First time changing water for a APA

[scubahiker]

Hello all! I'm wanting to get into changing my water profile. My local county provided me the water break down for my area:

Calcium (ppm): 8
Magnesium (ppm): N/A
Total Alkalinity as CaCO3: 40.9
Sulfate (ppm): 38.2
Chloride (ppm): 12.9
Sodium (ppm): 35.8
Water pH: 7.8

So I took that into BeerSmiths water profile tool for my base water. Since BeerSmith doesn't take CaCO3, I used bru'n waters calculator to get HCO3 of 49.6. From there I found and tweaked Randy Moshers profile for pale ales. This is what I ended up with:

This is for a pale ale. Please let me know your thoughts, as this is all new to me I'm very much open to tweaking!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Beersmith is wise to not accept CaCO3. Unless you dissolve it in the presence of CO2 it most likely isn't going to dissolve, and rather it will merely drop out without contributing any carbonate or calcium.

For APA you will be looking to acidify and thereby remove alkalinity, so why would you be adding CaCO3 to raise the alkalinity in the first place?

 

[scubahiker]

So you are saying I should decrease my HCO3 to be at or lower than my base water profile of 49.6?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

So you are saying I should decrease my HCO3 to be at or lower than my base water profile of 49.6?

It really depends upon the full recipe and intended mineralization, along with a knowledge of your intended strike and sparge water quantities.

But what I'm mainly emphasizing is that unless you take extraneous measures, adding CaCO3 isn't very likely going to do your brewing session any of the good that you believe it will. Regardless of whether or not your intended "good" is truly good for the recipe or not.

 

[ajdelange]

Yet another victim of the archaic method for reporting alkalinity. "Total Alkalinity as CaCO3: 40.9" means is that 40.9/50 = .818 mEq of acid was required to bring the pH of your water to pH 4.5 (what your lab probably uses) and that's all they mean. The units reflect the amount of calcium carbonate that would have dissolved if the sample's pH were 8.4 and all the alkalinity came from limestone dissolved by carbonic acid. Now in this case that amount of calcium carbonate (40.9/ 100 = 0.409 mmol/L- 100 is the molecular weight of limestone) would contribute 0.409 mmol calcium which is 8.18 mg/L so your calcium does turn out to be close to what the CaCO3 number implies. 40.9 alkalinity as CaCO3 also implies also that 0.818 mmol carbo (.409 from the limestone and another 0.409 from CO2) dissolved. This would, at pH 8.4, distribute itself 98% bicarbonate (48.9 mg/L) and 1% each carbonic acid and carbonate ion. But you are at pH 7.8 and at that pH you would have 48 mg/L bicarbonate from alkalinity of 40.9 ppm "as CaCO3" assuming that no other source of alkalinity than carbo was present. Thus your particular case is close to the case where as CaCO3 and actual calcium and carbonate numbers correspond. But it in no way implies that there are 40.9 mg of calcium carbonate in your water. That much couldn't dissolve.

All that aside you say that BeerSmith doesn't 'take CaCO3' but the pane you have posted does show a field for alkalinity -ppm as CaCO3. Presumably you could put the alkalinity number from your supplier's report in there. But I am not at all sure what this page is supposed to do nor really what you are trying to do. As it is the page shows alkalinity of 63 and bicarbonate of 54.2. This is only possible at pH 6.44 which is well below the pH of your water and you haven't mentioned adding any acid thus something is wrong with the page as posted.

Are you trying to adjust your water to some particular ion profile? If that's the case let us know and we will tell you what salts and (if necessary) acids you should add. Or are you trying to calculate additions to the water such that mash pH comes out at a particular value?

 

[scubahiker]

Thanks all, I'll reiterate this is my first venture into changing my water profile. So thanks for the feedback as I wrap my mind around all this. My local water profile comes directly from the county, so its not something I sent off. I used BeerSmith to add this water profile. That is where it only asks for HCO3, which it then formulates the CaCO3 you saw.

What I'm trying to do is tweak my base water, from the county, for an American Pale Ale (would that be the ion profile?). The image is the end result I came up with for an APA. Based on that new water profile and grain bill, BeerSmith is saying mash ph will be 5.64. But that was contradictory to what I saw when plugging all this into Bru'n Water. That told me my mash ph would be 4.19... So somewhere I'm not plugging in the correct values. My grain bill is 8# Two Row, 1# Crystal Malt 10L, and .5# Carapils.

What do you recommend I do?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Using the mineralization profile as seen in your first post, I would accept the BeerSmith projected mash pH of 5.64 over a mash pH prediction of 4.19 any day of the week. For the latter I must presume you made data entry errors. The former sounds quite realistic.

 

[ajdelange]

You're going to get as many recommendations as Carter's got pills so let's start by seeing what you have. First off, your alkalinity is 40.9/50 = 0.818 mEq/L. Anything less than 1 is good, Alklalinity this low isn't going to do you much harm in terms of mash pH. With a grain bill like the one you have the mash pH will probably come out at around 5.6 which isn't too bad. You could very well turn out a pretty nice beer without doing anything to your water at all. But the result will probably be more pleasing if you do a couple of things. First, adding some chloride ion will make the beer rounder, fuller and mellower. A good level to start at might be 1/2 tsp calcium chloride per 5 gallons. This will get the chloride to a respectable level and also raise your rather low calcium number to the ballpark that many brewers are comfortable with.

Second, most people, given that this is an ale, would add some sulfate as ales are supposed to be made with water containing sulfate. I often suggest deferring this to a second brewing of the beer as some people prefer their ales low in sulfate. My suggestion is that you try it without first and then add some sulfate in the glass when tasting to see if you think the beer is improved. If you do then start experimenting with sulfate additions the next time you brew this beer. If you think you want to add some sulfate the first time about a half tsp per 5 gallons is a good place to start.

Finally, the beer will probably be more pleasing if you add a bit of acid to get the pH a couple of tenths lower. The easiest way to do this is to add 2% sauermalz to the grist.

Note that these recommendations were all made without calculation or reference to spreadsheets or calculators. Just starting out those are more likely to lead you astray than towards a better beer. As you gain experience they will become useful to you. For best results learn enough of the simple chemistry required to understand how they work and, more importantly, appreciate the kinds of errors they make. An example of this is the aforementioned conflict on the panel posted in No. 1 which shows, in the presence of a chalk addition (which you should never use) alkalinity and bicarbonate numbers which are not possible except at pH not possible with a carbonate addition. Ninety nine percent of what you need to know is in the Stickies in this forum.