To get me even close to 140 ppm calcium and 300 pm sulfate I have to use 1.58 g/gal of gypsum and .33 g/gal of calcium choloride. I have only treated my water two time before which were not pale ales. I assume I gotta go with what the spreadsheet says but just wanted to confirm.
I am wondering if I should go with the yellow bitter profile instead? I am afraid…help
If you’re using Bru’nwater, be sure to use the Pale Ale profile for epsom too. Being magnesium sulfate, you’ll get sulfate without the excess Ca. I like between 200-250 sulfate for APA, 250-300 sulfate for AIPA.
EDIT - Be sure not to go over Martin’s Mg numbers on the profile. Better to be high on Ca than Mg.
The numbers above get me to 139.3 ppm ca and 267.5 sulfate. I am not adding any mg so that is staying at 4.5 ppm. I think I am going to back the sulfate down closer to 200. Thanks for your help.
I think you’re fine on both counts. I’ve hit those numbers many times and made great beer. But a lot of good brewers swear by using small amounts of Mg and Na as ‘flavor enhancers’ (aside from using epsom to reduce excess Ca) and I’ve been doing it for awhile with pretty solid results too.
Yeah I will need to play around more as I move forward. Right now I mainly concerned with getting more calcium, sulfate, and chloride. A big work in progress…
Yeah, with a beer like this you’re gonna get your Ca and then some easily though. You need 50ppm Ca for ales, but not an infinite amount. Good luck, man.
EDIT - Yeah, water is a work in progress (fine tuning it anyway). Makes a big difference though !
Went with 1.13 g/gal of gypsum and 0.33 g/gal of calcium chloride to get me up to 200 ppm for sulfate and about 110 for calcium. I made no other adjustments. Bru’n Water is telling me that my existing water would have a mash pH of 5.7 and the adjustments drop it to 5.5. I do not have a pH meter yet…
This was my 3rd time brewing this recipe and my efficiency jumped from 64% up to 74%! My APA just jumped from 5.4% ABV to over 6.0%. I moved a hop addition up a few minutes to get a few more IBUs.
My efficiency has steadily been dropping over the last year. I hope that I can stick around this number for future batches. I milled the grains at my LHBS then again at home. The crush was very fine. So between that and my water adjustments I am not sure which explains the big bump in efficiency. Normally my crush looks pretty good so I think it has to do more with the water?
Thanks again for all of your help! It’s hard for me to plan for my next batch now since I am not sure what my efficiency will be. Guess I will split the difference between what I got today and what I have been getting the last few batches.