High Gravity + dilluting post boil. Blending with tap water

[Smellyglove]

I'm looking into brewing high grav, then dillute the post boil wort with tap water into the fermentor.

I'm using Bru'n'Water. The only dillution option I can see is RO or Distilled.

Can I just adjust the parameters for distilled water in Bru'n'Water to contain the numbers which is in my tap-water? I see there are a lot of pitfalls here. Mash/post boil numbers.. But I must start somewhere.

 

[schokie]

That's how I brew. Gets me 10 gal batches with a 10 gallon mash tun and 10 gal brew kettle. Upper limit for OG with this method is about 1.060. I've gone higher by adding DME and/or sugar in the boil, but not much higher. If I want true high gravity beer I stick to 5 gal batches.

Math got a bit tricky first couple batches until I got a feel for it. For recipe planning purposes just pretend you're doing a 10 gal batch from the beginning with no dilution. I lie to Beersmith and tell it to do 10 gal math. I for Bru'n'water I put in my actual mash and sparge volumes as if I was just doing a 7gal batch. I've found their estimates of pH and gravity to be spot on, even with the eventual dilution.

I ignore the addition of tap water for pH and mineral content. The assumption is that your tap water is averagelishly decent. Since you're diluting post boil the mash chemistry won't be affected much. So the only effect will be the contributions of minerals in your tap water to the final flavor. If you don't like your tap water or are still worried about flavor changes, then just get a couple jugs of RO water from the store and dilute with that. My water is ok, so I don't also lazy.

 

[Smellyglove]

I'm not worried about the tap water. I'm more "worried" about the caso4/cacl contributions in the final beer. Maybe I should just add equal amount of those, as I added to the mash, just before flameout? In my head that would be at least somewhat correct?

Or? This is a great spot to toss out another question I have been wondering about but not found an answer to:

It's been told that some mineral additions are lost in the mash. But does mean only Ca, or the whole ion? CaCl /Caso4 etc?

 

[schokie]

I get what you're saying now. You bring up a good point. I do not adjust my water profile to account for top off water post boil. Perhaps I should. But no complaints so far.

Interesting to hear about mash effects on mineral profile. Are you saying the mash takes out all minerals? Haven't heard that one before. Consider me skeptical though.

 

[Smellyglove]

I get what you're saying now. You bring up a good point. I do not adjust my water profile to account for top off water post boil. Perhaps I should. But no complaints so far.

Interesting to hear about mash effects on mineral profile. Are you saying the mash takes out all minerals? Haven't heard that one before. Consider me skeptical though.

Not all of them. It takes some googling around to find what I mentioned. But if you start with "salts lost in mash", or something like that, you should find some posts stating this, and there's also a podcast which I believe was a masterbrewers-podcast about water or something, where one of the speakers said that some percentage of the minerals doesn't make it into the boil kettle. It was a female speaker, so you can look for a female name looking for that particular podcast. However, I've googled my eyes out. I have not figured out if it's just calcium ions which are "lost", due to at least Ca drops out when it reacts with phosphates in the mash (phosphates, correct? or no?), or if it's the whole ion. Like does the chlorides and so4's make it to the boil kettle?

However. I have a new questen. I've scaled an upcoming batch for high grav in BS. After dillution the estimated OG is right where it should be. But, it calculates it to be way darker than the non high grav beer. Why is this? I guess it might be due to maillard-reactions? a higher gravity wort contains more sugars. Maillard is a reaction between amino acids and sugars, afaik.

 

[ajdelange]

Kolbach's original observation was that 3.5 mEq Ca present in mash liquor led to the release of 1 mEq protons via precipitation of phjosphate. Assuming that the precipitate is 100% hydroxyl appatite, 10Ca++ + 6H2PO4- + 2H20 ---> C10(PO4)6(OH)2, + 14H+, each mEq protons released implies the precipitation of 20/14 = 1.42857 mEq of calcium which is
100*1.42857/3.5 = 40.8163 % of the calcium originally present. Not all calcium precipitated is precipitated by phosphate. Some is precipitated with proteins but this is more likely to happen in the kettle and we must note that Kohlbach's observation was at the conclusion of the boil but as the concern here seems to be about calcium carry over to the beer this theoretical value should be of some interest.

Kolbach noted that 7 mEq of magnesium ions also released 1 mEq of protons. Without knowing what the chemistry of magnesium precipitation is we can only assume that each mEq of H+ would require the precipitation something between 1 and 2 mEq calcium. Using the same value (1.43) as for calcium we would then find that 100*1.42857/7 = 20.41 % of the magnesium was lost to the boil.

Also keep in mind that malts contain a fair amount of calcium and lots of magnesium some of which will be released into the wort as ions.

 

[Smellyglove]

Kolbach's original observation was that 3.5 mEq Ca present in mash liquor led to the release of 1 mEq protons via precipitation of phjosphate. Assuming that the precipitate is 100% hydroxyl appatite, 10Ca++ + 6H2PO4- + 2H20 ---> C10(PO4)6(OH)2, + 14H+, each mEq protons released implies the precipitation of 20/14 = 1.42857 mEq of calcium which is
100*1.42857/3.5 = 40.8163 % of the calcium originally present. Not all calcium precipitated is precipitated by phosphate. Some is precipitated with proteins but this is more likely to happen in the kettle and we must note that Kohlbach's observation was at the conclusion of the boil but as the concern here seems to be about calcium carry over to the beer this theoretical value should be of some interest.

Kolbach noted that 7 mEq of magnesium ions also released 1 mEq of protons. Without knowing what the chemistry of magnesium precipitation is we can only assume that each mEq of H+ would require the precipitation something between 1 and 2 mEq calcium. Using the same value (1.43) as for calcium we would then find that 100*1.42857/7 = 20.41 % of the magnesium was lost to the boil.

Also keep in mind that malts contain a fair amount of calcium and lots of magnesium some of which will be released into the wort as ions.

I highly appreciate your answer, but.. Will that say that your calculation says that 40% of calcium is "lost" in the mash? This math and understanding of water is WAY beyond my level. I've read your post several times, and I will read it dozens of more times, but I'm mostly curious about if you add cacl, or caso, is it just the Ca which is "lost", does the chlrides and sulfates carry over to the boil without losses? The "mouthfeel"-things, do those carry over?

 

[ajdelange]

Let's suppose that we have used equimolar CaCl2 and CaSO4 as our calcium source and look at the precipitation equation again. We could rewrite it

5CaCl2 + 5CaSO4 + 6H2PO4- + 2H20 ---> C10(PO4)6(OH)2, + 14H+ + 10Cl- + 5SO4--

Thus the anions are not precipitated and are carried through to the beer.

 

[Smellyglove]

Let's suppose that we have used equimolar CaCl2 and CaSO4 as our calcium source and look at the precipitation equation again. We could rewrite it

5CaCl2 + 5CaSO4 + 6H2PO4- + 2H20 ---> C10(PO4)6(OH)2, + 14H+ + 10Cl- + 5SO4--

Thus the anions are not precipitated and are carried through to the beer.

Thanks!

 

[Smellyglove]

I'm sitting with my second high gravity.

I have a feeling that some of the body is lacking. I dilute with water before fermentation.

For example. This one. HG was a few point over on both OG and FG, seems a bit thin comparing to the original which was not HG, and was lower on both OG and FG. It's been a while since I tasted the original though, so I might be wrong. I feel like it's sort of just a nudge+ difference.

When I google most articles and experiences I come across is diluting post fermentation. And I can't seem to find any interesting about the body/mouth feel.

Anyone?

 

[Smellyglove]

I'm pulling this up again. I've found out this is a great way do make twice the volume of beer in "half" the time. But there are factors which are completely different comparing to doing a single batch, as I've experienced.

Anyone has a take on the following:

Mouthfeel
Bitterness
Color
Anything else?

I'm "researching" this myself, but if anyone is sitting on experiences which could give me a head start to some litterature to readt (googling), that would save me some time.