

[strange-steve]

I collect it into an FV the day before brewday, it takes probably about 3 or 4 hours to collect enough for a full batch.

 

[Saisonator]

I wonder if someone could tell me the profile they would go for with a Yorkshire Bitter
Malty?
Balanced?
Bitter?

Thanks

 

[strange-steve]

I wonder if someone could tell me the profile they would go for with a Yorkshire Bitter
Malty?
Balanced?
Bitter?

Thanks

The question really is how do you want your beer? If you prefer a full bodied, malty finish then balance towards chloride. If you prefer a lighter, crisp finish then go more sulphate. Personally for a bitter, I go for a balanced profile. For me a bitter is all about drinkability, so not too heavy and not too dry.

 

[Saisonator]

The question really is how do you want your beer? If you prefer a full bodied, malty finish then balance towards chloride. If you prefer a lighter, crisp finish then go more sulphate. Personally for a bitter, I go for a balanced profile. For me a bitter is all about drinkability, so not too heavy and not too dry.

Cheers Steve, I ended up making it just in the Sulphate biased range, but not too far.

 

[clarkeuk]

Hi @strange-steve
I'm think im missing something obvious here but really not sure, but what is the 119ppm calcium in the example as there is gypsum and chloride already there .What is this calcium
Cheers Clarke

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[strange-steve]

@clarkeuk
Sorry mate, I don't understand your question. Presumably you're talking about this example from the OP:

If you use RO water then it's very simple. For example, if I was brewing a very bitter DIPA then I want to add around 100 ppm of calcium with a sulphate:chloride ratio of about 4:1. As you can see from the tables above, an addition of 0.4g/L of gypsum and 0.1g/L of calcium chloride will give me:
calcium - 119ppm
sulphate - 223ppm
chloride - 48ppm
Ratio of 4.6
Which is close enough.

In this example we are using RO water, so you can assume for simplicity that it has 0ppm of calcium, chloride and sulphate. Using the table below, you can see that adding 0.4g/L of gypsum will add 92ppm of calcium and 223ppm of sulphate, and an addition of 0.1g/L of calcium chloride will add 27ppm calcium and 48ppm chloride. So the total calcium is now 117ppm.

Gypsum:
Addition - Increase in sulphate - Increase in calcium
0.1 g/L - 56 ppm - 23 ppm
0.2 g/L - 112 ppm - 46 ppm
0.3 g/L - 167 ppm - 69 ppm
0.4 g/L - 223 ppm - 92 ppm
0.5 g/L - 279 ppm - 115 ppm
0.6 g/L - 335 ppm - 138 ppm

Calcium Chloride:
Addition - Increase in chloride - Increase in calcium
0.1g/L - 48 ppm - 27 ppm
0.15g/L - 72 ppm - 41 ppm
0.2g/L - 97 ppm - 54 ppm
0.25g/L - 121 ppm - 68 ppm
0.3g/L - 145 ppm - 81 ppm

 

[clarkeuk]

@clarkeuk
Sorry mate, I don't understand your question. Presumably you're talking about this example from the OP:



In this example we are using RO water, so you can assume for simplicity that it has 0ppm of calcium, chloride and sulphate. Using the table below, you can see that adding 0.4g/L of gypsum will add 92ppm of calcium and 223ppm of sulphate, and an addition of 0.1g/L of calcium chloride will add 27ppm calcium and 48ppm chloride. So the total calcium is now 117ppm.

@strange -steve
Sorry for the poorly put question rushed it off this morning trying to get my head round it
I think I get it now when adding gypsum or calcium chloride , each one has a certain percentage of calcium and then sulphate or chloride .does that like iv got it now
Cheers clarke

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[strange-steve]

@strange -steve
Sorry for the poorly put question rushed it off this morning trying to get my head round it
I think I get it now when adding gypsum or calcium chloride , each one has a certain percentage of calcium and then sulphate or chloride .does that like iv got it now
Cheers clarke

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Exactly, gypsum is made up of calcium and sulphate, so when you put it in your water it increases the calcium and sulphate levels. Likewise with calcium chloride, except it adds chloride rather than sulphate.