Why is Beer Smith giving me a water profile so far off?

[rkhanso]

I'm trying out the Beer Smith 3 software. I've put in a double-batch recipe for Yoopers Oatmeal Stout.

I'm trying to get the same water profile that Yooper put in his recipe, but Beer Smith gives me numbers that are pretty far off. I'm starting out with RO water from the local grocery store.

Yoopers numbers are:
Ca: 84
Mg: 26
Na 9
SO4 45
Cl 62
HCO3 228

I entered those in the target profile. But if you look at the Adjusted Water Profile, some items are close. Sodium is way off. There is no Mg.
Is this just the nature of starting out with RO water? Is Beer Smith not doing what I want or think it should be doing?

I also tried this in Brew Target and Brewers Friend. I got some very different beer profile outputs (SRM/IBU/ABV). I tried to make sure my equipment profiles in each software or website are the same.

This software and math stuff is making me more confused. I'm trying to gauge each 3 options of software (I also purchased the Bru 'N Water spreadsheet, and have tried BIABacus and EZ Water), trying to get a correct, repeatable workflow to get consistent results. It seems I'm getting further away from that goal.

 

[Upthewazzu]

I haven't used it, but everyone who has says it's wrong. Just use Bru'N Water.

 

[day_trippr]

OT heads up: Yooper ain't a "he"...

Cheers!

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I'm starting out with RO water from the local grocery store.

Yoopers numbers are:
Ca: 84
Mg: 26
Na 9
SO4 45
Cl 62
HCO3 228


This software and math stuff is making me more confused.

My recommendation is to pick the one that’s easy to learn and fun to use. Then stick with it. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

 

[rkhanso]

OT heads up: Yooper ain't a "he"...

Cheers!

My bad. Sorry about that.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Don't tell A.J. deLange that you added 15.6 grams of baking soda.

Some water profiles (and particularly those which originated from a mix of natural water sources and added minerals) are simply impossible to duplicate with the handful of minerals most likely to be available to homebrewers. All you can hope for is to get relatively close.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I haven't used it, but everyone who has says it's wrong. Just use Bru'N Water.

Not anymore! See link:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/brew-day-ph-results.654664/

BS3 wins at 23 min. into the mash, with MME in a close second place
MME wins at 55 and 90 min. into the mash, with BS3 in a close second place

 

[Oginme]

Looking at your profile, you are running into blocks when the program is trying to match your Sulfate and Chloride values along with the high Bicarbonate content. The program avoids using Calcium Bicarbonate due to the low solubility of that salt in water. So it does what it can when running a multi-variable optimization and picks which targets it can get close to while minimizing the error in the others. Given the limited salts the program has to work with, this is probably the closest least-square fit that you can get.

If you started out with Yooper's water, it would probably make the job easy, but you are using distilled and starting from scratch and it just can't get there from here.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

In most cases it simply isn't possible to exactly match with a small handful of minerals added to RO or distilled water what nature took hundreds to thousands (or more) years to accomplish. But there is more to it than that:

Someone can (and will) always come along and state that a certain water profile (which in reality for many to most cases they merely contrived out of thin air because to them it sounds nice) is ideal, but in the real world cations and anions must balance, so when you look at anyone's conception of an ideal water profile, always check it for its cation/anion balance. If it isn't reasonably well charge balanced, even nature itself could not possibly duplicate it.

And when you see various of city water profiles that are averaged readings, they almost never come close to being in balance for cations and anions. Nominal averages are not reality, and water must be real in order to exist, or to be duplicated.

 

[danielthemaniel]

Do you live in a hard water area? You're best best is to start with a tap water with a high bicarbonate.

 

[RPh_Guy]

All you need to do for matching a water profile is:

1. Add NaCl (table salt AKA sodium chloride) to match the sodium.
2. Add CaCl2 (calcium chloride) to finish matching the chloride.
3. Add CaSO3 (gypsum AKA calcium sulfate) to match the sulfate.
4. Add lactic acid or baking soda to target mash pH (5.5-5.6 in this case).

 

[Blazinlow86]

Not anymore! See link:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/brew-day-ph-results.654664/

BS3 wins at 23 min. into the mash, with MME in a close second place
MME wins at 55 and 90 min. into the mash, with BS3 in a close second place

Interesting I'm gonna give bs3 another try. I was always under the impression we needed to check and adjust as soon as possible due to conversion happening sooner. Would you say the 5.2-5.5 is what the mash should end up as. If so that would explain why it had seemed to be off so much. Cheers

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I just thought of a non chemical analogy to the need for cation/anion balance for "averaged" city water analytical reports.

In politics one often hears about "the will of the people", or other such nominalizations upon similar themes. What this generally means is that a polling organization has asked individuals a range of questions on a range of political subjects, and their individual answers (opinions) are then tallied up to fabricate what will subsequently be broadcast to be the "will of the people". But if one was to compare the polling results for "will of the people" against each and every "real" individuals answers/opinions for said poll, it may well be found to be the case that not a single real person polled is in full agreement with the contrived "will of the people". Consider real opinions to be individual cations and anions, and reported "average" city water analysis (that is almost certainly out of cation/anion balance) to be the fantasized "will of the people". There, wasn't that simple?

 

[jaymosbeershack]

I just swithed to "BrewFather app" from beer smith because of the water calculator. Then i realized i like almost every thing else about it better too.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Interesting I'm gonna give bs3 another try. I was always under the impression we needed to check and adjust as soon as possible due to conversion happening sooner. Would you say the 5.2-5.5 is what the mash should end up as. If so that would explain why it had seemed to be off so much. Cheers

I can only definitively answer that it sure would be nice to get hold of data from major breweries, to see how they look at this (or if they even do, in a unified sense). But until the issue is settled thereby, my opinion is that if the real and measured pH at the very end of the mash hits the software targeted mash pH, then the software that generated the means by which to accomplish this task was (for that particular recipes set of actual circumstances only) a winner.

I've recently changed my outlook on this pH matter upwardly as to what should be the software "targeted" ideal, and I now plan to target 5.4 to 5.6 pH (or in other words, set the software to a nominal 5.5 pH target) as measured at the completion of the mash step as the ideal. So in the end (and subject to hearing how the big boys of the brewing industry do this) my current opinion is that if a beer finishes mashing at between 5.4 and 5.6 pH (at the full completion of the mash step) it should be fine downstream and to your glass from at least a mash pH perspective. That does not mean that mash pH (by this measure, or any other) is the only perspective by which to judge a beer as likely to turn out "fine".

 

[Blazinlow86]

I can only definitively answer that it sure would be nice to get hold of data from major breweries, to see how they look at this (or if they even do, in a unified sense). But until the issue is settled thereby, my opinion is that if the real and measured pH at the very end of the mash hits the software targeted mash pH, then the software that generated the means by which to accomplish this task was (for that particular recipes set of actual circumstances only) a winner.

I've recently changed my outlook on this pH matter upwardly as to what should be the software "targeted" ideal, and I now plan to target 5.4 to 5.6 pH (or in other words, set the software to a nominal 5.5 pH target) as measured at the completion of the mash step as the ideal. So in the end (and subject to hearing how the big boys of the brewing industry do this) my current opinion is that if a beer finishes mashing at between 5.4 and 5.6 pH (at the full completion of the mash step) it should be fine downstream and to your glass from at least a mash pH perspective. That does not mean that mash pH (by this measure, or any other) is the only perspective by which to judge a beer as likely to turn out "fine".

Thanks for your reply. I'm gonna give the beersmith tool another try. Cheers

 

[rkhanso]

Do you live in a hard water area? You're best best is to start with a tap water with a high bicarbonate.

My water is very hard, but it's the alkalinity that makes it unusable.

I looked at the Brewfather website. It seems like it's trying to be like Brewers Friend. I'll check it out, but may likely try to tweak Brewtarget to get it dialed in. And use Brew 'N Water for water additions (again, if I can figure it out).

Thanks for all the input.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I took some time this morning to take a look at the comparisons. Here is what I found interesting.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/brew-day-ph-results.654664/#post-8377441

 

[rkhanso]

Question about Brew Target equipment numbers --
I'm double-checking my BIAB equipment setup in Brew Target because it seems off when compared to Brewsmith and Brewersfriend.com and biabcalculator.com website.

My system:
25 gal Al kettle
.6 gal/hr boil-off (I'm using one of the Boil Steam Condensers with the lid on during boil)
.125 kettle loss (I've hopped in a bag also, to reduce gunk in the boil)
.5 gal loss in my CFC (which I combine with my kettle loss to come up with .625 gal)
.08 gal/lb grain absorbtion
72% Brewhouse Efficiency (tried to set it the same on all programs/websites, where possible)


For a 2x size (11 gal) Yoopers Oatmeal Stout - here are what each one tells me is my pre-boil water volume:
Beersmith: 14.62 gal est.
Brewersfriend: 15.06 gal
biabcalculator: 13.99 gal
Brew Target: 12.5 gal

I've double-checked the numbers because some of the programs use gal/hr or gal/lb and some use qt/hr and qt/lb.

Brew Target comes up low on the OG/ABV, but a tiny bit high on the SRM/IBU numbers. The other programs come up pretty close to Yooper's numbers all around.

Does this mean I should just not use Brew Target and instead pay up for one of the other options?

 

[rkhanso]

I think I found some of the trouble in Brew Target. I didn't see an area for other losses - like the CFC and hoses or trub loss in the fermenter.
I upped the "Kettle to Fermenter" loss to .625 gal (.5 gal for the CFC and .125 for the boil kettle). Now I'm up to 12.225 gal for pre-boil volume.

I think I need to find the trub loss in the fermenter or if there's not a spot for it, to figure out where else to put it.

Here are a couple screenshots:

 

[rkhanso]

I saw one thing wrong...some of the grains are listed as "steeped" and when I changed them to "mashed", then the OG, ABV and IBU came in line a little better.

I still don't know where to put the trub loss into the fermenter numbers into Brew Target. And - if this would even correct the starting water volume problem.




And, just to give another place a try for water volumes - I put the numbers in Priceless Brewing website. But it has a place for fermenter/trub loss.