What do brewing salts do

You can usually call your water company and get figures on both the permanent sulfate and temporary carbonate hardness, as well as the salinity salt content of your water. Editors Note: In Sonoma County, the water quality reports are published online by the County by district here If you're working with well water, you can get approximate hardness figures with a water hardness test kit. Figures in the following tables are expressed in parts per million ppm.

Calcium Chloride 4 oz. Gypsum - Calcium Sulphate 2 oz. The more scientific definition of alkalinity is the quantity of acid required to lower the pH to 4. Carbonate [CO 3 2- ], bicarbonate [HCO 3 — ], and hydroxide [OH — ] ions are three typical ions in drinking water that will neutralize an acid. Often chemists will talk about this using the term buffering. So why do we care about alkalinity? For brewers using water low in alkalinity, the mash is more susceptible to over acidification when highly roasted grains and crystal malts are added.

Roasted malts and grains add a lot of acidity to the mash and can lead to more acidic beers, which may not be what they are looking for. Water high in alkalinity is going to be more difficult to drop the pH. For brewing water this is very important considering many brewers would like to have their mash pH down around 5.

This can cause problems with wort darkening during the boil and off flavors such as increased diacetyl levels. Residual alkalinity is the term coined to describe the net sum when the brewing water and the malt make-up are combined together.

This value will help brewers gain a better understanding of how all the key factors fit together, or how adding darker malts or lactic acid or calcium chloride, can affect the mash pH and further downstream, the final product.

I will discuss much more information about residual alkalinity in the next article in this series. The pH of the water in your water report is fairly insignificant. But once water and grains mix, then pH starts to become much more significant. Calcium is probably the most important cation to be found in brewing water. Calcium is beneficial in most steps of the brewing phase. Its benefits have been noted from its positive affect on alpha amylase enzymes in the mash to the boil to fermentation and yeast flocculation.

So if you are starting with RO, distilled or very soft water, you should look to boost your calcium levels with one of several calcium containing salts and bases such as calcium chloride CaCl 2 , gypsum CaSO 4 , chalk CaCO 3 , or lime CaOH. One important detail though is that magnesium will see a large boost in the mash as it occurs naturally in malt. It also can have an effect on the flavor profile of the beer, adding a bitterness at lower levels and astringency at higher levels.

It is recommended that you do not exceed 50 ppm Mg in your brewing water and excessive amounts are also cited as causing a laxative effect. Epsom salts MgSO 4 are the most common way for brewers to boost their Mg levels. Sodium is not known to have any beneficial effects on the mash or fermentation, but sodium does affect the mouthfeel of the beer. This means you can add sodium at any point during the production of your beer, not just on brew day.

While we recommend 50 ppm as the max level, certain beer styles may benefit from higher levels of sodium from table salt, like Gose, and can be a nice touch in darker beers like stouts. Table salt NaCl and baking soda Na 2 CO 3 are the two most common ways for homebrewers to boost their sodium. This is the ion that brewers tend to focus on the most due to its extreme importance in determining the pH of the mash and beer and for the most part can be considered an unwanted ion in all but darker colored beers.

Carbonate will precipitate out in the presence of calcium which is an important factor in why it is called temporary hardness. Unless you have a gram scale handy, you will want to convert that to teaspoons which is more convenient. Lastly, you need to realize how much sulfate this addition has made. In this case, it would probably be a good idea to use calcium chloride for half of the addition. Use for making dark beers in areas of soft water. Use nomograph and monitor the mash pH with pH test papers to determine how much to add.

Gypsum Can be used to add sulfate "crispness" to the hop bitterness. See procedure for calcium carbonate. DeLange, AJ, personal communication, Daniels, R. If you find either or both of those spreadsheets helpful, you may want to consider donating to their upkeep.

This is an all-in-one brewing solution. One of the best features is being able to do water calculations right in the software. You can even create your own water profiles based on other recipes you like. Even better, you can create a water profile for your home brewery, plug in a target profile, and click a button to get all the brewing salt additions.

This makes a difference in your estimated mash pH calculation. Or you may need to add baking soda to bring it up. You can use brewing software to help you do this before you mash in. If not, you can use your scale or medicine dropper to add chemical additions to correct the pH. If your pH is low, you can add baking soda to increase the pH. If your pH is high, you can add lactic or phosphoric acid. Note: Most brewing salts dissolve into cold water quickly except calcium chloride.

You can avoid this excessive stirring by adding salts while your strike and sparge water are heating up. Warm water will dissolve these salts more easily. Never add water to salts or chemicals. Safety first! Brewing software usually has built-in lists of different target profiles depending on the style of beer you want to brew. You can also check out this list for some of the most popular ones. Even back then, brewers were making water adjustments.

So to blindly copy the water profile of a specific city or region is ludicrous. Half of getting your homebrew recipes right is accurately measuring ingredients. We found the best scales for grains, hops, or adjuncts.