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water profile and fly sparging with on demand water heater

redbone

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I think I have my water profile situation figured out, but this leads me to another question regarding water profile and sparge water.  I have a on demand water heater that I use to fill my mash tun and fly sparge with.  Given that this is my method of brewing, I'm not able to treat my sparge water prior to sparging.  So, looks like there are 3 possible options if I don't want to change my mash/sparge method.

[list type=decimal]
[*]Treat mash water only with proper additions for that amount of sparge water: ie it calls for 18.75 gallons of water to sparge with, but the total water needed is 35.12.  Only treat the 18.75 gallons. Leave out the rest.
[*]Treat mash water with ALL additions for the total amount of water: ie: treat the 18.75 gallons of water as if it's 35.12 gallons.
[*]Splt it up. Treat mash water with proper additions for 18.75 gallons and then add the other additions directly to the boil.
[/list]


What is the best thing to do in this situation?
 
It depends on your water and what additions you are putting in. Some additions are to achieve proper mash pH, others (like sodium and chloride) are to give good final taste. For the latter, putting the full addition into the mash water is OK (solution 2). For things meant to modify pH, that would not work at all. You want your mash pH to be between 5.2 and 5.6 and your sparge pH to be below 6.0. For PH additions something more like solution 3 would be appropriate, but you need to make  sure your sparge water pH is below 6.0 or you will extract tannins and get astringency. For people like CK27, who has water with pH=5.5 out of the tap, there is no problem. For people like me with water pH=8.6 out of the tap, then the sparge water needs to be treated for pH.

--GF
 
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