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HOMEBREW Digest #5682
HOMEBREW Digest #5682 Thu 20 May 2010
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
Agua ("A. J. deLange")
Na ("Darrell G. Leavitt")
Re: agua (mossview5)
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Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 23:51:15 -0400
From: "A. J. deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Agua
Can you brew with water from your softener? Yes, but the results are not
probably anything you would find desirable. As you can see from the
numbers you posted the typical home water softener replaces desirable
calcium and magnesium (desirable, but not to the extent calcium is) with
undesirable sodium. Calcium is desirable for many reasons but at issue
here is that the calcium reacts with malt phosphate to offset the
alkalinity of the water to some extent and thus prevent mash pH from
rising as high as it would if calcium were not present. Magnesium has
this same effect but is half as potent as calcium in this regard. Remove
the calcium and magnesium and you are completely at the mercy of the
alkalinity (bicarbonate). Now as you note Bohemian Pilsner is brewed
with very soft water i.e. water with no calcium or magnesium but it also
has no bicarbonate (alkalinity) to offset and thus you can brew a Boh
Pils with soft water without treatment and this would be the most
authentic way to make it. RO water is fine for this but will not, by
itself, give a mash pH as low as desired. Acid will be required to do
that. Continental lager breweries get acid from lactic acid bacteria
(found on the surface of malt corns and plenty of other surfaces as
well) which are used to ferment malt or wort thus producing,
respectively, sauermalz (acidulated malt) and sauergut. It is possible
to brew Pilsner without either of these and if neither is to be used
then calcium suplementation with the chloride is probably the best way
to go. The calcium, as mentioned above, reacts with malt phosphate to
produce hydrogen ions which offset, in this case, the natural alkalinity
of the malt itself (even distilled water has an alkalinity: 2.5 ppm as
CaCO3) in addition to aiding runoff, giving brighter wort, serving as a
cofactor for enzymes, precipitating oxalate... As to an amount, 1 tsp
per 5 gallons of the dihydrate should be fine. But for greatest
authenticity and (IMO) the best Pils, use just RO water blended with a
small portion of your tap water (say 10%) and rely on sauermalz to set
mash pH.
As for the water's pH - that matters very little. What is important is
the alkalinity. You don't say what that is but we can guess that it
would be about 120 or so depending on how much sulfate you have (and
yes, sulfate is generally undesirable in continental beers). That level
of alkalinity isn't terrible especially with the level of hardness you
have but if you brew with the straight water you would have to do
something about it (add acid or supplement calcium or both) for best
results.
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Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 07:06:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Darrell G. Leavitt" <leavitdg at plattsburgh.edu>
Subject: Na
Looks to me that your sodium is high, and should be closer to 5 or 6.
I am not sure how to reduce this, please let us know on HbD if you find out.
Darrell
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Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 18:01:18 -0400
From: mossview5 <mossview5 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: agua
Brewer Joe posed a question about using his water for Pilsner brewing.
As Joe pointed out, hard water does not make brewing a Pilsner impossible.
It only alters the taste perception. The Bohemian Pils is more delicate,
but the German Pils gets by with harder water. I've consulted for one of the
American mega brewers and have seen that their prefered brewing water
profile is about twice as hard as Pilsen water and they adjust the residual
alkalinity to about zero. This makes sense since Pilsen water is typically
considered too calcium-free for good yeast health and the low RA is in line
with brewing a pale beer. That brewer uses nanofiltration for their water
treatment since it does not strip out desirable ions to the degree that
reverse osmosis does and it is more efficient (energy and water usage)
than RO. I wish I could get a small nanofiltration system myself, but the
smallest units are going to set you back about $8000. No way can I
justify that cost for a homebrewer but it might be justifiable to a 30 bbl
brewer like Joe. I'd say that homebrewers with crappy water would just
have to put up with the cheap and inefficient home RO systems
(or they run out and buy water by the jug from someone).
The 175 ppm sodium concentration in Joe's softened water may be
perceptable to some, but most people will taste sodium when it exceeds
200 ppm. Its interesting that some people don't mind drinking high sodium
water. Hard water is endemic across much of the Midwest US. In fact, a
number of municipal water systems perform large-scale water softening
with ion-exchange. That means that every drop of water that their systems
produce are teaming with sodium. Locally, a water system has up to
250 ppm sodium in their water. I recently had an opinion article published in
the Indianapolis Star regarding this practice. You can read it here:
(I had to cut the address into 2 lines to comply with HBD's stupid line length
limit)
http://www.indystar.com/article/20100505/OPINION01/5050316/1002/OPINION/
The-hard-truth-Don-t-drink-the-soft-water
OK, enough pontificating about salt water softening. I think Joe would be
wise not to use his softened water for brewing. The sodium content that
he quotes is a bit too high for good yeast health and in conjunction with
any sulfate in the water, would probably create a significant harshness in
the flavor perception of a preferably delicate beer. 50 ppm is the typically
preferred upper limit for sodium and 100 ppm is generally an absolute
upper limit.
Unfortunately, Joe only provided the cationic content of his water.
The anionic content is also needed to be able to recommend a
good solution to his hardness concerns. The primary reason to
review the anionic content is to determine if the hardness that Joe
is dealing with is Temporary or Permanent. If it turns out that the
hardness is predominately temporary (high carbonates), then there
may be a cheap alternative for hardness reduction for Joe. In this
case, an Excess Lime treatment of his brewing water would be workable
and relatively cheap for this occassional Pilsner brewing. For the
Excess Lime treatment, pickling lime (aka slaked lime) is added to a
batch of water until the pH of the solution is raised to at least 11.
I've noted that there are references on the web that recommend that
you only raise the pH to between 9.5 and 10 for lime treatment.
There are several reasons why that is poor advice. The first is that
the degree of hardness reduction and remaining calcium varies with pH.
The second reason is that when the pH exceeds 10.5, you get the added
benefit of magnesium reduction. The third reason is that at very high pH,
there is a lower limit to which calcium and magnesium concentrations
can fall to and a brewer can rely on a relatively consistent calcium and
magnesium concentration in their finished water if they perform this
treatment process properly.
Brewers will need a large vessel to hold their entire mash and sparge
water volume. You will also need, pickling lime, a pH meter, and a
strong acid (preferably high strength phosphoric acid). Mix pickling lime
in the water until the 11 pH target is reached or slightly exceeded.
You must use a calibrated pH meter for this step. I would not rely on
pH strips. Allow the sediment in the water to settle out completely.
Decant the clear water off the sediment and place in another vessel.
Add strong acid until the pH is brought down to under 8.5. This may leave
the residual alkalinity a little too high for a pale beer, so the brewer should
be ready to add a little more acid if the room temperature pH of the mash
does not drop into the prefered range of 5.5 to 5.8. The sparge water
should be acidified to a room temperature pH between 5.5 and 6.0.
This treatment will result in a calcium content between 12 and 20 ppm
and a magnesium content between 3 and 5 ppm. These results assume
that there isn't any sulfate or chloride in the water. Since this
isn't likely,
I can calculate what the additional calcium and magnesium is in the
treated water, but that's way beyond the information I can convey here.
I normally provide this sort of analysis for municipal and industrial clients
in my job as a professional engineer with specialization in water treatment.
I trust that this information will help out Joe and other brewers that
are faced
with high temporary hardness and they want a quick and easy hardness
reduction method. The company I work for does provide professional
engineering services to large and craft brewers across the country,
so anyone with a more pressing problem is welcome to contact me for
additional help.
Martin Brungard, P.E.
Indianapolis, IN
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5682, 05/20/10
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