Adding brewing salts

[LovesIPA]

Recently I've done some research on my water supply and what kinds of salts my water needs to brew better beer. I've determined that my water is too low in Ca, Mg, and SO4. I went out and bought Epsom salt (MgSO4), Gypsum (CaSO4) and calcium chloride.

I'm brewing an IPA today so I'm shooting for a high sulfate number (~300) without introducing too much Mg or Ca into the mash.

The first question I have is when figuring out the additions, do I calculate it based on the total amount of water used for mashing and sparging or just for mashing?

Thanks!

 

[EyePeeA]

Are you brewing an all-grain beer or partial mash? If partial mash, some residual minerals from the maltster's original brewing water will be leftover in the extract.

What are your starting water levels (pre-treatment):

Ca
Mg
Cl
S04
Na
Alkalinity
Hardness

High hardness (Ca + Mg) is good for IPAs. Some additional magnesium is created in the mash. I think you will be fine with just the gypsum, but you should tell us your values before we can offer more educated advice.

 

[Crashola]

Someone pointed me onto EZ Water to figure this kind of stuff out. http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/ But you need the water report from your water supplier to plug in the information at the top. Then you plug in the grain bill and it lets you tweak the water salt additions at the bottom to figure out what will work for you.

I have what should be very good brewing water here through our water system, but every batch I've brewed with it has a tangy finish that drives me crazy. So now I just stop at the supermarket and use their Glacier Water coin operated machines to get filtered, Reverse osmosis, etc. water. It's pretty cheap -- $.35 for a gallon or $1.75 for a five gallon pour. With that, I just enter 100% for the distilled/RO water at the top of EZ water and then tweak my salts at the bottom.