Porter & Water Adjustments

[mabrungard]

Oh my! A RA of 350 is totally wrong. Forget the Palmer nomograph for RA. It is flat out wrong. There is little reason why RA should exceed about 150 and even that is a stretch.

[TimmyR]

Oh my! A RA of 350 is totally wrong. Forget the Palmer nomograph for RA. It is flat out wrong. There is little reason why RA should exceed about 150 and even that is a stretch.

Please note the date of my first post and following discussion. I am no longer following that profile. Last year I just added some Calcium Chloride to bring up Calcium. This year I am simply adding 4g gypsum and 4g calcium chloride to 11 gallons of liquor.

According to my spreadsheet, this places my concentrations at

Ca 112 ppm
Mg 26 ppm
Na 31 ppm
Cl 103 ppm
SO4 108 ppm
Alkalinity 181 (as CaO3)

RA 86

I plan to see how it works out. I have good results from my tap water, filtered, on amber, brown and darker beers. Less is more is my thought here and last year's Porter was pretty tasty.

[ajdelange]

Sauermalz is generally 1 - 3% acid by weight so assuming 2% (the average) 1 kg of it contains 20 grams lactic. The commonly sold 88% solution weighs 1.3 grams per cc so 1 kg is equivalent to 20/1.3 cc.

I have never had a bad experience using the acid instead of the malt because I have never done it but I don't see any reason why there should be a problem with the acid. It won't contribute those nuanced flavors that the malt does but those would be overwhelmed in a Porter anyway.

[TimmyR]

Sauermalz is generally 1 - 3% acid by weight so assuming 2% (the average) 1 kg of it contains 20 grams lactic. The commonly sold 88% solution weighs 1.3 grams per cc so 1 kg is equivalent to 20/1.3 cc.

I have never had a bad experience using the acid instead of the malt because I have never done it but I don't see any reason why there should be a problem with the acid. It won't contribute those nuanced flavors that the malt does but those would be overwhelmed in a Porter anyway.

Thanks AJ. I have to admit I think the sauezmalt really contributes a little zing (for lack of a better flavor descriptor at the moment) to my pale ales.