Water Treatment - how much calcium chloride?

[Kyral210]

Ok, I am moving into the world of water treatment and my book (Home Brewed Beers and Stouts) recoments calcium chloride for treating hard water when making lager. All good, I just wondered if there was an equation relating the amount of calcium chloride required to the hardness in the water (degrees clarks)?

Thanks

Chris

 

[Aleman]

"Oh no, not again!"

Chris,

Unless you have sound brewing practice and are making consistently good beers, there is no point in even considering water treatment

Water treatment is something that will cause no end of discussions, and is only of benefit to all grain brewing. There are all sorts of complex formulae for mineral additions and 'perfect' brewing water profiles out there on the internet, they all make assumptions, and in many (most) cases are complete and utter ********.

Please excuse the shouting

UNLESS YOU KNOW THE MINERAL MAKE UP OF THE WATER YOUR ARE BREWING WITH YOU MAY AS WELL NOT BOTHER.

There are 6 ions that you need to concern yourself with for brewing

Bicarbonate (ALKALINITY) - (HCO3-)
Calcium (Ca2+)
Magnesium (Mg2+)
Sodium (Na+)
Sulphate (SO4++)
Chloride (CL-)

You can get all apart from alkalinity from a schedule 4 water report from your water company . . . if you can get hold of a schedule 7 report you can even get alkalinity . . . but it does depend on your water company. That will only show you the range and average of these ions over the last 12 months, so in the case of alkalinity it is next to useless, mine for example varies from 20 to 140 . . . one needs no treatment for pale ales/lager . . . and the other end needs no treatment for stouts. I use a Salifert KH test kit to measure it before brewing so I get the water treatment right.

If you buy something like Tesco Ashbeck mineral water (Reasonably cheap even for a 5 gallon batch), then you can add a tsp of gypsum or calcium chloride to the mash and another to the boil, and that is all teh water treatment you need to worry about.

Randomly throwing acids and mineral salts at brewing liquor is not water treatment, it is closer to witchcraft!

 

[Kyral210]

Randomly throwing acids and mineral salts at brewing liquor is not water treatment, it is closer to witchcraft!

I like the sound of that! Thanks for the advice. I am not quite at the all grain stage, still at extract brewing so I guess I will wait a while. Besides I live near Burton on Trent so should be ok for my pale ales. I will just buy the bottled water for my lager!

 

[Kyral210]

For anyone who follows this thread, here is a good web page for info on water treatment.
:thumb:
http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2008/08/24/brewing-water-hard-or-soft/

 

[Alestar]

Also, Mr Palmer has a spreadsheet you can download from the online version of his book that you can use to do some calcs (although as mentioned you need to find out what's in your water to start with before you can try and work anything out regarding additions!).

Down at the bottom of this page.

 

[EskiBrew]

Not forgetting our own water treatment calculator

 

[Alestar]

Oh, don't think I was trying to do down your calculator, Bob! As you say yourself on the calculator it's designed to be usable and not need any chemistry knowledge. It's just the one I linked to is maybe more suited for trying to get your head round what's going on. You can play with the numbers and see what changes it makes to the water profile. In fact, you could take the salt additions output from your calculator and put it into Palmer's sheet if you wanted to try and understand what it's doing to your water! :)

 

[unclepumble]

Randomly throwing acids and mineral salts at brewing liquor is not water treatment, it is closer to witchcraft!

I like the sound of that! Thanks for the advice. I am not quite at the all grain stage, still at extract brewing so I guess I will wait a while. Besides I live near Burton on Trent so should be ok for my pale ales. I will just buy the bottled water for my lager!

If you live near burton your water comes from lichfield not from the ground water in burton.

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