I used RO water for my mash and forgot to add the brewing salts. It’s an IPA, 1064 OG, mostly 2 row with a little crystal. I added the salts as I ramped up to mashout temp. and held for 10 minutes. I know there are trace elements in RO water and I adjusted the ph to 5.4 with 10% phosphoric acid solution. So how how bad will it turn out. Do you think it will be drinkable?
I wouldn’t worry at all.
I wouldn’t worry about it either.
I did the same thing on my recent stout. Forgot to add salts to the mash in water, just added them in and stirred well for 5 minutes or so prior to mash out. Sparge water was treated in time.
The beer also turned out fine, couldn’t tell at all.
If it was a minor amount of salts and you took a pH reading and adjusted it to 5.4 I would say you should be fine. If it was a lot of salts it could have altered your pH more. Forgetting them all together is where you would find a potentially lackluster beer that would never clear.
I should add that I do not measure pH during the mash, therefore I took no corrective action. Honestly, back when I did measure pH religiously, I still only adjusted on subsequent batches instead of trying to fix it mid-mash.
I adjusted the water in the HLT. The salts were 1 tsp. combined so from what I’m hearing sounds like it should be fine. Thanks.
I would bet so.
Ya’ll who use tsp’s to measure water salts are cray-cray!
Yeah, gotta measure in weight, for sure. I’m pretty OCD about it.
That’s something I learned from watching Alton Brown years ago. Liquids can be measured with volume, anything else weight is the better option.
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I used to measure in teaspoons as well…it’s so simple. I always went off AJ DeLange’s guideline, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but agree that it’s always better to measure by weight.
You can add the salts to the beer in primary. Sulfate is generally beneficial to the flavor of IPA. Calcium is beneficial for yeast health. Better late than never.
Malt provides all the Ca the yeast need. No need to add to water, but if you want your ales to clear in reasonable time, adding Ca is a good idea. Excessive Ca in water can harm lager yeast performance.
Adding salts after the mash is OK. You typically need some salts in your wort to aid flavor. I’ve had bland beers that didn’t have salts in the water.