Water Analysis at Murphy and sons

[fisherman]

Hi orlando Seasons Greetings.
I do work out calcium additions usually 120ppm to 150ppm . My choice is then to use calcium chloride or calcium sulphate. Maybe only a minor adjustment of balance between hoppy or malty. I do try and keep it a balance. In my last 4 brews I used sweet pale ale as a guide to use equal parts of calcium of chloride and calcium sulphate.

[orlando]

Hi orlando Seasons Greetings.
I do work out calcium additions usually 120ppm to 150ppm . My choice is then to use calcium chloride or calcium sulphate. Maybe only a minor adjustment of balance between hoppy or malty. I do try and keep it a balance. In my last 4 brews I used sweet pale ale as a guide to use equal parts of calcium of chloride and calcium sulphate.

You might try a 2 or even 3:1 of sulphate to chloride to get a clean hoppy taste and a little bit of Burton style minerality.

[fisherman]

Hi lads,
I always add minerals in the same way using Grahams Water calculator and never add extra minerals to the sparge water. So I add the required dry salts to the dry goods in ratio to the Liqour and grain . Then the rest to the boiler. Am I correct in sparging with water that has had its alkalility reduced to 25ppm with no other treatment. Also I am thinking of changing from fly sparging to batch sparging in this way. Mash 20 lbs of grain in 23 litres of liquor at the end of the mash top up with liquor to 30 litre liquid capacity gently then drain. op up using 2nd sparge liquor 30 litres stir and wait to settle and drain.When adding the sparge water to the tun what temperature would you use?. I would like to try batch sparging help if you can please.
Any replies very gratefull.

[joebrews]

@dcq1974 Resurrecting this post from many years back. Not sure if you're still active here but I can't seem to message you directly. I think we're quite close geographically and I was hoping to pick your brains about water treatment. Hopefully you'll pick this up at some point...

[quote=dcq1974 post_id=439721 time=1305365629 user_id=1928]
Well after fermentation and kegging of my house bitter using the new liquor treatment advice from MURPHY & SON posted above, I can conclude that the beer has certainly been taken up to the next level organoleptically.

Yes the flavour and aroma profile are very similar to what I was previously brewing (using my own water calculations listed below) but now the flavour profile between the malt and hops is far more "balanced" and the bitterness is clean and crisp. pH of mash was spot on as mentioned above and the resulting beer (using WLP005) was very clear after 10 days fermentation.

So as a Professional Flavour Chemist of over 20 years and one that doesn't claim to fully understand water chemistry, I certainly endorse the liquor advice I received from Murphy & Son so many thanks Paul.

Just for completion, I list the water profile from Anglian Water and the water treatment I previously used. I would be interested for any comments on my calculations using the water calculator available on this site.

Alkalinity of 174 mg/l (as CaCO3)
Ca = 115 mg/l
Mg = 8 mg/l
Na = 40 mg/l
SO4 = 115 mg/l
Cl = 65 mg/l

Target "bitter" Ca (150 mg/l) Mg (10 mg/l) Na (40 mg/l) SO4 (273) Cl (137)
So Sulphate:Chloride ratio (2:1)

For 25 litres of treated liquor I was adding 20.3 ml CRS (0.8 ml/l) 3.54 g of CaSO4, 0.19 g of CaCl2 and 0.51 g of MgSO4

Following analysis by Murphy & Son I was offered advice to try 0.52 ml/l AMS, 0.17 g/l CaSO4 and 0.17 g/l CaCl2 (so very different salt additions)
So for 25 litres of treated liquor to compare to previous this is 13 ml AMS, 4.25 g CaSO4 and 4.25 g CaCl2.

Any comments gratefully received and thanks again to the chaps at Murphy & Son

PS Am I correct in thinking that additions of MgSO4 are often removed from water treatment as Mg can cause a "metallic" bitterness profile?
[/quote]

[guypettigrew]

Fisherman hasn't been here for many years. Which is a shame.

What's your water query, joebrews? May be best to start a new thread.

Guy

[joebrews]

Hi Guy,

I was after gcq1974 rather than fisherman, because I think we're in the same area and have the same water supplier and similar water profile.

I'm just getting in to water treatment (have just received my report back from phoenix analytical- see below) and was after some advice about treatment. I'm doing my best to understand it and make my own decisions about how to proceed, but in the short term I just want someone to recommend how much AMS and DLS (or other treatments) I should use for various types of brew. I've been playing with Grahams calculator but it keeps giving me errors about Mg/Na balancing or that it can't produce results to match my water. Can't quite get my head round it at the mo.

Once I've got a tasty pint of my own brew in my hand I can spend a bit more time trying to understand

Sodium as Na, mg/L - 42.7
Potassium as K, mg/L - 8.5
Magnesium as Mg, mg/L - 7.3
Calcium as Ca, mg/L - 118
Chloride as Cl, mg/L - 67.6
Nitrate as NO3, mg/L - 28.3
Phosphate as PO4, mg/L - 2.6
Sulphate as SO4, mg/L - 116
Total alkalinity as CaCO3, mg/L - 175
pH - 7.62
Conductivity, uScm-1 at 20C - 729

[guypettigrew]

Excellent, you have had a wallybrew analysis done. All is easy from here in--not!

GW's calculator needs a bit of thought, but you'll find it really helpful once you've got to grips with it.

Firstly put your alkalinity number in, then click the button labelled CRS in the next box, headed 'carbonate reduction method'. This will select an alkalinity value of 20ppm. Perfectly adequate for most beers. This value can be changed if you wish. Ignore the next box at the top labelled 'hardness'.

Then put all your other numbers into the relevant boxes underneath. You'll see your raw water is showing as about 7% out of balance between the cations and anions. Not a problem, and better than mine!

Then, from the next line down, the yellow one, select (for example) bitter. The note tells you your target sodium is too low. In other words, the desired amount is less than you have started with. Click the instruction to balance Na/Mg. All is now well.

At the bottom of the page you'll see the calculator tells you 0.81ml of CRS will be needed per litre of raw water to get the alkalinity down to 20. I start off with about 50 litres of raw water in my hot liquor tank so, with your water, I would need about 40 ml of CRS to drop the alkalinity to 20ppm.

The calculator can tell you what weight of salts to add to get to your desired liquor profile, but it's not obvious how you get this information from it. In the yellow box in the bottom panel, labelled 'volume to be treated', put your expected final volume, NOT the total volume of raw water you are starting with. Let's say you expect to end up with 23 litres of wort in your fermenter. The calculator then tells you you'll need to add 3.08g of calcium sulphate, 0.07g of calcium chloride and 0.63g of magnesium sulphate.

Your raw water has enough calcium in it to allow the mash to go OK, so I'd suggest adding the salts to the grain in the mash tun before the sparge.

Hope this all makes sense.

Guy

[joebrews]

Hi Guy,

Thanks for this comprehensive reply.

I am happy with the addition of CRS to reduce alkalinity (and additional effect on sulphate and chloride). I think the question for me is: should I be using this pot of DWB I bought, or do I need to buy some of the pure minerals to have greater control over my water manipulations? It seems that DWB is a bit of a broad spectrum treatment, more suited to those treating distilled or RO water.

I'm planning to brew some paler beers in the next couple of months - a california common and maybe something like a Kolsch. Not sure if this will alter drastically what I should be doing. If I select Lager as my target liquor, my Cl and SO4 figures are way above what they should be, but there doesn't seem to be any solution to this. Is this when I need to start buying distilled water or invest in an RO unit??

[Eric]

DWB is a Murphy and Son product. It is a mix of commonly used brewing salts. Murphy's advocate its use, adding an extra degree of mystery to water treatment, while Graham Wheeler put great effort into demystifying brewing and for water treatment used discrete brewing salts.

[Top Cat]

Excellent, you have had a wallybrew analysis done. All is easy from here in--not!

GW's calculator needs a bit of thought, but you'll find it really helpful once you've got to grips with it.

Firstly put your alkalinity number in, then click the button labelled CRS in the next box, headed 'carbonate reduction method'. This will select an alkalinity value of 20ppm. Perfectly adequate for most beers. This value can be changed if you wish. Ignore the next box at the top labelled 'hardness'.

Then put all your other numbers into the relevant boxes underneath. You'll see your raw water is showing as about 7% out of balance between the cations and anions. Not a problem, and better than mine!

Then, from the next line down, the yellow one, select (for example) bitter. The note tells you your target sodium is too low. In other words, the desired amount is less than you have started with. Click the instruction to balance Na/Mg. All is now well.

At the bottom of the page you'll see the calculator tells you 0.81ml of CRS will be needed per litre of raw water to get the alkalinity down to 20. I start off with about 50 litres of raw water in my hot liquor tank so, with your water, I would need about 40 ml of CRS to drop the alkalinity to 20ppm.

The calculator can tell you what weight of salts to add to get to your desired liquor profile, but it's not obvious how you get this information from it. In the yellow box in the bottom panel, labelled 'volume to be treated', put your expected final volume, NOT the total volume of raw water you are starting with. Let's say you expect to end up with 23 litres of wort in your fermenter. The calculator then tells you you'll need to add 3.08g of calcium sulphate, 0.07g of calcium chloride and 0.63g of magnesium sulphate.

Your raw water has enough calcium in it to allow the mash to go OK, so I'd suggest adding the salts to the grain in the mash tun before the sparge.

Hope this all makes sense.

Guy

Just reading this post with interest, you’ve got me confused Guy!
Since I’ve been using the water treatment calculator, I’ve always used the total amount of raw water to be treated not the finished amount, for my brewing situation there is almost a ten litre difference.
Is there any particular reason, as the wording of water to be treated is misleading to me.

[f00b4r]

Excellent, you have had a wallybrew analysis done. All is easy from here in--not!

GW's calculator needs a bit of thought, but you'll find it really helpful once you've got to grips with it.

Firstly put your alkalinity number in, then click the button labelled CRS in the next box, headed 'carbonate reduction method'. This will select an alkalinity value of 20ppm. Perfectly adequate for most beers. This value can be changed if you wish. Ignore the next box at the top labelled 'hardness'.

Then put all your other numbers into the relevant boxes underneath. You'll see your raw water is showing as about 7% out of balance between the cations and anions. Not a problem, and better than mine!

Then, from the next line down, the yellow one, select (for example) bitter. The note tells you your target sodium is too low. In other words, the desired amount is less than you have started with. Click the instruction to balance Na/Mg. All is now well.

At the bottom of the page you'll see the calculator tells you 0.81ml of CRS will be needed per litre of raw water to get the alkalinity down to 20. I start off with about 50 litres of raw water in my hot liquor tank so, with your water, I would need about 40 ml of CRS to drop the alkalinity to 20ppm.

The calculator can tell you what weight of salts to add to get to your desired liquor profile, but it's not obvious how you get this information from it. In the yellow box in the bottom panel, labelled 'volume to be treated', put your expected final volume, NOT the total volume of raw water you are starting with. Let's say you expect to end up with 23 litres of wort in your fermenter. The calculator then tells you you'll need to add 3.08g of calcium sulphate, 0.07g of calcium chloride and 0.63g of magnesium sulphate.

Your raw water has enough calcium in it to allow the mash to go OK, so I'd suggest adding the salts to the grain in the mash tun before the sparge.

Hope this all makes sense.

Guy

Just reading this post with interest, you’ve got me confused Guy!
Since I’ve been using the water treatment calculator, I’ve always used the total amount of raw water to be treated not the finished amount, for my brewing situation there is almost a ten litre difference.
Is there any particular reason, as the wording of water to be treated is misleading to me.

I was going to ask the same, I hadn’t had a chance to check the calculator notes but how could it account for differing dead space, boil off, sparging amounts etc in different setups.

[Eric]

This could be my fault from previous discussions with Guy.

My water supply contains a goodly amount of calcium and salts are added not to the liquor, but to the grains. This can be to the mash and/or the sparge. Further to avoid pH rising when sparging, sparge liquor alkalinity is reduced further than that for the mash and some salts are frequently added to the grain bed during the sparge. In those circumstances, all the added salts will be washed through and into the wort, while if the same quantity of salts were added to the liquor, some would be lost in the process. Accordingly, I calculate salt additions in proportion to the amount of wort required and not the initial volume of liquor. Those added salts are the concentrated during the boil as the volume of wort is reduced.

[orlando]

It often comes as quite a surprise that brewers treat some liquor in a brew differently. The explanation for this is that some grains are more acidifying in the mash than others. Typically dark Beers contain grains that are very effective in doing this. If the brewer treats all the liquor the same, as say a Pale Ale, the mash pH would be too low. One caveat here is that crystal malts, the darker the more so, are even more acidifying than highly roasted malts. Apologies if this confuses more but it is a key understanding. A complication that once understood actually makes water treatment relatively simple.

[guypettigrew]

As Eric says, it depends where you are going to add your salts. If I was planning on adding all the salts to the water in the hot liquor tank then yes, I would put 50 litres in the box at the bottom of the calculator.

I add the salts to the grain, either before mashing or, more usually, at the start of and during the sparge. Therefore I'm more interested in getting the desired salt balance correct for the final wort. Following Eric's advice from a while ago I also drop the alkalinity of the liquor in the HLT for the sparge.

So, I put 23 litres into the box at the bottom. After the sparge there's about 35 litres in the boiler. At the end of the boil and allowing for losses caused by the hops absorbing some wort there is usually about 23 litres in the fermenter.

To be completely correct I should work out what volume of wort is left after the boil and before losses to the hops and use that figure rather than the amount which ends up in the FV. But hey--this is an art as much as a science and a gram here or there of a salt won't significantly alter the final beer. At least, I don't think so! There are plenty of other variables in the process.

Guy

[Top Cat]

It’s all making a lot more sense now, especially the added salts and when to add.
I put the final wort quantity into the calculator, and TBH there wasn’t that much difference in salt additions, between start and finish volumes.
As Guy is saying, it can be an art as much as a science, a little trial and error can go a long way!