Do you eschew the common teaching that Calcium balances Carbonate to reduce RA?
I follow the rule that 1 gram/gal Baking Soda contributes 189 ppm HCO3- and ~155 to RA, while 1 gram/gal Calcite contributes 158 ppm HCO3- and 106 ppm Ca++ so only ~55 to RA.
My usual recommendation for an Oatmeal Stout, depending on the base water, is a combination of Calcite and Baking Soda to get Ca++ and Na+ at least above 50 and some CaCl2 and/or NaCl to get the Cl- at least above 50. For distilled water I would probably try 1 gram/gal each Calcite and Baking Soda and 0.5 gram/gal CaCl2 in the mash to balance the mash pH with an RA of ~180 and contribute ~70 ppm Ca and ~175 ppm HCO3- to the final beer, then maybe 0.5-0.75 gram/gal NaCl in the sparge water to keep the Na+ and Cl- up around 70 ppm in the final beer.
[quote]When adding salts for flavor/“seasoning” purposes (as opposed to mash pH purposes), is there a reason not to simply toss them directly into the boil kettle, instead of adding them to the sparge water?
[/quote]
That’s what they did at Sierra Nevada when I was there. Not all salts in the mash/sparge will carry over to the kettle.
If you’re making a dark beer with soft water, you really don’t need to screw around with all the water salts. Mash your base malts normally and add the dark malts during the vorlauf. You aren’t really mashing the dark malts anyway. So if you don’t want them to mess with your mash pH, don’t put them in the mash.
Malzig brings up a good point that when adding chalk (calcite), the calcium does counter the effect of the carbonate. Unfortunately, the formulation that he used was incorrect.
While chalk does contribute 105.8 ppm Ca, it also provides 158.4 ppm of CO3 (not HCO3). The equivalent concentration of HCO3 is 322 ppm. 1 ppm of CO3 is equivalent to 2.033 ppm HCO3. Although the chemical formula for chalk (CaCO3) says that its supplying CO3 to the solution, at the pH of typical drinking water, all the CO3 is immediately converted to HCO3 in solution.
So, the alkalinity contribution is 264 ppm for 1 gm/gal chalk. Plugging that into the RA formula with the 105.8 ppm Calcium addition and the resulting INCREASE in RA is 188 ppm when adding chalk at 1 gm/gal. This compares to the 156 ppm RA increase that baking soda provides when added at a rate of 1 gm/gal.
Regarding the addition of flavor ions to the beer, there is no reason to add them to the mash or sparge water since they aren’t a large participant in the mash chemistry. Gordon brings up a good point that not all the ions will make it out of the mash into the wort kettle and adding the minerals directly to the wort kettle makes sure that they make it there. But that brings up another consideration. If the natural water from a major brewing center (ie. Burton, Dublin, Munich, etc) was used in their historic brewing context, then some of those ions that naturally exist in that water would not make it through to the wort. So, there might be some reason to add minerals to the mash and sparge water. I suppose there is the possibility that adding minerals could overdo the flavor effect, but its probably a small discrepancy. Just figured I’d through that out there.
Gordon brings up another good point regarding the addition of dark grains in a mash. I agree that if you’re dealing with low alkalinity water (not soft water as Gordon indicated) and would need alkalinity to keep the mash pH from dropping too low with a dark grist, then adding the dark grains at the vorlauf stage makes sense. I know that Gordon uses RO for his brewing, so he is very adept at this technique (his pile of brewing medals attests). I perform a relatively fast vorlauf at about 15 to 30 minutes and have never done dark grain additions that way. I wonder if that short of a contact time is sufficient to transfer the flavor and color contributions???
For the great number of brewers out there that DO NOT have low alkalinity water, recognize that you will NOT want to do the pale grain mash separately and add the dark grain at the vorlauf. You’ll want the dark grain in the mash the entire time to help take out that excessive alkalinity.
I don’t think that’s right. I assumed that Gordon’s point was that if you have mash water with (for example) 100 ppm Ca++ and sparge water with 0 ppm Ca++, your kettle will not have 100 ppm Ca++ in it. If both your mash and sparge water have 100 ppm calcium, then I don’t see how the kettle can end up with anything but 100 ppm calcium (allowing for small differences since the moisture in the malt itself might not be at 100 ppm calcium). Am I missing something here? ???
I don’t think that’s right. I assumed that Gordon’s point was that if you have mash water with (for example) 100 ppm Ca++ and sparge water with 0 ppm Ca++, your kettle will not have 100 ppm Ca++ in it. If both your mash and sparge water have 100 ppm calcium, then I don’t see how the kettle can end up with anything but 100 ppm calcium (allowing for small differences since the moisture in the malt itself might not be at 100 ppm calcium). Am I missing something here? ???
[/quote]
Okay. I see two questions: Mash and Sparge.
For the mash, the salts dissolve in the mash liquor. They can do this because the grains have acidified the water. The mashed grain absorbs some of the mash liquor. So clearly, regarding the mash, not all of the salts make it to the boil kettle. Do the grains absorb the salts one-for-one with the water they absorb? I don’t know. Somebody chime in if you do. If they do, then it makes sense that the ppm that make it into the kettle is the same as the ppm in the mash tun. That’s certainly my assumption.
For the sparge, if you add the salts to the HLT, the pH of the water will be too high to dissolve the salts and most will just sink to the bottom and sit there, hence, not making it into either the mash tun or the boil kettle.
I don’t know if that’s what Gordon had in mind, but it’s what I thought of when I read his comment.
That’s an awesome idea! You’re suggesting he just steep the specialty grains?
Ah, so if you are talking about individual ions then no, they won’t all make it. I was thinking in terms of ppm, which I think makes more sense if you’re talking about the base water.
Anyway . . .
Maybe for your water, but my tap water has very low mineral content and many salts dissolve very easily in it (at 7.9 pH according to Ward labs).
II know that carbonate chemistry in water in the presence of CO2 is complex, and I can’t claim to really understand it, so I’d be glad to see an explanation of that statement.
It would seem that if 1 ppm (1 mg/L) of 60 m.w. CO3– was dissolved completely in water, it could only result in 1.1 ppm (1.1 mg/L) of 61 m.w. HCO3-. I know that the chemistry of bicarbonate in water allows for atmospheric CO2 to become HCO3-, which I assume is the source of the additional 1 ppm of HCO3-.
When examined by Kai Troester, I believe (and again, I could be wrong) he found that the commonly used RA contribution of 55 by Calcite held in practice, unless the Calcite was forced into solution prior to the mash by high CO2 partial pressure. Is it possible that the solubilization of CaCO3 by acid in the mash, instead of by Carbonic Acid in water, results in 1 ppm CO3– producing approximately 1 ppm HCO3- and 55 increase in RA?
[quote]Quote from: mabrungard on Today at 10:22:48 AM
While chalk does contribute 105.8 ppm Ca, it also provides 158.4 ppm of CO3 (not HCO3). The equivalent concentration of HCO3 is 322 ppm. 1 ppm of CO3 is equivalent to 2.033 ppm HCO3. Although the chemical formula for chalk (CaCO3) says that its supplying CO3 to the solution, at the pH of typical drinking water, all the CO3 is immediately converted to HCO3 in solution.
II know that carbonate chemistry in water in the presence of CO2 is complex, and I can’t claim to really understand it, so I’d be glad to see an explanation of that statement.
[/quote]
Martin is referring to the concentration of CO3 expressed as an equivalent weight of HCO3 - this is the same concept as when you see on a water report your alkalinity expressed as “as CaCO3”. That refers to the total sum of all alkalinity in your water expressed as an equivalent weight of CaCO3 - this helps determine the electrical balance of cations and anions in a given sample of water.
To express the concentration of a substance as an equivalent amount of substance you first find the mg/L (or ppm - they are equivalent measurements) concentration of the substance for which you are attempting to express as an equivalent weight of another substance. For the example above the concentration of CO3 is 158.4.
Then you must find the equivalent weight of that substance, in the above case the substance is CO3. The equivalent weight of a substance can be derived by dividing a compound’s molar mass by the number of positive or negative electrical charges that result from the dissolution of that compound (or, more conveniently, just Google search, “Equivalent weight of x” and you can usually find it). In the case of CO3 the gram equivalent is 30.004 (roughly).
After finding the equivalent weight of the first substance you must find the equivalent weight of the substance in which you’d like to express the concentration of the first substance. In the case of HCO3 the equivalent weight is 61.016. Also, as an aside, CaCO3’s equivalent weight is 50 - in case anyone was wondering.
Once you have all of these numbers the math is fairly easy:
A mg/L * A equivalent weight/B equivalent weight = ppm of A as B
The above example works like this:
158.4ppm CO3 * (61.016/30.004)=322.121530462605 ppm CO3 as HCO3
As a practical anecdotal aside. I used to treat my water in the mash tun and the boil kettle exclusively. In the mash I’d add all the salts I’d need to get my calcium up (since, around here, we have zero calcium in our water) then, after taking a mash pH, I’d add acid or CaCO3 to get my pH in the right range. After that I’d add salts to the boil kettle to keep my Calcium ppm level where it was given the dilution. I was taught that you calculate ppm of calcium based on the total amount of mash water and then add calcium to the kettle to derive the same concentration of calcium based on the amount of additional sparge water you’ve used.
This method may be the right way to do it; however, I don’t use this method today. Now I treat all my brewing water in bulk before brew day. Then I adjust in my mash tun if need be.
You can build most water before brew day using most salts, the major exception being chalk. Water becomes saturated with Calcium Carbonate very easily check out the solubility chart here:
You can dissolve chalk in your brewing water for the purposes of authenticity or pH (IMO only if you’ve brewed the beer before or have done a test mash) pre-brew day, pre-mash using the process outlined here: Building brewing water with dissolved chalk - German brewing and more
However, outside of an attempt at pure authenticity, I don’t think I’d go to the trouble as you’d probably see the chalk fall right back out of solution as soon as you began to heat your water. If you’ve decided that you need to add Calcium Carbonate to your water it’s probably best to attempt to dissolve it in your mash using an amount appropriate to your total mash volume. My $.02 - worth about as much.
Tubercle tried to read all of this and fell over onto the floor shaking like a dog shitting persimmon seeds. Tubercle has made a lot of oatmeal stouts over the years but ain’t never went through all of this.
Tubercle just pours some hot water over some crushed grains, boils with hops, chills and pitches yeast. I mean like DAMN! Y’all need to get y’all a woman or something.
I don’t know. I kind of feel like I just watched the space shuttle launch. Awesome stuff! ;D
I really appreciate this stuff. I won’t remember it, or use it every day, but if somebody gives me an equation to use with no explanation I’m skeptical. If somebody can go through and explain why that’s the equation to use and where it comes from… that’s pure gold! 8)
I reached out to one of the brewer’s from a local brewery-Silver Moon. He taught the all-grain class I took. Great guy. Their brewery also won several medals at this year’s GABF. Here was his response to me:
Thanks. It was a huge victory for our little brewery.
It sounds to me like you’re thinking about amending your water to fit a particular water style. London perhaps for the oatmeal stout? One teaspoon of gypsum to the mash should get the water pH where it needs to be. One half teaspoon gypsum and one half teaspoon of calcium chloride added at 15 minutes remaining in the boil should get you close to where you want to be. Tom has this stuff at his shop.
You can add your dark grain at 45 minutes into a 60 minute mash to smooth the harsh dark malt flavors.
