Beer Forum

Water report from supplier's lab.

chloride 96
nitrate 3.4
sulfate 22

sodium 41
magnesium 32
calcium 67

alkalinity 206
hardness 323

If I understand all this right I have some fucking hard water! Explains the water stains on sinks and tubs!!

Next up to brew is a German Pilsner. Can I dilute with distiled water to an acceptable level or should I build up from scratch?

Thanks!

Its hard water, but it has hope. The Mg is higher than I prefer, so I recommend roughly a 50% dilution with RO or DI. That drops most of the ions into moderate concentrations. The Ca will be a little low due to the dilution, so it appears that about 1/4 gram of gypsum per gallon of mash water would be needed to bring the Ca content up to a decent range. The alkalinity is still going to be too high for a light colored beer, so reduction is required. It looks like 0.3 mL of 88% lactic per gallon of mash water will be needed to help the pH get into a desirable range.

Agree with the dilution suggestion and gyspum additions as a starter. Also recommend that you stop pee-ing in the shower and sink and that should take care of stains.

The thing that will eat your lunch is the alkalinity - it's pretty impressive. With just base malt you can expect your mash pH to be about almost 6. To get to 5.5 from there would require about 5% sauermalz which is more than I would be comfortable with. With a 1:1 dilution with RO you might expect pH 5.87 and you could get to 5.5 with 3.7% sauermalz - I'd be more comfortable with that. Going to a 2:1 dilution expected mash pH would be 5.83 but if you added the standard gram of calcium chloride per gallon it would be about 5.8 and you could expect mash pH of 5.5 with about 3% sauermalz which is definitely a comfortable level (and will give you some nice subtle flavor enhancements into the bargain). It also gets the calcium level up to 46 mg/L. So I guess that's what I'd do (actually, I'd use straight RO with half the CaCl2 and brew Boh Pils because that's the kind I like).

So playing the devil's advocate, what would the beer taste like if he used his original water and used lactic acid to adjust to 5.4?

I don't know - that's why I am uncomfortable with sauermalz/sauergut levels higher than I have experience with.

Using the original water and going to a pH of 5.4 would require about 6% sauermalz. As Weyermann has a recipe for a "Berliner Weiße" that uses 7 or 8% I suspect that you would definitely notice the lactic tartness at 6% but I'm not certain of it. Someone needs to do it to see for sure.

Thanks for the replies guys. AJ, do you use one of the many water spreadsheets to arrive at those pH levels you stated? If so which one? I trust you numbers, would just like to crunch the numbers as well.

And speaking of pH. I noticed on my lab report that the pH of my water was not stated. Is that something I need to know or does it not matter, or were you able to calc it from the various numbers in my report.

Does that sauermalz need to be crushed? Almost sounds like the acid is on the outside of the grain.

atomicpunk wrote:Thanks for the replies guys. AJ, do you use one of the many water spreadsheets to arrive at those pH levels you stated? If so which one? I trust you numbers, would just like to crunch the numbers as well.

I have a spreadsheet I developed for my own use. It uses Kolbachs observation that each ppm of residual alkalinity translates to a pH shift of +0.00168 (negative RA lowers pH by the same amount) and RA is calculated simply as alkalinity - (calcium_hardness + magnesium_hardness/2)/3.5. These are both simple to program into a spreadsheet. I don't generally mention my spreadsheet because it has grown to a level of complexity that makes it intimidating to most. If you want it, it is available at www.wetnewf.org.

The rest of the pH shift is a rule of thumb posted by Weyermann on their website. That is the 0.1pH reduction for each percent sauermalz in the grist.

atomicpunk wrote:And speaking of pH. I noticed on my lab report that the pH of my water was not stated. Is that something I need to know or does it not matter, or were you able to calc it from the various numbers in my report.

I can, conceptually, compute the pH of your water from the other numbers by noting that in a real water sample the charges on the cations must equal the charges on the anions and finding the pH that satisfies that condition. In the case of the numbers you gave that pH is 5.53 but I doubt very much that that is your water's pH. Small errors in the reported calculations, i.e. errors of the magnitude typical of measurement error, can throw the pH calculation way off.

Fortunately, the pH of the water doesn't make much difference unless it is above 9. The alkalinity is a measure of buffering capacity and it is buffering capacity that really determines where mash pH is likely to come in and that's where its power lies. My spreadsheet does need to know the water's pH in order to do it's ion distribution calculations. I just put in 7 when looking at a report in which a value is not furnished.

atomicpunk wrote:Does that sauermalz need to be crushed? Almost sounds like the acid is on the outside of the grain.

There are 2 ways to make the stuff. One is to prepare an unhopped wort, innoculate it with lactobacillus and let them ferment the sugar to lactic acid. This is called sauergut and it is sometimes used directly and sometimes sprayed onto malt which is then dried. The other way is to moisten malt, hold it at 47 °C and let the L. delbrueckii naturally found on the surface to ferment some of the sugars. When the pH of this mash stops dropping the malt is dried. So in either case the action is at the surface but some of the acid has soaked into the kernel in either case so you do want to crush it. Besides, it lends other flavors and even some extract.