Testing my water

[orlando]

Looks good. If you have gypsum, add 1 tsp to your total water volume as your devon water is low in calcium. Gypsum raises calcium but also lowers mash pH a little.

How much calcium will he end up with in ppm?

[Charles1968]

It's hard to say exactly without guesstimating the calcium level of Barnstaple water. I'm assuming it's about 10 ppm calcium.

29 litres Barnstaple @ est 10ppm calcium
5 litres London @ 100 ppm calcium
5 g gypsum
Gives 84 ppm calcium on Brewersfriend. SO4 is 112 ppm. Without the gypsum calcium is 50 and sulphate 30 - both quite low.

But... This is 5g gypsum in the whole volume, whereas Chrissy is mixing different waters for mash and sparge, so the calcium levels in the mash and sparge water will be slightly different.

[Eric]

It's hard to say exactly without guesstimating the calcium level of Barnstaple water. I'm assuming it's about 10 ppm calcium.

29 litres Barnstaple @ est 10ppm calcium
5 litres London @ 100 ppm calcium
5 g gypsum
Gives 84 ppm calcium on Brewersfriend. SO4 is 112 ppm. Without the gypsum calcium is 50 and sulphate 30 - both quite low.

But... This is 5g gypsum in the whole volume, whereas Chrissy is mixing different waters for mash and sparge, so the calcium levels in the mash and sparge water will be slightly different.

While I would agree with your estimates for calcium in those waters, not sure Brewersfriend gets the sums right.
The total calcium provided by 34 litres of the 2 waters will be 29 x 10 + 5 x 100 = 290 + 500 = 790mg. 5g of gypsum contains 1150 mg of calcium to make the total 1940mg.
Now while 1940 divided by 23 gives 84ppm, some of that calcium may never play a part in the 23 litres of finished beer. The last 5 litres of sparge water will be retained by the grain in order to release that in the mash and earlier sparge and depending upon the setup, there will likely be a couple of litres of good beer trapped in the hops and dead space in the boiler.

I'd go for a good spoon of gypsum in the mash and another in the boiler.

[Chrissyr63]

H all,

so I did this yesterday. What I did was added a teaspoon of gypsum to all the Devon water and then did my mix up with the London water for the various stages.
Did the test on each batch and all was expected (50 for the mash and 25 or so for the sparge mix - was a bit worried about this as it was such a small Devon mix and I thought the original 5 might not be very accurate as it was so near the limit of the kits accuracy).

Will come back when it is all ready and say how it all went.
Thanks for all the input learned a new bit of the process.

Chris

[Charles1968]

While I would agree with your estimates for calcium in those waters, not sure Brewersfriend gets the sums right.
The total calcium provided by 34 litres of the 2 waters will be 29 x 10 + 5 x 100 = 290 + 500 = 790mg. 5g of gypsum contains 1150 mg of calcium to make the total 1940mg.
Now while 1940 divided by 23 gives 84ppm...

You're right, but Brewersfriend is also right. I must have put in the wrong fig somewhere doing it by phone. Checking it again with a proper keyboard it comes out at 57 ppm Calcium (dividing by 34, i.e. the total volume), which is the same as your figs.

[Eric]

While I would agree with your estimates for calcium in those waters, not sure Brewersfriend gets the sums right.
The total calcium provided by 34 litres of the 2 waters will be 29 x 10 + 5 x 100 = 290 + 500 = 790mg. 5g of gypsum contains 1150 mg of calcium to make the total 1940mg.
Now while 1940 divided by 23 gives 84ppm...

You're right, but Brewersfriend is also right. I must have put in the wrong fig somewhere doing it by phone. Checking it again with a proper keyboard it comes out at 57 ppm Calcium (dividing by 34, i.e. the total volume), which is the same as your figs.

Right, that's sorted that. A bit of a low level for something as important as calcium is to beer, wouldn't you say? Of course it can depend where the calcium is put and what might happen at each stage of the process. For example, if the gypsum was mixed with the liquor, that in the last of the sparge would never play any part, while if mixed with the grains, all would be available to the mash but then much might precipitate there with phosphates and not be available for later reactions.

While in my book 57ppm calcium is probably fine for what I imagine Homer Simpson's Duff beer to be, or Budweiser and there can be a lot worse starting points, but for calcium additions there is a lot of valuable information in this datasheet by Murphy and Son.

[Charles1968]

If I raise gypsum to 2 tsp in Brewersfriend, it tells me sulphate is more than ten times chloride, which it flags up as too bitter. I'd go for 1 tsp gypsum and 1sp calcium chloride, but maybe the sulphate:chloride ratio isn't such a big deal.

[Eric]

If I raise gypsum to 2 tsp in Brewersfriend, it tells me sulphate is more than ten times chloride, which it flags up as too bitter. I'd go for 1 tsp gypsum and 1sp calcium chloride, but maybe the sulphate:chloride ratio isn't such a big deal.

No, I think it wise to have a decent level of chloride present else the beer can become dry and lack any malt flavour. Looking back only 1 brew in the last dozen or more of mine have had less than 100ppm chloride, but I do find myself at odds with much of modern opinion.