Water Chemistry Adjustments

[Savage06]

I am going to be brewing a saison and looking to pay a bit closer to water chemistry adjustments to really dial in what I want

I live in NYC and the water profile is a bit low in certain ion counts according to the brewer's friend and EZ water calculators it recommends 7g of Gypsum to be added and based on my grain bill 3ml of Lactic acid 88% to bring the mash ph down.

The only adjustments I use is I crush and add a campden tablet to my mash and sparge water 50% to each roughly to eliminate any residual chlorine as I don't have a quality filtering system yet and running close to 8 gallons of a water through a pur filter is painful to say the least.

So I am guessing the process would be to hit the strike temp of the water mash in wait 5 mins take a ph reading and add the lactic acid if needed.

My real confusion is when to add the gypsum, should I split it between the mash and sparge or add it to the boil? Ideally I want to pull out a bit more clean bittering from the hops.

Does this sound about right? Anybody do it differently?

 

[hnycrk]

When I add gypsum I add it to my mash water just before adding the grain. If the calculator tells me to add salts to the sparge water, I usually add it to the boil. Here lately I've been adding all my salts to the mash. Hope this helps some.

 

[Kremlock]

I've only started doing salt additions and I always add gypsum to the mash

 

[MrHadack]

I use the Bru'n Water spreadsheet to calculate additions separately for the mash and sparge water. I typically toss in any additions while heating the mash water so that they dissolve completely. Then, after I start my mash, I add the additions to the sparge water when I start heating it and take a pH reading of the sparge water.

The reason I make the additions to the sparge water itself and not in the boil like hnycrk does is because sparge water pH is most important when it comes to making sure you don't extract tannin from the grain during the process. I typically use my additions to modify pH to a certain degree. You want your sparge water to be under 6 pH (I usually shoot for about 5.7 pH) to prevent tannin extraction. If my additions aren't enough to do it, I typically use lactic acid 88% to get it the rest of the way.

I'm curious, though-- what are you shooting for with regard to PPM of sulfates? Is the 7g of gypsum total for all the water you are using?

 

[Savage06]

Well NYC Muni water is very low latest report has Ca at 13ppm and Sulfite at 12ppm most targets for a saison shoot for the neighborhood of 100 ppm and up the Ca at 50+ according to the calculators I have seen 7g seems to get it there.

I use the Bru'n Water spreadsheet to calculate additions separately for the mash and sparge water. I typically toss in any additions while heating the mash water so that they dissolve completely. Then, after I start my mash, I add the additions to the sparge water when I start heating it and take a pH reading of the sparge water.

The reason I make the additions to the sparge water itself and not in the boil like hnycrk does is because sparge water pH is most important when it comes to making sure you don't extract tannin from the grain during the process. I typically use my additions to modify pH to a certain degree. You want your sparge water to be under 6 pH (I usually shoot for about 5.7 pH) to prevent tannin extraction. If my additions aren't enough to do it, I typically use lactic acid 88% to get it the rest of the way.

I'm curious, though-- what are you shooting for with regard to PPM of sulfates? Is the 7g of gypsum total for all the water you are using?

 

[Savage06]

yes 7g is the total for the mash and sparge water combined.

Starting Water Profile (Post Gypsum addition):
Ca ppm-58.9
Mg ppm-4
Na ppm-11
Cl ppm-21
SO4 ppm-122
CaCO3 ppm-29

Volume (gallons): Mas-3.86, Sparge-5.52

 

[adixon3]

I would add it to the mash

 

[MrHadack]

Yeah, the water profile looks good the way you calculated it.

Personally, I would break up the additions separately for mash and sparge to ensure the pH of each are on target. But as long as you hit the mash pH in the right ballpark, and the sparge water is under 6, you should be perfectly fine.

Good luck with it!