Beer Forum

Okay,

So I think I have a better handle on water chemistry and salt additions, but I have a quick question for you all. When I am using Palmer's spread sheet and I am calculating the sparge water, is the number of grams of salt addition for the entire beer or just the mash additions?

If, and the way that I am reading the spreadsheet, the grams are only for the mash, how do you calculate how many grams of salts to add to the kettle after sparging? If I am adding acid to reduce the pH of my sparge water, do I still need to add the salts to the kettle from the sparge amount?

phew. I hope you all can even make sense of what I am talking about.

peace

I might be doing it wrong, but I just add them to the sparge water (I batch sparge) and don't acidify. By batch sparging I never have to worry about the pH getting too high.

It's just the mash volume adjustments. You have control to set that volume.

What I also do (which may or may not be the best but it works): after the mash, I calculate what the entirety of my sparge water will be (I sparge in 2 equal batches). I input that volume into the "Mash" cell and change the salt adjustments around until the profile matches what I had to begin with (Bitter to bitter, balanced to balanced, etc). I take these new amounts and dump the salts into the full boil kettle. So I made one adjustment for the mash, and a larger addition for the rest of the volume.

+1.. I computed for the mash first, then, after knowing how much more I would need for my double sparge, I recomputed for that amount. Those salts however, go into the brew kettle upon completion of the sparging, . and not into the water you are sparging with. Reason for this is the sparging is happenning so quickly, the salts you need to add do not have enough time to break down completely. Besides, it's fun to watch them foam when you throw them in with all the wort you collected. Makes you feel like a 'mad chemist' heh heh... But then again, what do I know, I just completed my first all-grain and first water profile build this past sunday... cheeers to me.... yippppeeeee