Simple water question in Bru'n water

[oceanic_brew]

I'm having some troubles understanding the choice and amount of mineral additions in the mash VS the Sparge.

Before I started using Bru'n water I would add all my mineral additions to the mash. For the last 10 or so brews with this wonderful program I've followed the recommendations provided in the software that suggest saving some of these additions for the Sparge water.

I understand the reasoning for only targeting ion concentrations that affect PH in the mash but my problem came after playing around with the Sparge water volume cell....I just realized that there's a hole in my knowledge of water treatment.

I assumed that when you were targeting say 50 PPM calcium in a 5.5 gallon batch of beer that the finished beer would have 50 PPM calcium. But I noticed that when you increase the Sparge volume that the suggested ion concentrations increase as well.

This has me confused. I've never been totally clear on the recommendations of "treat for the total volume of water"

If I increase the Sparge to 10 gallons it tells me to put in a ridiculous amount of Calcium Chloride. Would this not end up in the finished beer even if you theoretically had very long boil down?

I'm getting ready to open a brewery and it has me a little terrified that somehow this has been lost on me this whole time.

Help me out

Thanks!

 

[mabrungard]

Umm, you're adding salts and acids in proportion to the volume of water to produce a specific set of ion concentrations. Increase the volume and the amount of salts and acid also will need to increase to produce that intended concentration.

Needless to say, don't increase the volume of mashing or sparging water any more than appropriate for the batch size and brewery practices.

 

[eric19312]

He Martin I’ve wondered about this same question and never seen it really addressed. Why don’t brewing water calculators consider boil off? An extended boil is going to concentrate minerals the same way it concentrates sugars. Perhaps at 5-10% boil off that might be typical pro rate maybe it doesn’t matter but I’ve seen homebrewers boil considerably more.

I deal with this in my head and shoot a little low in minerals if I’m planning a very long hard boil but curious why water calculators such as yours don’t adjust for expected boil off.

 

[mabrungard]

If we consider that virtually all beer is boiled and some degree of concentration is achieved, we can live with assessing how a beer is percieved by looking at its initial water ion concentrations. The problem is that some brewers do boil longer and harder and produce higher concentration of their wort. Its that scenario that throws a wrench in the works.

But it turns out that boiling longer and harder does damage wort and that leads to faster staling beer. We homebrewers have long been schooled to boil the heck out of our wort. Nobody ever told us that there is actually a downside to boiling too hard and too long. The professional journals and textbooks have actually provided proof of that damage for several decades now. Pro brewing systems have been focused on their energy efficiency and gentle wort handling since the 70's.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't boil most beers too hard or too long. Avoiding that will also mean that you won't alter your wort concentration too much. That is the solution, not trying to assess post-boil ion concentrations.

 

[oceanic_brew]

Ok that makes sense.

But just to be clear. If I'm doing a 90 minute boil I'm going to be adding more voiume to the Sparge water. This increases the suggested additions for the Sparge.

This will not affect the finished ion concentrations in a beer. Or it does and we just live with it?

As a little bit of a side note I make a raspberry triplebock. If you follow some recommendations for mash and Sparge water volumes you'd end up with a 3 hr boil. Not saying this is correct but if I use Sparge pal and with the massive grain bill in my triplebock if I follow the recommendations from sparge pal I'm left with a lot of sugars in the mash.

I'm assuming if I were to follow Bru'n water I should just account for a very low efficiency and up the grain bill to account for this. That way the Sparge water additions aren't out of whack?

 

[oceanic_brew]

Sparge Pal is just another online calculator BTW

I've read that commercial breweries usually accept a very low efficiency on massive beers. I suppose this is to deal with the potential massive Sparge volume to go with it.