Beer Forum

just when I thought I had this whole water thing figured out, I tasted my first all grain batch where I treated my water.... Man, I still have so much more to learn But that's why I love this hobby....So this time, I figure I will recompute and then ask first before I just go ahead and do it... I have very hard water and will be brewing up the Scottish Ale series ( 60/, 70/, 80/ ) towards the end of the month... I figured I would try to simulate Edinburgh water as reported in Mr. Palmers book "how to brew"... Edinburgh (target) water as reported was: Ca = 125, SO4 = 140, Mg = 25, Na = 25, Cl = 65, HCO3 = 225 ..... My water with no dilution is: Ca = 82, SO4 = 90, Mg = 30, Na = 4, Cl = 14, HCO3 = 330, Alkilinity = 275, pH = 7.8 .... Based on a 4 gallon water treatment (to be scaled up or down when I finalize my grist), If I dilute 3 gallons of my water with one gallon of distilled water and add the following salt contributions of: Epsom Salt = .575 grams; Sea Salt = .725 grams; Calcium chloride = .850 grams; and Gypsum = 3.125 grams, then my resulting treated water becomes: Ca = 125, SO4 = 137, Mg = 26, Na = 22, Cl = 67, and my "Alkilinity" is now 206 while my hardness shoots up to 421. But don't I ignore the 'hardness' value at this point, because isn't it the 'alkilinity' we are now concerned with for the mash? Is this a viable water treatment for the Edinburgh profile? Or am I way out there in left field somewhere and have totally miscalculated thanks for any/all responses...

hopefully someone can help with this question... or is everyone watching the Yankee vs Angels game

Let's start with the target water. The numbers you listed are within the range of values reported for Edinburg water but they don't quite balance (even at pH 8.3) so the first thing you'll need to do is come up with a target that does because you can't synthesize unbalanced water. You are maxed out on chloride and sulfate (i.e. the levels you are using are the greatest I have in any Edinburg report) so that means bicarb has to come up. As an aside it appears that bicarb is usually under-reported. At pH 8.3 taking the bicarb up to 346 mg/L balances the profile. This target water has an alkalinity of 291 and a residual alkalinity of 187 - pretty hefty.

Turning to your water report: There are some inconsistencies in it as well. This is perfectly normal. No laboratory makes perfectly consistent, accurate measurements. Taking the calcium, magnesium and alkalinity numbers at face value the water's total hardness is 328 and its residual alkalinity 200.

Making the dilution and salt additions you propose gets all the ion concentrations to about the levels you have calculated except sulfate. The gypsum and epsom salts add 172 mg sulfate and you have 90 in your water for a total of 262 which multiplied by 3 and divided by 4 (the dilution) gives about 197 mg/L. Alkalinity becomes 207.6 and total hardness 425, both close to what you calculated. The residual alkalinity is 101. It is the residual alkalinity which is related to mash pH. So by diluting you are taking the RA down 54 units to 146 and by adding the calcium salts another 45 to 200. But you now have a sulfate level which is 41% higher than the highest reported level for Edinburg that I have. This may well be OK. Other ions are within a couple of percent of target with the exception of bicarbonate which is about half of target because we had to double the target's alkalinity to get ion balance. As your water's RA is about half of the adjusted target you should have no trouble getting proper mash pH.

So yes, this is a reasonable treatment. You could cut back on the gypsum to ease off on the sulfate but should probably try it as is first and only fiddle with the sulfate if the hops are to "assertive". As always, I strongly recommend a pH check in the mash tun at least.

ajdelange wrote:Let's start with the target water. The numbers you listed are within the range of values reported for Edinburg water but they don't quite balance (even at pH 8.3) so the first thing you'll need to do is come up with a target that does because you can't synthesize unbalanced water.......But you now have a sulfate level which is 41% higher than the highest reported level for Edinburg that I have. This may well be OK. Other ions are within a couple of percent of target with the exception of bicarbonate which is about half of target because we had to double the target's alkalinity to get ion balance. As your water's RA is about half of the adjusted target you should have no trouble getting proper mash pH.

So yes, this is a reasonable treatment. You could cut back on the gypsum to ease off on the sulfate but should probably try it as is first and only fiddle with the sulfate if the hops are to "assertive". As always, I strongly recommend a pH check in the mash tun at least.

...... thank you for your response ajdelange. The great thing about this hobby is that it reaches out into other disciplines of education....Your comments have directed me to the following web site to learn more about balancing http://dl.clackamas.edu/ch104-04/ ...can you offer up others which will assist me in my endeavor to learn? ..It was fun going through the examples from that web site, but I was reminded of my putrid scores in chemistry I would obtain in high school... I never listened... Now if the instructor would have said, "this may come in handy when you brew your own beer", I would have been all ears!!! .... cheers!!

The balance I was referring to is electrical balance but that is related to the kind of balance the website you refer to is talking about. If I dissolve 147.014 mg (1 millimole) of calcium chloride dihydrate in water and make up to 1 L it will separate into its component ions: CaCl2.2H2O --> Ca++ + 2Cl- + 2 H2O i.e. 1 mmol of calcium ions, 2 mmol of chloride ions and 1 mmol of water. But note the electrical charges. The chloride ion puts 2 mmol of negative charge into the water and the calcium 2 mmol positive charge. Charge is usually noted in units of "equivalents" so we would say that this solution would have 2 milliequivalents/L positive charge and 2 meq/L negative. The solution has to be electrically neutral (i.e. positive and negative charges have to balance exactly) is any real solution and this is the balance I'm referring to. Now if I send a sample of this water off to a lab for analysis they will come back with a concentration for calicium ion and one for chloride. If I measured out exactly 1 mmol then the calcium ion concentration would be 40.0784 mg/L and for chloride 70.9064. The "equivalent weight" of an ion is the amount required to produce 1 mole of charge. The equivalent weight for calcium is 20.0392 g/eq and for chloride it is 35.4532 so there would be 2 meq/L from the calcium and 2 meq/L from the chloride. If the lab measured exactly 40.0784 mg/L calcium and exactly 70.9064 mg/L chloride and divided these by the appropriate equivalent weights they would obtain exactly 2 mmol/L for each and the report would be balanced (2 - 2 = 0). But no lab is going to return results that accurate. Suppose they measured 40 mg/L for the calcium and 70 mg/L for the chloride. Then the positive charge they would report is 40/20.0392 = 1.9961 meq/L and the negative 70/35.4532 = 1.9744 mEq/L. The difference here is not 0 but rather 0.021 meq/L and this imbalance is a reflection of the errors made by the lab.

What applies to calcium chloride applies to all other substances which dissociate in a water sample. Thus all the negative charges and positive charges should add up to 0. Analysts use this as a method of quality control. Ward Labs is the only lab I know that tells you what they calculated for both the cations (positive charge) and anions (negative charge) and this is great except that the balance numbers they come up with are often nothing to brag about.

As for learning basic chemistry I'd get a good freshman text and start going through it with emphasis on the ionic equilibrium stuff. You don't really need to understand the oxidation states of palladium to appreciate brewing water chemisty. In my youth (long past) Sienko and Plane was the standard (I remember Prof. Plane had an extensive bookcase behind his desk completely filled with copies of this book - no two in the same language) but I'm sure it has been surpassed by something newer. And speaking of those two worthy gentlemen, the only time I ever saw Prof. Sienko animated was on the day he gave a lecture on the chemistry of fermentation. The class was quite animated too.

In this same regard I found myself talking, during a judging break in my club's big annual contest, to a fellow who taught analytical chemistry at a college in these parts. He said he definitely held the interest of the class (the male students at least) by posing every analysis he possibly could (and there are many) in terms of beer and brewing.