What volume of water do I add salts to?

[Fremont Brewer]

Hi all,

I've been looking in to adding salts to my water. This will be my first time. I've decided it would be easiest to buy RO water and add minerals to that and build up. I think for my first few times, I am going to just prepare the entire water. Later on down the road, I may try to split it up between mash water and boil additions.

My question is this: For right now, when treating the entire water, do I base my additions on the pre-brew water total, 10 Gallons? Or, do I base my additions on the final volume amount of 6 gallons?

Thanks in advance.

John

[TheDarkSide]

Listen to the Water-Ganza shows of brew strong.

Add your salts and minerals based on your mash volume. Sparge with your untreated water then add the salts for the difference in the preboil volume. ( preboil minus mash volume ). Palmer says on the show there's no sense adding the salts to your sparge water since it doesn't have time to dissolve.

[CRBrewHound]

If you treat your entire HLT water (assumption: this is all the water used to create the wort), you won't have to add to multiple sources. I do all my water, mash plus sparge in the HLT.

[krizwit]

Dont add all your salts in the HLT...

Some of the salts wont dissolve properly in the HLT and will just settle at the bottom. You want to add your salts in the MT(to get the proper Ph) and in the brew kettle(for flavor and Ph). For your sparge water, you can acidify the water with acids(phosphoric and lactic are the most popular).

[ajdelange]

Later on down the road, I may try to split it up between mash water and boil additions.

Not much point in doing that. If you want to acidify the sparge water (shouldn't be necessary if you are building from RO as you won't be building water with high alkalinity) then you can add some acid at sparge time. If you want to lower kettle pH that is usually done by adding the acid to the kettle.

My question is this: For right now, when treating the entire water, do I base my additions on the pre-brew water total, 10 Gallons? Or, do I base my additions on the final volume amount of 6 gallons?

I guess it depends on how you want to procede but I have always just treated the water volume for the entire brew day i.e. mash, infusion, decoction thinning, kettle makeup and hops sparge water are all the same.

You will not (or should not) add anything to the brewing water (chalk) which does not dissolve in it so you can add everythinhg to the HLT without concern in that regard. In the exceptional case where you might wish to emulate carbonaceous water exactly (this is a big pain and involves sparging with CO2 for hours and hours) you might add chalk to the HLT, do the CO2 thing and wind up with an HLT full of water with the same amount of calcium bicarbonate in it as say Burton but as soon as you apply heat the CO2 will escape and the chalk precipitate. This is exactly what would happen if they used an HLT in Burton (which they well may have done). So you would see what the Burton brewer would see but the water would be missing most of the bicarbonate you went to so much trouble to prepare. This is why you don't add chalk to brewing water.

[Fremont Brewer]

Later on down the road, I may try to split it up between mash water and boil additions.

Not much point in doing that. If you want to acidify the sparge water (shouldn't be necessary if you are building from RO as you won't be building water with high alkalinity) then you can add some acid at sparge time. If you want to lower kettle pH that is usually done by adding the acid to the kettle.

My question is this: For right now, when treating the entire water, do I base my additions on the pre-brew water total, 10 Gallons? Or, do I base my additions on the final volume amount of 6 gallons?

I guess it depends on how you want to procede but I have always just treated the water volume for the entire brew day i.e. mash, infusion, decoction thinning, kettle makeup and hops sparge water are all the same.

You will not (or should not) add anything to the brewing water (chalk) which does not dissolve in it so you can add everythinhg to the HLT without concern in that regard. In the exceptional case where you might wish to emulate carbonaceous water exactly (this is a big pain and involves sparging with CO2 for hours and hours) you might add chalk to the HLT, do the CO2 thing and wind up with an HLT full of water with the same amount of calcium bicarbonate in it as say Burton but as soon as you apply heat the CO2 will escape and the chalk precipitate. This is exactly what would happen if they used an HLT in Burton (which they well may have done). So you would see what the Burton brewer would see but the water would be missing most of the bicarbonate you went to so much trouble to prepare. This is why you don't add chalk to brewing water.

Some day I'll understand all that. HAHA. Thanks ajdelange for the detailed response. For right now, I'm trying to start simple. Maybe just a little gypsum and calcium chloride. I've been reading Gordon Strong's book and he says he puts just a teaspoon of gypsum per 5 gallons for hoppy beers. I also have Tasty's water profile for hoppy beers. I'm not going to be burtonizing water anytime soon, until I get the hang of it all. Still trying to make sense of it all.

Thanks again,
John

[Fremont Brewer]

Thanks guys for all the replies I have gotten so far. I am trying to make sense of it all.

[mabrungard]

This thread is full of bad advice. Let me document each error.

While I enjoy Brew Strong, some of the advice is weak. First, all common minerals used for brewing water adjustment will fully dissolve in straight water excepting for chalk. You need to consider your mashing water and sparging water separately since there are many times when the mineral additions needed for each water will be different. Add minerals based on each volume and its particular requirements. It is OK to add the minerals calculated for the sparge water to either the HLT or the kettle after runoff.

Some mashes need alkalinity in the water to help keep the mash pH from dropping too low. But all sparging water needs to have low alkalinity. Therefore, its wiser to treat each water separately. In some cases, a brewer may need to add alkalinity with chalk or lime which also happens to boost the Ca content. But if the starting water has really low Ca (like RO or distilled water), then it would be important to add Ca to the sparge water volume using something other than chalk or lime since you do not want to increase the alkalinity of sparge water. Most brewers should forget about using chalk since it is hard to dissolve as AJ mentions. Lime is a much better alternative when additional alkalinity is needed.

Something that the casual brewer should know is that both AJ and Gordon Strong (and me) start with RO water for their brewing needs. The appropriate advice that is given by these brewers is sometimes lost on the fact that the advice is only appropriate for brewers that have similar starting water (very low ionic content). Gordon's advice to add a teaspoon of gypsum per 5 gal is only suitable if you're starting with low ionic content water. Don't even think of using that advice if you don't know that your water also has low ionic content.

I hope I have cleared up some of the confusion.