Burton salts to sub for lack of enough gypsum?

Ingredients
1

Is this a bad idea or would a moderate amount of substitution be acceptable?
I also have some calcium carbonate but its for a Pils so I dont want to over do it.

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If you have a good idea of what the composition of the Burton salts is, then it may be OK.  Hopefully you have a guide of how much to add.

I’m curious about your use of calcium carbonate?  There is little use for that in Pils brewing, so I’m wondering why you would be considering them?

3

Thanks Martin, I was just listing what I had available on hand.  I use Bru’n Water to calculate my additions which with my soft water here in Oregon almost exclusively prescribes gypsum and calcium chloride and some acid for the sparge water.  I had enough gypsum for the mash addition but only about a third of what was needed for the sparge water. I ended up just adding burton salt to equal another third of what the calcium chloride should have been.  The beer is actually kind of an experiment using my pils base  with a touch of munich and Nelson sauvin hops, so yeah not really a pils at all but I appreciate the feedback nonetheless.

I do have another question about the software.  Generally it call for me to add ~1.5 ml of lactic acid to my sparge water to get the pH in the neighborhood of about 5.7.  When I test my sparge water post addition, I never get much lower than about 6.7 down from an non-treated pH of 7.8.  Even when I’ve boosted the addition by about 25%.  Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong?

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It sounds like the water has more alkalinity than what is reported.  Water supplies and quality can vary in some places, so the discrepancy may not be surprising.  I assume that your acid quality and strength are valid.

Another thing to be aware of is that the recent version 1.15 of Bru’n Water had a little error in it with respect to acids using % strength.  That has been corrected in version 1.16 and 1.16a.  The ‘a’ version had a little tweek to correct a problem when using sulfuric acid.  Of course, all brewers should be using the most up to date version of the program.

5

Thanks again Martin. I always appreciate your inputs. I’ll make sure I’m updated to the latest version.  I bought the 88% lactic at a local HBS.  Do you recommend ordering from a more reliable source?