I just don’t see why it’s bad to add in small amounts. I guess to each his own…
I suppose you wouldn’t want too much sodium for German or Belgian styles, but for many American styles a little is fine, I would think.
Name one thing that nateo thinks you should never add to your brewing water?
I hate to sound so dogmatic. This past year, I’ve really hit my stride brewing. All of the past 10 batches or so I’ve done have turned out consistently better than I’ve ever made before. I’ve only been doing a couple things differently:
- Using pickling lime for mash pH increases
- Using the softest, least mineralized and lowest alkalinity water I can get.
- Only using calcium chloride for calcium adjustments
I used to futz with my water a lot, and add a lot of stuff to it to hit arbitrary ranges of ions others said were desirable. The above, simpler method has worked well for a broad range of styles.
Taste is subjective, YMMV and so on. I would urge everyone to take a critical approach to what you’re adding to your beer, and why. If you think it does/does not make a difference, try it both ways and see which you prefer. The proof will be in the beer.
and on to final jeopardy
I’d just be careful about over-generalizing. I’m not trying to sound skeptical, but I’m just really surprised that the water adjustments above were the thing that pushed your beer over the line from good to great. You seem to hint that overdoing salt additions was something that didn’t work out for you, which is often considered a “rule” of brewing and one that I’d agree with. Keep experimenting for another year, and I bet you’ll find that hard and fast rules don’t always work out. 
I’d also like to point out that #1 and #2 above contradict, and that there are a lot of styles where more sulfate than chloride is appropriate.
1 and 2 only contradict at the start. if you start with the lowest mineral/alkalinity then add the lime, you get what you are looking for. similar to guys, i would imagine, that always start with RO water and then build their water for a particular style.
I brew a few British bitters and IPAs each year, and I’ve found I prefer using CaCl over CaSO4 for calcium additions in those. I’m assuming those are the kinds of styles you’re referring to, where more sulfate would be appropriate. I haven’t found that to be the case, but your tastes may vary. I tend to brew drier beers, so maybe my IPAs don’t need any “bitterness firming,” if sulfate does what people claim it does. I also don’t brew American-style IPAs anymore, so maybe that style needs more sulfate?
I’m not claiming my water advice is applicable in every conceivable situation, but if you can make good beer with hard/mineralized water, it’s worth investigating whether or not you could make better beer with softer/less mineralized water.
I almost rearranged the order on 1 and 2. As Don pointed out, when appropriate, I use pickling lime for increasing pH. I don’t add it to every batch.
Sorry for derailing the thread, back on topic:
I just don’t see a reason why adding chalk or baking soda is better than adding lime. Some people have claimed negative flavors form from neutralized bicarbonate. As far as I’m concerned that’s just conjecture. I’m not ready to firmly support that, but I’m leaning toward believing it.
That would be YTMV.
I guess, but I don’t see any difference in water that started with low alkalinity and ended up with a lot of it versus a base water with high bicarbonate.
Or, you could just take AJ Delange’s advice and never add alkalinity. 
I think it’s more a question of “Is lime better than chalk or baking soda”? I think it does have some advantages over both, but disadvantages as well. I would never recommend anyone use lime unless they have a pH meter, as the strips (even colorPhast) are just not accurate enough. Even with that, use safety precautions and err on the low side. I personally don’t think any beer benefits from a mash pH of over 5.5, and even a beer with lots of roasted malts will be very easy to get above this with a strong base like lime.
Just the conjecture that neutralized bicarbonate (like what would happen in your acidic mash) lends an unpleasant flavor. I’m not an expert mead maker, but I’ve noticed it’s definitely true when making mead, and also when making Belgian candi syrup. You can use much larger amounts of lime than chalk before you hit the taste threshold. How applicable that is to beer I couldn’t say with certainty, but I strongly suspect similar flavor issues.
Agreed. I think using a 10% or 5% solution will address some of those concerns, but I’d agree to never use lime unless you have a pH meter.
I agree, and am not a big fan of chalk either. Beers I haven’t added chalk to are almost always better than the ones I have. The possible reasons are:
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No need for additional alkalinity. This is definitely possible; AJ Delange thinks that few, if any, circumstances warrant adding alkalinity. My water has a bicarbonate content of 59 ppm. I’ve checked the mash pH with my meter on beers like a 60 SRM stout, and found that the contributions from a mostly roasted malt grainbill still result in a mash pH of 5.5. The same mash read at about 4.9 with the colorphast strips, which, even with the 0.3 margin of error that Kai found, do not seem to be at all reliable for dark beers.
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Neutralizied alkalinity. Possible, but I don’t see the same effect when using lactic acid in light lagers.
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Residual chalk. Could impart flavors, given that it doesn’t dissolve completely. Also possible that we are adding twice as much as we need, given the poor solubility, and the rest dissolves/reacts in the boil and causes a high wort pH. This is generally never good.
I just want people to be careful with adding alkalinity. In most cases, alkalinity is a bad thing. I’m still looking for “the answer”, as well; even though generalizations about water are hard to make, there are some best practices. It seems to me that they are style based, and based on flavor. 100 ppm of bicarbonate have very little effect on the conversion, given the mash pH shift is less than 0.1, but have a large effect on flavor.
Keep experimenting!
Narvin - I completely agree. I don’t know if you saw the thread where I was heckling John Palmer, but if I had to make a sweeping generalization, I’d agree with DeLange way before Palmer.
I’m not willing to go quite that far. If you have the capability to dose your water accurately with lime, there is no more need to have a pH meter for that addition than with any other mineral addition.
If you are starting with a low alkalinity water like distilled or RO, then you know that you will need some alkalinity for highly acidic grists with significant crystal or roast content. If you have any confidence in the acidity correlations for various grain types, you can certainly have some confidence that you can calculate what the total acidity you are adding via your grist. With that knowledge, you can estimate what alkalinity your mash will need to produce an appropriate mash pH.
The great thing about lime is that you will get exactly the quantity of alkalinity in your water with respect to your dosing. And with that alkalinity being delivered in the hydroxl form, it is going to react with whatever proton donor it encounters. Its especially going to react with and neutralize those available acids (those sluts!).
So you can depend on this reaction to proceed fully to completion, unlike chalk. If you dose lime right and understand your mash acidity, the pH will be right. You don’t have to worry about the buffering capacity like when you’re adding acid to an alkaline water. Adding lime into an acidic solution is a straight one to one response when you are starting with little or no alkalinity in the water.
Nate, I have to disagree that ‘in most cases alkalinity is a bad thing’. I’ve found just the opposite. I find that inappropriate alkalinity content is a bad thing. That goes both ways. Too low an alkalinity produces a thin, body-less beer that is likely to be tart. That might be a good thing in a Berliner Weisse, but not so good in other styles. Too high an alkalinity creates a litany of faults through excessive mash pH and wort pH. But the appropriate alkalinity produces a better beer every time.
There are brewers that brew beers like stouts using RO water and maybe some calcium mineral. They are making beer. But in the hundreds of darker beers that I’ve judged that have an acidic twang and thin body, I can only assume they were brewed with low alkalinity water. In some cases, I’ve been able to confirm from the brewer that they used low alkalinity water for the brew.
Conversely here in the land of very alkaline water, I’ve tasted some truly wonderful dark beers that I’ve queried the brewers as to their water adjustements. They typically do little to their water. (of course their lighter beers stink unless they’ve learned the magic of alkalinity reduction). Aiming for the appropriate alkalinity to coordinate with the needs of the grist is the path to better beer.
I have been advocating an elevated mash pH target for darker beers for probably 3 years now. I always found that if I over-neutralized my high alkalinity brewing water when I was in Tallahassee or my under-alkalinity RO water here in Carmel, my dark beers were sharp and unpleasant. Whereas, when the mash pH was a little bit high at 5.5 to 5.6, then those same beer recipes were much smoother. Recently, I was trolling through Kai’s Braukaiser site and noted that he had pointed out a reference (I think it was either Kunze or Briggs) that said that a slightly higher mash pH helps improve the extraction of color and flavor from roast malts. That was an Ah Ha moment for me! It corroborated my empirical findings above.
That higher pH target also helps me understand why so many brewers using RO or distilled water have to reserve their roast grains from the main mash. That process helps moderate the problems of a too low mash and also allows the mash to naturally increase its pH as the mash progresses. That moves the pH closer to a range that the roast color and extraction is going to appreciate.
Appropriate alkalinity should always be a brewers goal, not ‘no alkalinity’. That no alkalinity water recipe does not hold true for all beers. You can also fault Palmer’s original nomograph and spreadsheet. It was the downfall of many a dark beer brewer since it recommends far too much alkalinity. But, don’t go to the extreme in aiming for too little alkalinity.
Enjoy!
Martin - As always, thank you for being the voice of reason.
These conversations are where I learn the most. I still don’t understand water chemistry as much as I would like, but every time one of these threads come up, I learn a bit more, or a different way of understanding my water chemistry. Thanks you guys.
so next time i brew my dark (probably not until the fall or winter) i will brew back to back batches. one i will use pickling lime to correct my alkalinity. this brings up two questions.
1. where do i get it?
2. why can i not just use strips and correct for the difference over using a meter? this is similar to when everyone comments about weighing priming sugar over using a measuring cup. i once checked the repeatability of my 3/4 cup and i was consistently withing 1-2 grams of 153g. granted a 1% error but within the accuracy of my scale.
You can get it at a supermarket by the canning supplies. One bag is a lifetime supply and it’s only a few dollars.
The closest Walmart to me used to carry lime with their canning stuff, but they don’t anymore. Sometimes hardware stores carry canning stuff, but none of the hardware stores around me carry lime. All of the Mennonite stores by me carry it, though. Just FYI, it might be hard to find.
Our supermarkets tend to be very seasonal with canning supplies so it’s hit or miss whether you’ll find it. I can reliably find it year round at our local Southern States Co-op, though.