First time water chemisty/pH adjustment, a few questions.

[MistFM]

So I am brewing a Kolsch soon, and this will be the first time I've used Brewer's Friend, as well as the first time I've tried to measure pH and add brewing salts. Should I be trying to hit a pH of 5.4 or 5.2? I know it's all "close enough", but most threads I've seen on the homebrew forums try to aim for 5.2 for a Kolsch. Does it really matter?

I'm also adding 6.2 g of Calcium Chloride and 5.6 ml of lactic acid 88% to my mash for pH and to see if adding a bit of calcium will improve my yeast activity since my brewing water is super soft. Should I add this into the mash or should I add it to my entire batch of brewing water? Is this too much?

Thanks for the help!

 

[enkamania]

Add to the brewing water. The amounts of lactic and calcium chloride don't seem out of line.

 

[MistFM]

Add to the brewing water. The amounts of lactic and calcium chloride don't seem out of line.

Hmm, I thought you just throw it into the mash. Ok, so I separate my strike and sparge waters, should I just add all of my brewing salts to the strike/mash water and just sparge with my unmodified water?

 

[thehaze]

Some brewers do not treat their sparge water. I use the Grainfather, so I need to sparge to get my boil volume. Thus, I do treat my sparge water.

I use the Bru'nWater spreadsheet and it works well. I would say that for me and my process, the predicted amount of acid with Bru'nWater, to use for say a mash pH of 5.4, is usually lower than needed, but seeing the spreadsheet is only trying to aproximate, it actually works extremely well. I use a pH meter, which does make things much easier. So I've learnt to add a bit more acid than predicted to hit the correct pH.

I would say, yes, treat your sparge water as well.

 

[RPh_Guy]

From my understanding, if your water has alkalinity you need to treat the sparge water. The main reason why you wouldn't need to treat the sparge water is if using RO water.

I use tap water so I add salts to both the mash and sparge water per Bru'n Water.

On an early batch I over-sparged without treating the water... the result was a very harsh beer.