SO I am working out my next brew, a partigyle barley wine small beer event and I was wondering how to put this into Bru’n water to get the best results.
I will cap the mash with 2 lbs of crystal malt and maybe a little extra munich and let it sit another 10-20 minutes.
I know I will probably want to add my small beer salts to the kettle but do I have to acidify my second water addition as so much of the acid contributed by the darker base malt will be gone into the kettle?
I think you’d want to acidify your 2nd running water.
I’d just measure the pH and decide from that what and how much to do.
I’de do that but I only have the strips and don’t really trust them. I guess I will go with the sparge water acidification page on bru’n water.
I have checked my batch sparge brews and the pH never varies.
If you batch sparge you can do the same.
My water is pretty soft though. If yours has a high a residual alkalinity you might consider acidifying it. I wouldn’t go by theory alone, I would check it with a pH strip.
YMMV
P.S. I love doing parti-gyle for all of my big brews.
It is always a good assumption that sparging water alkalinity should be brought to under 25 ppm to avoid ill effects. In some places, the water supply already has low alkalinity and no treatment is necessary. Other areas are not so lucky.
I don’t know what to say about a partigyle. I assume there would be some phytin left in the mash, but I don’t know if it would be enough to react with any Ca or Mg in the added water. Let us know how it works out.
Looking at the sparge scidifaction work sheet I notice that it wants to know things about my starting water that I am not sure I know. I use all RO water so I assume ra is quite low but I don’t know for sure. If I recall your spreadsheet assigns a pH of 8ish to RO water but I know that’s not really the same things as ra. Man, I am going to have to get a pH meter aren’t I?
Its not RA that is used in the acidification calculation, its alkalinity. If you use RO water, you can estimate what the alkalinity is since it should fall in a narrow range due to most of the minerals being removed. Alkalinity for RO water should fall in the 5 to 20 ppm (as CaCO3) range. If the RO machine is working very well, use the lower end. If not so good, use the upper end.
The pH assumed for the water to be acidified is not all that important. If you play with the calculator, you’ll see that adjusting the alkalinity has a lot more effect on the acid demand than adjusting the starting pH. Of course when playing with the starting pH, I’m talking about a small range that would be typical in drinking water…say 6 to 9 with many supplies coming in around 8. RO water can have a lot of dissolved gases including CO2 since the RO membrane is very permeable for gases. So that means that the pH of RO water can be a little lower than normal. It should be in the 5 to 7 range in most cases. That excess CO2 comes out quickly upon heating.
you rock martin. I think I understand, When I get howe I will play with it and make sure.
Thanks again.