I am using Distilled Water since I live in LA and am planning to do an export stout. The guidance I have gotten for an export stout is given soft water to really not treat water unless my PH drops low and use baking soda for buffering otherwise not to worry. Any recommendations on treatment of water for a Single Infusion, batch sparge?
Grain bill and mash/sparge volumes?
14.5 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb Roasted Barley
8 oz Flaked Barley
8 oz Black Malt
8 oz Pale Chocolate Malt
5 oz Carafa III
39 ibus from EKG
Calculating a mash thickness of 1.7 qts to gallons, 7.4 gallons dough in, 3 or so gallons for sparge
With distilled I would go 4g Gypsum 2g CaCl in both the mash and the sparge. Doesn’t look like you need any acid to stay around 5.4 ph. But you might test the preboil (total volume) and see where it’s at if you want. I’d adjust it if needed, but I doubt you would. The salt additions put you at about 65ppm calcium and slightly on the hop accentuating side.
The acidity contributed by the dark grains most likely will result in a low mash pH and lead to harsh, acrid flavors. I usually target a pH of 5.6 for stouts to get a smooth, rounded flavor profile. I think Martin recommends pickling lime for this purpose rather than baking soda, but I forget the water chemistry reasons behind it.
Another approach is to hold off adding the dark grains until the sparge. That way they don’t affect the mash pH, but you still get the roasts aromas and flavors.
If you need to neutralize a large amount of acidity from the dark grains, baking soda will result in the Na reaching a high level and giving a salty taste. If one uses pickling lime the Ca introduced is pretty flavor neutral.
FWIW, if you use all RO like I do, the Na from baking soda doesn’t get excessively high in dark beers. I have a pretty roasty American stout on tap now and the finished Na level (from baking soda) was ~ 40ppm, well under Martin’s Brunwater limits. It’s a good beer. But I definitely wouldn’t want to use baking soda with any tap water, softened water, etc.
From what I read in Palmer and Kaminski’s “Water” book Calcium Hydroxide (pickling lime) is recommended over Calcium Carbonate (chalk) as a water treatment since the phosphates in the mash will react with the chalk and precipitate out as apatite reducing the effectiveness of the chalk’s effect on water alkalinity and the carbonate contribution. Martin can weight in a bit more on this as well. Plus, chalk is really hard to dissolve in water. (It becomes more soluble as the water temperature goes up but it is still a pain to work with). I changed my water profiles to use pickling lime with Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) in small amounts instead of chalk for the alkalinity and carbonate adjustments in my brewing water.
Agreed. With distilled and that grain bill, I think you need a couple grams of baking soda in the mash to get that pH up a little to smooth out the roast. And the added sodium will enhance the flava flave, too. That’s just me though.
That was you with the big clock around your neck, wasn’t it? 8)
My calculation showed he would need less than half a ml of lactic to reach 5.4 ph (basically none) so for 5.6 ph you’d need .6 grams baking soda per pound of grain. That might be too much saltiness might not. Depending on your taste threshold. Personally I’d go with 5.4 target, then adjust the ph in the final beer to taste.
Same here- never a salty beer been made. Easy to use with very predictable PH movement. Depending on the quality of
Your pickling line, may not easily or reliably work for you…I had this issue.
Yep. Just checked my stout profile in Brunwater - the one on tap now had a finished Na profile of 39ppm. Martin says in Brunwater to ‘keep Na under 100ppm for beers with high sulfate content, but that under 50ppm is best for most beers’. No saltiness whatsoever in my beers, or I wouldn’t use it.
I think it is pretty tough to get more than 50 ppm of Na in even a very dark, roasty beer. Even at 50, I doubt one would notice any salty-ness.
Exactly - my American stout is pretty roasty, so there’s a fair amount of acidity there (from crystal, too) to overcome. Zero issues.