The ongoing mystery of water treatment

[clibit]

It's SO much easier not having to faff about with water treatment. My dark beer dont' need it because London water is great for Stouts/Porters/Mild. I'm going to continue acidifying my bitters for a while but having read your posts about just using gypsum I think I might do an experiment whith making a beer that I have used previously acidified the water and added a gypsum addition to make it and make the exact same beer but just add the same amount of gypsum. Then compare, to see what, if any difference there is.

My water is very different from yours of course. But I have made great dark beers with no treatment, which contradicts all the advice. It seems Marble are doing the same. So I guess, do what works for you.

 

[rodabod]

So, I received a proper Murphy's brewing water report for my actual area.

The recommendations for dark ales is quite different for bitters, pale ales, etc.

In short, the dark ales are recommended to have a greater alkalinity and greater chloride, whereas the bitters and pale ales are recommended to have greater sulphate content.

The dark ales also have table salt addition recommendations, and regardless of how this helps the mash and fermentation, I found that it brings out the malt flavour in the same was as salted-caramel.

I've tended to make very pale ales in the past, where I've found that using a 50/50 mix of London tap water and bottled water works well (to my taste), but I think this could be handy as I brew other styles.

For the additions, I use Brupaks AMS, DLS and Calcium Chloride flakes. These are just smaller packages of re-branded Murphy's salts.

 

[MyQul]

I've tended to make very pale ales in the past, where I've found that using a 50/50 mix of London tap water and bottled water works well (to my taste), but I think this could be handy as I brew other styles.

.

That's interesting. Might have a go at doing that on my next bitter

 

[rodabod]

MyQul, did you get a copy of the Bermondsey water report?

 

[MyQul]

MyQul, did you get a copy of the Bermondsey water report?

I did, yes.

 

[BeerCat]

So, I received a proper Murphy's brewing water report for my actual area.

The recommendations for dark ales is quite different for bitters, pale ales, etc.

In short, the dark ales are recommended to have a greater alkalinity and greater chloride, whereas the bitters and pale ales are recommended to have greater sulphate content.

The dark ales also have table salt addition recommendations, and regardless of how this helps the mash and fermentation, I found that it brings out the malt flavour in the same was as salted-caramel.

I've tended to make very pale ales in the past, where I've found that using a 50/50 mix of London tap water and bottled water works well (to my taste), but I think this could be handy as I brew other styles.

For the additions, I use Brupaks AMS, DLS and Calcium Chloride flakes. These are just smaller packages of re-branded Murphy's salts.

Interesting about salt, i still have much to learn about this. Far too much lol.

 

[rossydoodle]

I do add Gypsum (calcium sulphate) to pale beers and will continue to do so, I believe it is necessary and I have detected a clear and positive difference from using it. I have occasionally also added Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom salts) and I need to decide whether that is worthwhile or not. I don't add much Mag Sulphate though, when I do, it's probably not enough to make any detectable difference. I know a lot of brewers only ever bother with gypsum, adding it to the mash and the boil, and it's looking like a good basic, but effective, approach. For those of us with soft water, any roads.

I'm getting the same water as you as I'm just down the road. I'm just about to get started with water treatments and so this post interested me.

How much gypsum are you adding? And do you do it to both the mash and the boil? If so, in what amounts?

The calculator on this very site suggests the following additions to 23 litres of water;

Gypsum added to mash: 11.48 grams Gypsum
Chalk added to mash: 0.13 grams Chalk

Gypsum added to boiler: 0 grams Gypsum
Table Salt added to boiler: 1.28 grams
Epsom Salts added to boiler: 4.31 grams
Calcium Chloride added to boiler: 0.22 grams

So, roughly 2 teaspoons of gypsum in mash. Does this sound similar to what you're doing?

The other additions are negligible, but how about the epsom salts? I haven't got enough understanding yet to know what that may result in, so will stick to the gypsum for now.

 

[clibit]

Rather than try to understand the science and balance a'l the differences of opinions and water calculator results I sort of treat water additions as another ingredient. Water additions affect beer flavour and it's largely subjective, beyond the mechanics of getting a successful mash, which I've never had a problem with. I've never measured the PH of a mash, but I've always had good efficiency and good beer. I've been in breweries where they don't measure PH, and they do minimal water treatment. If any.

I have trimmed additions down to gypsum and calcium chloride, and I'm wavering on the latter. Table salt is not required, and neither is magnesium sulphate (Epsom salt), which exits in malt at the levels required for mashing, apparently. Gyspum is the only sulphate you need to add. Gypsum adds 'sharpness' to a beer. I sometimes add calcium chloride to darker beers, but am not convinced by this, for my palate anyway. Chlorides promote maltiness, mouth feel and sweetness. I know that the Marble brewery adds gypsum to pale beers and nothing to dark beers. This is pretty much what I do too but I've not settled yet on a formula for mid-colour and dark beers.

All my dark beers turn out well whatever I do, it seems. I've made better stouts than Guinness with zero water treatment and no idea what the mash PH has been using Manchester tap water. What does that say about water treatment?

I have the figures below printed out, for what they are worth, from the old forum calculator, which are for treating 16 litres of water to make a 10 litre batch of beer. I use these figures to decide how much gypsum, and occasionally calcium chloride, to add to the mash and boil. It's very much a guesstimate approach, but I find most of my beers are great. Maybe that is down to understanding what ingredients I like, how to create recipes with them, and getting the yeast choice and fermentation part right, more than water issues. But it seems likely to me that water treatment is really about correcting anything that is fundamentally wrong with your water for making a particular type of beer, rather than all the detail that some people get heavily involved in:

Pale Ales
Gypsum 4.12g Mash
Gypsum 4.12g boil
Epsom Salts 3.25g boil

Bitter:
Gypsum 3.35g Mash
Gypsum 3.35g boil
Epsom Salts 1.62g boil
Calcium Chloride 2.49g boil

Mild:
Gypsum 1.63g Mash
Gypsum 1.63g boil
Epsom Salts 1.62g boil
Calcium Chloride 5.05g boil

Stout
Gypsum 0.66g Mash
Gypsum 0.66g boil
Epsom Salts 1.62g boil
Calcium Chloride 7.48g boil

 

[TartanSpecial]

Spooky timing ..I've just spent the afternoon plugging my water analysis (Murphys analysis form last year, my own recent testing and Thames water for th emissing Sodium value) though the graham wheeler calculator and put together a similar table which I'll print out. Plan to test alkalinity once a month going forward. I'm in Epsom which is an ultra hard water area, but suprisingly is low Magnesium according to Murphy's testing. Hope the formatting comes out OK

Liquor Volume (ltrs) 35 Espom Water Treatment Profile

Butron Pale Ale Dry Pale Ale Sweet Pale Ale Bitter Mild Porter Stout
CRS (mls) 46.2 46.2 46.2 46.2 43.1 35.0 35.0
CaSO4 (grm) 10.2 9.1 1.1 6.7 0.0 0.0 0.0
CaCl2 (grm) 0.0 2.1 1.3 0.0 4.9 5.6 11.6
MgSO4 (grm) 6.3 4.6 4.6 2.8 2.5 0.0 0.0
NaCl (grm) 0.0 1.1 1.3 1.4 3.2 7.4 5.3

 

[TartanSpecial]

oops it didn;t but you get the idea. Need to strip back carbonates with quite a lot of CRS.

 

[rodabod]

oops it didn;t but you get the idea. Need to strip back carbonates with quite a lot of CRS.

That's a lot of CRS. I use Thames water plus Murphy's water report and recommendations and it's a lot less than that, generally.

 

[TartanSpecial]

For some reason Epsom has harder water than surrounding areas.

 

[MyQul]

For some reason Epsom has harder water than surrounding areas.

It's because of all the Epsom Salts in it

 

[TartanSpecial]

I put a leytonstone postcode into the thames water quality bit of their site and total hardness is showing as 259ppm as CaCO3 ...for Epsom north it is 317ppm (as CaCO3) based on 2014 samples. I know this isn't the same as temporary hardness/alkalinity but it gives a relative comparison. When Murphys tested my water last year is was less hard than the results I'm getting now testing it myself. I was adding just a smidge over 1ml CRs per litre liquor base don their recommendation but now I'm adding 1.3ml/litre. It could be messing up the testing, but I've also got a Calcium testing kit and its showing higher Calcium levels than last year by roughly the same %. I'm not sure if this is permanent or whether it fluctuates month by month. I'm going to do an alkalinity test each time I do a brew to make sure I'm not adding too much CRS.

 

[TartanSpecial]

It's because of all the Epsom Salts in it

funny thing , Murphys tests said I have low Magnesium...only 2ppm which I was surprised about given I'm in Epsom. I haven't shelled out on a Magnesium test kit yet since they are around £8 I think...

 

[clibit]

Someone on here said the Murphy's water tests are not very good. Which may or may not be true. Maybe their results should be taken with a pinch of (Epsom) salt?

Also, I found this thread a while back in which Aleman, a bit of a water guru, says there's no need to add Epsom salts ...

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4111

I think pretty much all the water treatment advice you need is explained very succinctly in that thread, probably. So, with my soft water, I now only bother with gypsum and calcium chloride, and I'm dubious about the effects of calcium chloride, for my own particular taste in beer anyway. The jury is still out.

 

[peebee]

One thing that caused me a lot of confusion is the tendency to report things "as if" it contained something else that has the same effect. Even that sentence is confusing! "Hardness" and "Alkalinity" being the worst culprits; and unfortunately the most useful to brewing.

Take hardness: Now calcium ions are the main cause of hardness. So express hardness as ppm (mg/L-ish) of calcium. So you might get Hardness as, say, 80ppm of calcium. If you are really lucky you'll get an actual figure for calcium, say 60ppm in the same report. Hang on, that's not the same! Thing is the hardness figure glosses over the fact that Magnesium ions (and others) cause hardness; calcium is only being used for convenience.

And hardness might also be displayed as CaCO3 (chalk). So you might get temporary hardness displayed as 20ppm CaCO3. Great, yeah, many of us know it's "temporary" hardness because when you boil the water much of the CaCO3 precipitates out.

But in the same report you might get "permanent" hardness as, say... 80ppm CaCO3! Its the hardness "as if" it contains Nppm CaCO3 not because it contains Nppm CaCO3.

And you might even get alkalinity (no, its not the same as hardness). Perhaps its measured as ppm "CaCO3"!

And there are other ways of presenting hardness: Clark (English), German, French... just to be helpful the report probably shows them all!

Confused? Hardly surprising really. And I can't guarantee I've not just written junk because I "think" I'm not confused by it all now!

Oh aye, and then there's "milliequivalent", It'll be talking about this sort of bobbins? NO! That's something else.

 

[TartanSpecial]

I was originally a biochemist so am generally comfortable with things chemical, but the 'carbonate' aspects of water chemistry isn't my favourite.

 

[TartanSpecial]

Also, I found this thread a while back in which Aleman, a bit of a water guru, says there's no need to add Epsom salts ...

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4111

that's a nice concise thread....

 

[peebee]

I was originally a biochemist so am generally comfortable with things chemical, but the 'carbonate' aspects of water chemistry isn't my favourite.

Cheers TartanSpecial. Well on the subject of 'carbonate', obviously not for your benefit but because some might like to know and because I'm mid-rant...

'Carbonate' is a way of expressing 'alkalinity'. So I've already mentioned it can be measured as "CaCO3": Well 'hardness' is the Ca bit, "alkalinity" the CO3 (carbonate) bit. 'Alkalinity' is important for increasing pH in the mash (not really its flavour impact). A mash could be too acid (<pH5.2ish) because it contains lots of acidic roast grains.

So you add chalk or baking soda to increase alkalinity (reduce acidity) - which? Depends on if your mash can stand more calcium (chalk) or sodium (baking soda). But what about CO3 (chalk) or HCO3 (baking soda)? Doesn't matter, balance of CO3 and HCO3 finds its own equilibrium depending on conditions (such as pH), but it'll mainly ends up being HCO3 in a mash. So you decide to add chalk. First thing you notice is it wont (barely) dissolve! Well one form is called "precipitated chalk" so that shouldn't be a surprise. Some add it direct to the mash where the conditions will help it dissolve a bit and the remainder you can't see anyway! All that careful weighing, and chalk will make a mockery of it. Don't even think of adding it to your sparging water! Or any alkaline salts for that matter.

Just don't bother with this stuff unless you've got a "too low pH" problem. Even then you are better with slaked lime than with chalk (BUT it is hazardous, it burns, and very easy to overdose).

What helped me is "Bru'n Water" which is a freebie (or send him 5-10 dollars or so for a more up-to-date version). But its fairly involved, but then again, if you've read this far...