What % of water salts are left in the mash?

[herbaljoe]

I know this question is pretty hard to nail down due to all the different factors involved (such as recirculation and sparging duration) but I'm just looking for rough numbers.

Like many other brewers, I add my water salts into the mash. What I'm wondering is how much of them get bound up in the grain and left behind after sparging? I've searched the forums for this topic and haven't found much discussion on it. Currently my calculations don't factor this in and I'm wondering how much it matters. Has anyone seen any data on this or have some experience estimating it?

Thanks!

[anday6]

I think I've heard it off handed mentioned on Sessions and CYBI interviews (no idea on specific episodes) that you loss about half of your salt additions in the mash. That's why you could want to add gypsum or other calcium to the boil because you want it in the finished beer depending on the style or flavor.

[spiderwrangler]

Batch vs continuous sparge can affect this as well.

[herbaljoe]

I think I've heard it off handed mentioned on Sessions and CYBI interviews (no idea on specific episodes) that you loss about half of your salt additions in the mash. That's why you could want to add gypsum or other calcium to the boil because you want it in the finished beer depending on the style or flavor.

Wow, half is a lot more than I was guessing. I thought maybe 20%. This could explain why some of my beers are not coming out with the right flavor profiles. I did start adding some gypsum to the kettle but now I'm thinking I should be increasing the other mash salts above where they are now.

[Afterlab]

When John Palmer was at the Minneapolis Northern Brewer last friday this topic came up. He gave a 2 hour presentation filled with a ton of technical water/pH/chemistry info. Most of which I don't think is covered in the Water-Ganza podcasts.

I can't recall all of the info but he did mention adding salts and acids to strike water, sparge water and your wort during the boil. For the salt additions, lets say you are heating your strike or sparge water and you toss in X amount of salt. Palmer said you could sit there for hours heating your water and stirring in your salt and your salts would never fully dissolve into the water. When you drain your water from the kettle into your MT you typically have some residual salt stuck to the bottom of the kettle.

Don't quote me on this part but it sounded like he recommended throwing your salts and acids directly into the mash and stirring them to get them mixed in.

He recommended not wasting time adding salt or acid additions to your sparge water. Since you generally sparging for such a short amount of time, acids won't do much because they won't be able to alter your pH all that quickly and your pH has changed quite a bit from mashing. Not to mention your salts won't have much time to dissolve and your grain bed will likely strain them out when you are collecting the wort.

For your main salt additions he recommended adding that at the start of the boil.

Take all of the above with a grain of salt. This is me paraphrasing from a very long and technical Palmer presentation where I did not jot down any notes. He said a lot of this stuff will be covered in the Water book he is publishing with Colin Kaminski. Hope some of this helps.

[herbaljoe]

Thanks for the reply Afterlab. For most of my batches the only additions I do are in the mash as you described. I dough in, stir, add my salts (which are already mixed up with a bit of water in another container), and then stir as well as possible to get the salts evenly distributed. I've been able to hit my pH just fine so I know my additions are at least in the right ballpark. Do you remember if Palmer specifically mentioned how much of the salts will get strained out by the mash? It's looking more and more like the kettle is the best place to add salts for the purpose of nailing down the flavor profile. The trouble I'm having with this is knowing how much to add and how much remains from my original addition in the mash.

[Buttwidget]

So the Palmer info begs a pair of questions:

If I use tap water, do I lose any of my "salts" from that water through the mash and sparge processes?

Couldn't I just up the amount of salts I use in the mash and sparge water to account for loss in mash and sparging?

~widget

[slowhead]

I usually start with RO and acidify to 5.5 with phos. All of my salt additions go into the kettle so that I have a more accurate idea if what made it to the finished beer. Seems to work.