[HopDen]

I'm a little confused here. I just recently started to adjust my water. I start with RO and use Beersmith3 to formulate. So here is the water adjustment for a Baltic Porter.

Mash:30.02 g Calcium Chloride
         15.74g  Salt
         9.42g Calcium Sulfate
         8.79g MgSO4
         4.68g Chalk
         2.13g Baking Soda
Sparge: 17.88gCalcium Chloride
             9.37g Salt
             5.61g Calcium Sulfate
             5.23 MgSO4
             2.79g Chalk
             1.27 Baking Soda

Targets:


Ca:75.4
Mg:5.3 (Missed target by minimum of 4.7) (10-40)
Na:63.7
SO4:53.4
CL:169.6
HCO3:26.7
Alkalinity;21.9
Effective Hardness:57
RA:-35.10 as CaCO3
SO4/CL:0.3
SO4/CL balance: Ex. Malty

 RO pH:7.2
 Mash pH: 5.56 @15mins.

My questions are these: 1) Are these addition redundant?
                                   2) Can I hit my targets W/O all of these additions?
                                   3) What, if anything am I doing incorrectly?
                                   4) Where can I make improvements?

[Robert]

What are the volumes?  Those look like enormous amounts of salts unless it's something like 40 gallons of mash water or something like that.  Without knowing how much water you're treating we can't really help.
 
Also, you normally don't want to add alkalinity to the sparge, only the mash.

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[HopDen]

Yes, thats definitely needed. 21.5 gals of strike water with an estimated absorption of just under 8gallons. Enough sparge water to make 25 gallon boil.

[Robert]

I did some quick calculations and came up with: 

Ca 122
Mg 10
Na 107
SO4 103
Cl 282
HCO3 145

RA 8
SO4/Cl 0.3

(I didn't work out pH with your grain bill.  Because you didn't include one.)

So yeah, some things are off, hopefully I or someone here can take time to troubleshoot this.  (Hopefully Martin will reply!) 

One more point that can't be stressed too much.  Chalk is completely useless.   It should never be used in brewing.  It will never dissolve and contribute the alkalinity or calcium desired; this is not procedure,  it's the laws of physics and chemistry.   For some reason calculators still include a place  for it, but you really need to use either picking lime or more baking soda in its place.

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[HopDen]

Thanks Robert. I did not know that about chalk additions. I'm sure I need to study up on my chemistry and delve into Beersmith a bit deeper.

[Robert]

I also think I was a gallon off on your volume but we're in the ballpark at least, it shows where things are really off.  You can never go wrong reading the Water Knowledge page on Martin's Bru'n Water site, even if you use BS instead of his sheet.  Best primer on water out there right now.

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[BrewBama]

You can get chalk to dissolve in water but it takes CO2 to do it. Just for giggles I did it and it works. ...but a PITA when I can simply add pickling lime I picked up in the Walmart canning section.

Instructions: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Building_brewing_water_with_dissolved_chalk


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[Robert]

As I recall Martin has mentioned that even if you get it to dissolve with such a method, it is not stably dissociated and so not reliable.  And yeah, pickling lime at Wal Mart, no brainer.

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[goose]

One more point that can't be stressed too much.  Chalk is completely useless.   It should never be used in brewing.  It will never dissolve and contribute the alkalinity or calcium desired; this is not procedure,  it's the laws of physics and chemistry.   For some reason calculators still include a place  for it, but you really need to use either picking lime or more baking soda in its place.

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Totally agree with Rob on this one.  Getting chalk to dissolve is almost impossible unless you use Brewbama's approach.  I went to pickling lime (calcium hydroxide) a few years back and it is much easier to get into solution and works in the same way to increase pH in the mash.

One thing you might want to consider which I have been doing is to treat the mash liquor as you are doing but recalculate and add the additional salts to the kettle.  You will want to leave out the baking soda and pickling lime for the kettle addition.  Just calculate the difference between your mash liquor and the full kettle volume and add the rest of the salts there (i.e if you have 7 gals. of mash liquor and are shooting for 13 gals. of kettle volume, you will calculate the extra salt additions for 6 gals. and dump them in the kettle).  The only thing I have been putting in my sparge liquor, which is RO water, is phosphoric acid to get the pH between 5.2 and 5.6 (at room temperature).

I am sure that Martin will weigh in on this as well.

[goose]

One other thing I forgot to mention, don't worry too much about the concentration of magnesium (Mg).  What you have there is probably about right.

Post your grain bill and I will play with it in Bru'n water with your desired profile (it will be after Xmas though, as I will be out of town for a few days).  FYI, I make a Baltic Porter just about every year and have used the London Water (boiled) profile which works pretty well for me.  It only has 6 ppm of Mg.

[mabrungard]

As mentioned, chalk is not very useful for brewing use since it takes extraordinary measures to get it to dissolve fully. Pickling lime and baking soda are more effective at adding alkalinity to mashing water.

One thing that alarms me with the OPs post is that it shows them adding alkalinity-increasing minerals to the mashing AND sparging water. I'm hoping that this was just an oversight by the OP. Sparging water should always have low or no alkalinity. If BS3 is making that recommendation, then shame on them for reducing the quality of subsequent beers for their users.

While some think that a big malty Porter needs a lot of chloride in the water, its not necessarily true. The OPs original water quality is pretty high in chloride and could end up with minerally tasting beer. That's OK if that's your goal. An important take-away from this discussion is that an extra malty chloride/sulfate ratio does not make your resulting beer maltier. Malt and the lack of bittering are what make beer malty. That is the reason why you no longer see me using terms like Malty or Bitter for the chloride/sulfate ratio. Those terms are FALSE.  Substituting the terms Full and Dry are more descriptive of the effects of chloride and sulfate.

If I were making this B Porter, I wouldn't go above 150 ppm chloride. The other concentrations are OK. The 50 plus ppm sulfate is OK too. Sulfate could actually be higher since having a somewhat drying finish in a big malty beer is actually helpful for the overall perception. To illustrate this, brewers should understand that Russian Imperial Stouts were largely brewed in Burton with their high sulfate content water. They were big and malty, but finished dry. That invites the drinker to take another sip. 

[HopDen]

One other thing I forgot to mention, don't worry too much about the concentration of magnesium (Mg).  What you have there is probably about right.

Post your grain bill and I will play with it in Bru'n water with your desired profile (it will be after Xmas though, as I will be out of town for a few days).  FYI, I make a Baltic Porter just about every year and have used the London Water (boiled) profile which works pretty well for me.  It only has 6 ppm of Mg.

Here is my grain bill: 20lbs Yarian Quality Malts Munich 6.7 SRM (local)
                               20lbs Yarian Quality Malts Pale Malt 2.8SRM
                               20lbs Yarian Quality Malts Vienna 3.0 SRM
                               6lbs C-120
                               10oz Dingimans BlackPrinz 550 SRM
                               10oz Chocolate Malt 350 SRM

I mashed in @ 148 for 20 minutes then raised to 156 for 1 hour. Recirculating mash.

Thanks for the input!

[denny]

An important take-away from this discussion is that an extra malty chloride/sulfate ratio does not make your resulting beer maltier. Malt and the lack of bittering are what make beer malty. That is the reason why you no longer see me using terms like Malty or Bitter for the chloride/sulfate ratio. Those terms are FALSE.  Substituting the terms Full and Dry are more descriptive of the effects of chloride and sulfate.

Martin makes such am important point here that it bears emphasis.  I see too many brewers thinking that they can control this with water, when recipe design is the first thing to look at.

[HopDen]

As mentioned, chalk is not very useful for brewing use since it takes extraordinary measures to get it to dissolve fully. Pickling lime and baking soda are more effective at adding alkalinity to mashing water.

One thing that alarms me with the OPs post is that it shows them adding alkalinity-increasing minerals to the mashing AND sparging water. I'm hoping that this was just an oversight by the OP. Sparging water should always have low or no alkalinity. If BS3 is making that recommendation, then shame on them for reducing the quality of subsequent beers for their users.

While some think that a big malty Porter needs a lot of chloride in the water, its not necessarily true. The OPs original water quality is pretty high in chloride and could end up with minerally tasting beer. That's OK if that's your goal. An important take-away from this discussion is that an extra malty chloride/sulfate ratio does not make your resulting beer maltier. Malt and the lack of bittering are what make beer malty. That is the reason why you no longer see me using terms like Malty or Bitter for the chloride/sulfate ratio. Those terms are FALSE.  Substituting the terms Full and Dry are more descriptive of the effects of chloride and sulfate.

If I were making this B Porter, I wouldn't go above 150 ppm chloride. The other concentrations are OK. The 50 plus ppm sulfate is OK too. Sulfate could actually be higher since having a somewhat drying finish in a big malty beer is actually helpful for the overall perception. To illustrate this, brewers should understand that Russian Imperial Stouts were largely brewed in Burton with their high sulfate content water. They were big and malty, but finished dry. That invites the drinker to take another sip.

Martin,
I followed BS3 to the letter. Even as I was weighing the mineral additions I was questioning the rational. With that being said, I am still trying to understand the chemistry when adding salts to brewing water. Trust me, it is difficult as many will agree. I may have to use "another" water calculator.

I appreciate your input, your posts are always informative.

[mabrungard]

OH! Well that is a sad finding with BS3. I hope that Brad Smith corrects that oversight.