Water Profile in Imperial Stout

[Rob2010SS]

Working on an imperial stout recipe and I'm working on building the water profile in Bru'n Water. Given the grain bill, the mash pH is so low that it's taking an extreme amount of baking soda to bring it up, to the point that my Sodium PPM is through the roof at 217 and the bicarbonate level is at 576. I know bicarbonate isn't too critical, but the sodium is much higher than anticipated. (Disregard water volumes below, haven't changed those yet)

Do I change the grain bill to have less roast malts?
Is there something other than baking soda to bring up the mash pH to acceptable levels?

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

IIRC, I used pickling lime. Let me take a look...

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Yep, pickling lime. I also went a bit higher on pH than I do for IPAs because I read that it smooths out the beer.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Before the 13.3 grams of baking soda addition gave you a software calculated mash pH of 5.28, what was the software indicated mash pH?

 

[Rob2010SS]

Before the 13.3 grams of baking soda addition gave you a software calculated mash pH of 5.28, what was the software indicated mash pH?

3.68....

 

[Rob2010SS]

Yep, pickling lime. I also went a bit higher on pH than I do for IPAs because I read that it smooths out the beer.

View attachment 590062

Ok, so pickling lime. That helps, thank you! Never used it before. Where can you get it?

 

[Rob2010SS]

Bear with me as this is my 2nd imperial stout. Even with pickling lime though, the calcium, sodium, and bicarbonate are pretty high. Thoughts?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

3.68....

The lowest DI water mash pH of any of the individual ingredients in your grist is about 4.5, with that being for the 120L crystal. If you mashed 22.8 lbs. of straight 120L crystal in the presence of distilled water with zero added baking soda or any other minerals, the mash could not go below 4.5 pH. But most of your grist is 2-Row malt with a DI water pH of about 5.57 (or higher). So it doesn't seem possible for the overall mash pH to fall lower than some figure which falls between 5.57 and 4.5. Something is problematic here.

Looking at this another way, 13.3 grams of baking soda added to 4.42 gallons of mash water is something akin to roughly 473 ppm of alkalinity. The wildest "old school" high side estimates generally suggest a need for no more than 200 ppm alkalinity within the mash water for a strong stout. And A.J. deLange would potentially suggest far less than this level of alkalinity as the requirement for your grist and a mash pH target of 5.28.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Something is problematic here.
.

Any idea on what the problem is here?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Any idea on what the problem is here?

The software would be my guess. To get to the bottom of one potential problem area, try tossing a few different distilled mash water quantities at it (with no minerals or backing soda added), and see if the predicted mash pH floats up or down. Distilled water is not what is being mashed here. The grist is being mashed. Distilled water is merely an innocuous carrier, and its volume should not alter the mash pH outcome.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

The software would be my guess. To get to the bottom of one potential problem area, try tossing a few different distilled mash water quantities at it (with no minerals or backing soda added), and see if the predicted mash pH floats up or down. Distilled water is not what is being mashed here. The grist is being mashed. Distilled water is merely an innocuous carrier, and its volume should not alter the mash pH outcome.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying the total water volume shouldn't alter the mash pH or that the blend of distilled with some other water shouldn't alter the mash pH? Either way, that statement confuses me....

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Bear with me as this is my 2nd imperial stout. Even with pickling lime though, the calcium, sodium, and bicarbonate are pretty high. Thoughts?

View attachment 590068

Well, a big part of that is the gypsum. I left it out of my additions for that very reason.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Here's the grain bill that goes with that water adjustment screen capture I added above:

 

[Rob2010SS]

Alright... So if I pull out gypsum and calcium chloride and only use baking soda and pickling lime, it looks SOMEWHAT better. Should I be concerned about 553 bicarbonates?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying the total water volume shouldn't alter the mash pH or that the blend of distilled with some other water shouldn't alter the mash pH? Either way, that statement confuses me....

The issue here is primarily one wherein the overall acidity which the 22.8 Lb. grist has released into the otherwise neutral water (in lock step with the enzyme released sugars) is being reacted to a final pH of 5.28 via the addition of a fixed quantity (13.3 grams) of mildly caustic baking soda. In chemical reactions where one component is being reacted to a targeted pH point via the addition of another component in the presence of water as the carrier, DI or distilled water is specifically chosen as a carrier because in being neutral it does not interfere with the reactants. This entire matter is discussed in full in the late June of 2018 initiated "A thought experiment to test the general validity of available mash pH software" thread.

If there was alkalinity present, or calcium or magnesium, these would be additional reactants which would clearly enter into the overall reactions taking place and thereby alter the outcome accordingly (and in some cases dramatically) for the case of varying the volume of the mash water, but for this specific case the OP started with distilled water, and the only addition was baking soda. No initial alkalinity or mineralization is present within the mash water to alter the outcome for the case of varying the volume of the mash water.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

pH is a log base 10 scale. 3.68 pH is thereby 100 times more acidic than pH 5.68, which is close to the lowest presumed DI mash pH of the 2-Row in the OP's grist (wherein I presumed 5.57, but this can extend to pH 5.85 for many low Lovibond base malts, and particularly those classified as Pilsner base malts). pH 3.68 is also nearly 10 times more acidic than the presumed 4.5 pH of the single most acidic grist component present in the OP's recipe. My pH presumptions are derived from Briess lab data which I requested and subsequently received from them directly. Consider this seriously. The software in use here is applying leagues more acidity character to the innocuous mash water than it is to the acidic grist itself, either when considered individually or in overall sum total. Yet this water is distilled. Who among us believes that acid well above and beyond that which is present within the grist components suddenly appears magically out of nowhere, and manifests itself within distilled water when in the presence of said malted barley grains?

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I just looked at what I posted for water adjustment and it's showing a mash pH of 4.41 where it was showing 5.5 when I planned this. It shows an pre-water addition pH of 3.68.

The 5.5 was a previous version of Bru'n Water. I'm wondering if something's not right with this latest version....

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Here's a screen shot of the older version (I was off in my recollection of the pH a bit):

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

@mabrungard - Can you take a look at this thread? Are we doing something wrong?

 

[Rob2010SS]

Good call, getting the big guns involved!!

I thought maybe the version I had saved (v1.18) was corrupt or something so I tried to download the new version and it was not working at all. Had some weird arrows all over it that you couldn't do anything with and gave me an error about "circular references". See pic below for arrows... The form itself was not working at all. PH wasn't changing as I added different minerals and gave me a starting pH with the same grain bill of 5.7 I think.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

When it comes to brewing science, and the intricately detailed mathematics behind it, the only big gun brewing industry scientist who routinely participates on this forum is A.J. deLange, and in the extensive thread which I referenced above, and which discussed this matter in fine detail, he was in agreement with the gist of my position as regards distilled waters volume varying effect (or rather its substantially non effect) upon mash pH.

And in addition to this, A.J. has repeated his position many times over that stouts do not (when measured for mash pH, which he actually does) typically drive mash pH's anywhere near as low as the software in question says it does, and he often states that for 10% by weight of deep roasted malts there is zero need for baking soda, and for 20% there is minimal need for baking soda. A.J. is on record as stating that in general 10% deep roast containing stouts actually require a bit of acid added to the mash in order to hit a mash pH of 5.4. This is vastly different from adding 13.3 grams of baking soda and only as a consequence rising to 5.28 mash pH.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I can say this about Brun water. For the IPAs I've brewed and checked, it's been spot on. The stout listed above turned out fantastic. I didn't test the pH however.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I can say this about Brun water. For the IPAs I've brewed and checked, it's been spot on. The stout listed above turned out fantastic. I didn't test the pH however.

Did you in fact add the 13.3 grams of baking soda, or is this someone other than the OP that I'm responding to here?

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Did you in fact add the 13.3 grams of baking soda, or is this someone other than the OP that I'm responding to here?

That was someone else. Here's what I was seeing at the time. The grain bill is shared above.

 

[jerrylotto]

I don't have software but I did a manual calculation for a 5 gal batch and came up with these additions to distilled water:
1.8 g Calcium Carbonate (chalk)
1.0 g Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda)
0.2 g Calcium Sufate (Gypsum)
0.9 g Magnesium Sulfate (Epsom Salt)
1.0 g Calcium Chloride
2.0 ml Lactic Acid 88% soln - resulting pH 5.5

I would like to confirm my calculation but I was targeting this profile and should have achieved the second column:
ion ppm target ppm result
Ca 60 60
Mg 10 9.6
Na <20 14.4
Cl 38 33.6
SO4 47 45.2

 

[Dr_Jeff]

There is so much going on in a Russian Imperial Stout, that adjusting the water is the very last thing I would worry about even if one has "the worst water in the world."

 

[Rob2010SS]

There is so much going on in a Russian Imperial Stout, that adjusting the water is the very last thing I would worry about even if one has "the worst water in the world."

You have made an RIS without messing with your water? There's so much acidity there that you'd have to have some baking soda added to the mash or something to balance the pH.