Planning on using some pickling lime in a dark beer (black balanced brunwater profile) where im managing low sulfates and chloride levels, and therefore need a little bump to just calcium so using the pickling lime to add calcium and bump my PH up to 5.5.
besides the practice of adding pickling lime directly to the mash vs. the water as suggested, anything I should be aware of?
Unless you have a good scale, e.g., lab grade, the amount of pickling lime to add is probably beyond the ability of your scale or your eyeball to measure correctly. A little bit of pickling lime goes a long way so it would be preferable to add too little because you would still most likely be in the mash range then add too much which would likely push the pH too high.
Got a good gram scale that gets calibrated each use.
Use some in DI water and measure the effectiveness of it. Got some from the grocery that apparently was old and/or exposed too long to air. It was about half as effective. Used Brun Water to root cause the problem.
FWIW, I use baking soda to raise pH on the darkest of beers and stay with Na limits, using RO water.
EDIT - I see now what you’re getting at with the Ca, Ken. I’ve always gotten things to work out with baking soda, but no harm in using some PL either.
Do you calibrate the scale yourself? If so, what is the standard weights accuracy spec’d at?
Edit: 6mg. I calibrate .
Do you know the accuracy of the standard though?
You may be calibrating it before each use, but your scale can only be as accurate as the weight you compare it against.
the weight is ±6mg
That’s some pretty solid accuracy for consumer use. Assuming the standard is still within its calibration interval.
Yep. I can ignore some of the parameters for black balanced, but I’m trying something a little different. So figured I would give the pickling lime a shot as it’s the only way I can minimize chloride and sulfate and maintain 40-50ppm calcium.
Right and I think a little more sodium is good for dark beers. That’s what people are always afraid of when using baking soda, is too much sodium in the water profile. It’s really not an issue.
Yeah, the only issue I could see would be if you used your local water and it were somewhat high in Na. But using RO, I make my stouts pretty roasty and never hit 50ppm.
Good call. I thought about that after I posted, but thought you’d say something. My water is pretty good, so I don’t have to worry much about it, fortunately. A gram or so is usually all I need to raise the pH where I want it.
So I’m not worried about sodium either…baking soda is in my additions. Trying something different and keeping chloride and sulfate low and seeing if it produces less harsh and smooth dark beer. This requires a little calcium bump so would use
Pickling lime for that, and also to bring PH up to solid 5.5ish range.
quick update. I mashed in without pickling lime and got PH 5.28 vs 5.35 Bru’nwater (pretty good). I added the 1gr pickling lime and was projected to be 5.5PH (my target). I got to PH5.38. perhaps the pickling lime was not as strong or effective as it should be. I added some to distilled water and it read 11.5PH.
Anyway, I ended up adding more baking soda at this point since i knew the impact that would have, and got my mash to PH5.51. lowered a tad after sparge, so added more baking soda so I had PH5.5 in the kettle (final additions of baking soda only contributed about 30PPM sodium).
All in all good day and cant wait to see if the lower chloride and sulfates in conjunction with PH5.5 makes for a smoother dark beer.
FWIW, it was a great move using black balanced vs. brown balanced (lower sulfate and chloride) at 5.5PH. my porter is pretty darn smooth already in taste I took this morning. at 1.017 at 4 days, and looks to be pretty much done.
Another update for anyone interested. Before moving my porter to cold crash, I of course sampled and took gravity. Without question, this is the smoothest dark beer I have ever made. I think using the black balanced with lower sulfate and chloride and 5.5ish PH has made a huge difference. It reminds me of the smooth roasty character you get with Guinness, and then add in the porter attributes. I’m really looking forward to carbonating this one and sampling.
Ken, your result with lime is not a surprise. AJ DeLange did some testing with lime samples and found that it is often not as pure as we expect. In addition, lime can degrade into chalk in the presence of air moisture. Not exactly what we would hope for our brewing use.
Fortunately, baking soda potency is unaffected by moisture and it retains its alkalinity. As long as you don’t push the sodium content of your finished wort too high, baking soda is a pretty good choice for adding alkalinity. In addition, I find that sodium is a nice compliment to roast flavors.
Since we only add alkalinity to mashing water, sparging water ends up diluting the final sodlum content of the wort. The supporter’s version of Bru’n Water automatically calculates the final sodium of your wort when using baking soda in the mash. You can generally add a lot of alkalinity without pushing the sodium content too high.
Sounds great, man! I felt the same way when I bumped up to 5.5 and kept sulfate in check.