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Sulfate:Chloride Balance in Water profile

Merkur

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I like the new water chemistry controls and the fact that the additions are added to the total recipe ingredient list.  The tool seems to do a pretty good job of coming up with the mineral additions to match a profile and adding acid to control Mash and sparge pH.  However the Sulfate:Chloride ratio for the recipe is way off.

How do I specify the desired ratio and have BeerSmith take that into account when coming up with the required additions?  With the recipe I am working on now, the water chemistry and pH are under control but the ratio is 5.4 (Extremely Bitter) instead of my desired 2.0.

Thanks.  Great improvements in version 3.0!

Paul
 
Getting the water profile you want starts with defining the overall mineral balance you desire.  You can set this in the water profile tool or by directly defining a water profile you want to meet.

For the latter, you can open up your water profiles ['profiles' > 'water'] and then create a new profile to meet the quantities of each of the minerals and ions you want in your finished profile.  For instance if you select a new profile ['add water'], you can set your Chloride to Sulfate ratio based upon targeting the amount of each you want to have in your water.  For a 1:2 ratio you can target Chloride at say 75 ppm and Sulfate at 150 ppm.  You can fill in the rest of the minerals as you want.  I would recommend a target of at least 50 ppm for Calcium and 10 ppm for Magnesium.  This option works best if you pretty much know a profile you want to meet and can enter it in.

The water profile tool allows you to start with your base water (tap, RO, distilled) and build it by selecting a pre-existing profile to match and then clicking on 'match target profile'.  You can save the salt additions to the profile if you don't want to have them automatically added in your recipe.  If you are using this route, you can easily just do this within the recipe on the 'water' tab and get the same result.  You can begin by using the standard color/flavor profiles in the water profiles listing.  Here you can choose based upon the basic color (pale, amber, brown, black) combined with the flavor balance (malty, balanced, bitter) which will give you a place to start.

Again, if you know the basic parameters you want to hit for Chloride and Sulfate, you can also use the water profile tool to build up to those target quantities and then save the profile to use within the recipe.

All of the above assumes that you have some understanding of water chemistry to know how to build your profile.  If you are looking for some primers on water, you can search the BeerSmith blogs and podcasts for several of the articles Brad has put together or look up 'Water Knowledge' by Martin Brungard for a good primer on how to put together water using the various commonly used available minerals.
 
Thanks.  I have a water test result from a lab and have entered it into BeerSmith.  I know from experience that I am better off mixing the tap water 50:50 with distilled water so I have added half of the total water required as distilled and half of the water as my town's tap water in the Water tool.  I have then selected Dry Pale Ale as the target profile and BeerSmith does its stuff and comes up with the mineral additions to do a best fit to my target profile.

The issue is that the Sulfate:Chloride ratio is over five instead of my desired two.  I cannot see where I can set my desired Sulfate:Chloride ratio and have BeerSmith take that into account when coming up with the mineral additions.

Paul
 
Looking at the dry pale ale profile, the ratio should be 2:1 Sulfate to Chloride.  It may be that your water will not allow you to get to a 2:1 ratio based upon your starting values of Sulfate.  You can export the recipe you are trying to match you water for as a .bsmx file and we can look at it to see how or if you can work around your base water.

 
Thanks so much for the quick and clear responses.  I am getting ready for a brew-day tomorrow when I will be brewing two batches of this.  I have brewed it before and used Martin Brungard's Bru'n Water to achieve the water profile, but now I am trying to get the whole recipe in BeerSmith.

So I took another look at this.  What I found was that the Pale Ale water profile I was using (From Bru'n Water) was quite a bit different from the canned Dry Pale Ale one in BeerSmith.  When I changed the target profile to the Dry Pale Ale one in BeerSmith, the numbers came out a lot closer to what I need.  The Sulfate:Chloride ratio in fact was spot on at two.

These are the differences and the complete recipe is attached.
Bru'n Water Pale Ale Profile (ppm):
  Calcium          113
  Magnesium      20
  Sodium            25
  Sulfate          300
  Chloride          55
  Bicarbonate      35

BeerSmith Dry Pale Ale Profile (ppm):
  Calcium          190
  Magnesium      15
  Sodium          30
  Sulfate            329
  Chloride          165
  Bicarbonate    15

I will use the canned Dry Pale Ale profile for now and see how it turns out but am interested in any comments.

Thanks,

Paul
 

Attachments

  • Not Quite IPA.bsmx
    37.7 KB · Views: 133
I have to confess that I don't use the stock color/flavor profiles that are in Bru'n water or BeerSmith, but design my own.  In general, I hove found that it is the total quantity of Sulfates and/or Chlorides that seems to bring out the dryness or malty flavors and not specifically the ratio, so i generally don't pay much attention to that aspect. 

Looking at your water profile, it looks pretty good.  I've never run Calcium levels up that high, so I really don't have much experiential advice to offer here.  I'd say brew it and see how it comes out for you!


 
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