Recently started using Brun Water to acidify my sparge water with lactic acid. When I’m doing a brew where I’m building water from scratch, based on distilled water, do I enter the Water Alkalinity on Tab #2, Cell B4, as zero, since distilled water plus gypsum & CaCl2 has zero alkalinity, according to Tab #3, Cell L12?
And then when I enter a zero alkalinity into Tab #2, it tells me to use zero lactic acid in the sparge water. I guess I should believe this, but am having trouble figuring out why… won’t the distilled water still have a pH of around 7, and I’d like it to get down to 5.5?
Distilled water has roughly a neutral pH, but it also has zero buffering capacity. That means that it doesn’t take much to swing the pH quickly in either direction. It also means that it has minimal effect on the pH of what it is being added to. The ions already present in the mash should easily overcome the addition of distilled water (depending on the water adjustments and grist).
If you had another solution with the same pH, but a high concentration of a buffering agent, then it would have a significant effect on the pH. Not all pH=7 solutions are created equal.
red, you are correct. Distilled water actually has a non-zero alkalinity. It’s the amount of acid needed to drop its pH from 7 to 4.3, which is a common titration end point for alkalinity measurement. Check out this calculator: http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/ Simply leave the default values for the source water empty and play with the pH. When you update the calculation and then look at the detailed report in the source water section (click “show report” and then click “even more detail”) to show the alkalinity you will see how the alkalinity changes if only the pH of the water changes.
distilled water with a pH of 7, for example, has an alkalinity of 2.5 ppm as CaCO3
But erockrph is also correct that for the purpose of brewing water adjustments you can assume the alkalinity of distilled water to be 0.
If I use that calculator to determine the amount of lactic acid needed to drop the pH from 7 to 5.4 I get 0.01 ml for 4 gal of water. You can’t even measure that precisely.
You don’t have to acidify low alkalinity water for sparging use. In addition, it would only take a drop or two to cause its pH to plunge. pH is NOT what matters for sparging water or tap water, its the ending alkalinity of the treated water. In the case of starting with distilled water, then you don’t need to perform any acidification for sparging use.
For those using the free version of Bru’n Water; yes, you need to enter the appropriate water alkalinity on the Sparge Acidification sheet in order to have the program figure out your sparging water acid addition. If using RO or distilled water, then the alkalinity would be near zero. The users of the supporters version of Bru’n Water already know that the alkalinity of the water from the Input page is already copied onto the sparge acidification page and there are also drop down selections for using RO or Distilled water dilutions. Its worth the upgrade.
+1 being worth the upgrade. and all the comments are dead on from my experience. when i switched to distilled, it basically eliminated my need for lactic acid in the mash…whatever my mash ph calculated at after plugging in the grains and my salts, my runoff was exactly that. unless i was trying to get the PH a point or 2 lower for a lighter beer, no lactic acid is needed. as far as sparge water is concerned, you will likely never need anything other than the brewing salts - so trust bru’n water…it wont steer you wrong.
I don’t want to turn this into a “which is better” discussion, but I will say that in my case not having to use internet to access a program is a big plus. Anything that’s online only is a deal breaker for me.
I think that both formats are great. I like to be able to have a local copy for use in my brewery. I never have to worry about loss of connection to the internet. Having an online calculator is awesome too, because sometimes I am at work and want to develop a water profile on a computer, so that is pretty cool.
I guess it really is what you prefer - a local copy or a ‘cloud’ copy…At the end of the day, either one will get you in the zone.
While the residual alkalinity of water is the driver, I just wanted to note that the pH of distilled water is not 7, it is acidic (often around 5.8) because of absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
A pH of 5.8 is what you should get if the distilled water is in equilibrium with the CO2 in the atmosphere (according to the internet, which is about what I remember). YMMV.
I hear you…I read the same thing about 5.8 for distilled. I also read not all distilled water is created equal, so perhaps there is a ph range variance amongst brands.
Anyway , with distilled, the ph is pretty much irrelevant in the context of his question regarding the alkalinity and buffering capacity. 5.8 or 7.0, the grain and brewing salts will drive the ph of the wort and it should not be required to add acid to sparge water.
I think the 5.8 pH that is mentioned above may be referring to the mash pH of a pale malt mashed in distilled water.
By the way, Kai’s online calculator is cool. However, the need to plug in a code number is not. If they made it with cookies so that the website recognized the user and brought up all their work, that would be a nice feature. I don’t like being tethered to the net, but that feature would make it more appealing.
“Water with a pH value of less than 7 is acidic. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), distilled water has a pH of between 5.6 and 7.”
That’s weird. When I log in via Firefox the calculator recognizes that I have used it before and prompts me whether I’d like to restore my previous session. If you save a session, then you can always bookmark the URL specific to that session and that will pull up the values you have entered.
bookmark the link with a descriptive title and manage the bookmarks. I have done that.
sign up for BF with a trial account and you’ll see a list of all your saved water calculations since having signed up. We recently added a title and description field that makes the bookkeeping easier. This is new since v1.4
I agree that keeping a code around is not very practical. I never use the code w/o the link. Sometimes folks send me just the code when it would have been as easy to send me the link+code.
The restore feature is for cases when you accidentally press the back button. This was something I asked for as a must since I hate forms where you fill stuff in, press the back-button for some stupid reason, and have to fill them out again.
I know that availability on the web is an issue. I talked to BF about this and since their business model is build around an on-line only calculator lots of investment is done with respect to redundancy and uptime. They can’t afford even rare events of downtime since that can ruin their reputation. Especially if it happens while you brew. It can be argued that your records are safer on the web then on your computer unless you have a good back-up system implemented. That may not be that easy if you only work with a laptop, but there are solutions available. Many folks have lost all their recipes and other files due to hard disk crashes. That’s an argument often forgotten when folks don’t trust the cloud.
I’m not a big fan of the cloud either. I rather keep my stuff on my computer but in some cases it just makes life a bit easier and is not a huge risk.
