Bru'n Water Sparge Addition clarification

[HopHead73]

I've read and listened to Palmer talk about brewing water as much as I can lately. One thing I hear him talk about a lot is making your water profile consistent throughout the brewing process.
I usually use his spreadsheet, but I started to look at some other ones and I like Bru'n Water, but am slightly confused.
According to Palmer he says that one thing to do is calculate your minerals to achieve the proper Ph for your mash. Then take that same mineral additions scale them from the mash water volume to the sparge water volume collected and add it to the kettle.
So now the water used in the mash and the sparge collected in the kettle all have the same mineral profile.

Bru'n however seems to say you shouldn't add certain minerals to the sparge.
But, what if you don't add them to the sparge, but you add them to the kettle?
Should you still do this calculation like Palmer suggests or ignore adding minerals such as chalk to the kettle and only add ones such as gypsum if needed?

Also, has anyone done what Gordon Strong does and add the crystal and roasted grains to the sparge and not the mash?
I'm brewing his Robust Porter recipe this weekend and I'm assuming I should do two different spreadsheets? One with just the mash grains to calculate that addition and then a second spreadsheet with the dark grains added to it to calculate the sparge/kettle addition?

 

[doug293cz]

There's never a good reason to add anything that will raise pH to the sparge water, and those are the items that Bru'nWater says are "not recommended" for the sparge. You want to make sure your sparge water is less than 5.8 pH in order to avoid raising the pH too much during the sparge and extracting tannins.

If you are not going to add the crystal/roast malts to the mash, then you definitely need to calculate your mash pH without them. Otherwise you could end up with a high mash pH, which is not a good thing.

Brew on

 

[HopHead73]

Ok, I keep going over the two separate spreadsheets for my Robust Porter mash and sparge addition.
The mash additions I just calculated for my mash of 2-Row Brewers and Marris Otter to reach a mash Ph around 5.3.
I'm adding 2.5g of gypsum in my mash.
When I put in the sparge spreadsheet with the crystal/roasted grains, I'm assuming just put in the same gypsum gram/gallon addition for the sparge adition to keep the same water profile with the sulfates and calcium and use the lactic acid amount for them sparge acidification tab and roll?

 

[mabrungard]

The only minerals not added to both the mashing and sparging water are: chalk, lime, or baking soda. Those minerals are only added to the mash to add alkalinity to avoid an overly low mash pH. Sparging water should always have low alkalinity and it would be counterproductive to add those minerals to sparging water. While I do generally advocate having the same mineral content in both the mashing and sparging water, its not a requirement.

Please understand that Gordon Strong uses only RO water for his brewing. It has very low alkalinity. That technique of reserving roast and crystal malts from the main mash is employed to help avoid the mash pH dropping too low. That is a good thing to strive for. However, when those malts are added at the end of the mash, the resulting wort pH will fall. In some cases, the pH drop can be excessive and the beer will suffer. While his technique solves one problem, it is not a cure-all. Sometimes, using mashing water with the proper amount of alkalinity is going to produce a far better beer than with his technique.

 

[HopHead73]

Thank you Martin for clearing that up!
That is one point that Gordon does not go over very well in his book. He just states that he adds them to the sparge to keep the harshness down.

I did his crystal/roasted malts in the sparge technique for his Honey Brown Ale and it came out great.
But for this batch I will try adding all to the mash and using your spreadsheets adjustments to reach proper Ph.

Thanks for making a great tool for all of us!
Cheers

 

[twistyboy]

this is easier to use :

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/

 

[bob1852]

You want to make sure your sparge water is less than 5.8 pH in order to avoid raising the pH too much during the sparge and extracting tannins.

Minor point of clarification:

You want your sparge water to be very low in alkalinity so that your mash pH doesn't creep up above ~6.

Distilled or RO water is going to often have a pH of more than 5.8, but because the alkalinity is practically zero, it doesn't raise the mash pH much during the sparge.

 

[doug293cz]

Minor point of clarification:

You want your sparge water to be very low in alkalinity so that your mash pH doesn't creep up above ~6.

Distilled or RO water is going to often have a pH of more than 5.8, but because the alkalinity is practically zero, it doesn't raise the mash pH much during the sparge.

True, if your source water is low alkalinity then you don't have to worry about using it unmodified for sparging.

Brew on