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Water Correction - Help needed

grahambayley

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Melbourne, Australia
Hi All,

Trying to get the next 'thing' under my belt and with that im trying to change my water profile to a target profile.

So Ive added my local water profile to Beersmith (Melbourne, Australia Anyone with more accurate figures ?)
(Calcium: 5.00 ppm, Sulfate: 8.00 ppm, Magnesium: 2.00 ppm, Chloride: 13.00 ppm, Sodium: 8.00 ppm, Bicarbonate: 12.00 ppm, PH: 7.40)

And added it to the recipe, for my desired volume i needed 36 Litres of it (15 Litres Mash + 21 Sparge).

Going to the Water Tab of the recipe, I enter the Target Profile (Brown Balanced) It says

1) Add X to the Mash
2) Add Y to the Sparge 

Question is do you Add X to the Total Volume (36 Litres in the HLT (15 Litres Mash + 21 Sparge)), then Add Y to the left over 21 Litre sparge, so the total additions in the 21 litre Sparge = X + Y ?

Or does Brewsmith assume 15 Litres of Mash = X and the 21 Litres of Sparge = Y additions ?

Thanks all
 
grahambayley said:
Hi All,

Trying to get the next 'thing' under my belt and with that im trying to change my water profile to a target profile.

So Ive added my local water profile to Beersmith (Melbourne, Australia Anyone with more accurate figures ?)
(Calcium: 5.00 ppm, Sulfate: 8.00 ppm, Magnesium: 2.00 ppm, Chloride: 13.00 ppm, Sodium: 8.00 ppm, Bicarbonate: 12.00 ppm, PH: 7.40)

And added it to the recipe, for my desired volume i needed 36 Litres of it (15 Litres Mash + 21 Sparge).

Going to the Water Tab of the recipe, I enter the Target Profile (Brown Balanced) It says

1) Add X to the Mash
2) Add Y to the Sparge 

Question is do you Add X to the Total Volume (36 Litres in the HLT (15 Litres Mash + 21 Sparge)), then Add Y to the left over 21 Litre sparge, so the total additions in the 21 litre Sparge = X + Y ?

Or does Brewsmith assume [size=12pt]15 Litres of Mash = X and the 21 Litres of Sparge = Y additions[/size] ?

Thanks all

The part in red.  The program is initially set up to add the water salts according to the split between mash and sparge to give you a consistent mineral content in both.

 
Hey thanks for the answer.

In the recipe attached can you please help me understand the Brew steps and what and where to add things as it appears in Water Prep to add the 'Mash' Profile Water additions to all 36 L of water.

Thanks again and sorry for the dumb questions :)
 

Attachments

  • Brulosopher's Best Brown Ale.bsmx
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If you go into the "tools" section, click "water Profile" you can put in the numbers you want, putting in the 36L amount to the base, then selecting your target profile, and clicking "match target profile" I've attached a photo of what it should look like, note mine shows with Distilled Water, not your base water

 
Hi dtapke

Ive noticed the tool before, it seems to add 'All' Additions to the Base water and does not do a seperate Mash and Sparge.

So which is better to do and why do them either way ? 

Going Back to Oginme's response then im still not really understanding the 'Brew Steps' ...

Cheers

Graham
 
if you heat all of your water in one vessel, then you could use the calculations that are for the entire quantity. if you heat your mash water and sparge water separately than you would need to separate the additions.

i brew on a herms system, using my hlt to sparge. so I make my sparge water additions to my hlt, and i make my mash water additions in my boil kettle and transfer to the mash when i'm doughing in.

with smaller batches sometimes i will heat my total water in the hlt, and add the required mash water from there. in this instance i add all of my water additions to the total water quantity.

Personally i would exclude the chalk if this is your first time trying to make water adjustments.
 
So in your brew steps print out, you have the first section which is labeled 'water prep'.  This contains the volume of water and the salts needed for the MASH water as split by BeerSmith according to the water volume added to the mash.

Under 'mash ingredients', there is the list of malts to be added to the mash water and then the list of minerals proportioned to be added to the sparge water [note that they are listed as salt (sparge)].

I can certainly understand the confusion based upon the way it is listed. 
 
Hi Oginme

Just to be uber clear

"Under 'mash ingredients', there is the list of malts to be added to the mash water and then the list of minerals proportioned to be added to the sparge water [note that they are listed as salt (sparge)]."

means assuming 'fresh' water in the HLT, add this .... to my 'normal water' to be the sparge water addition

Really quite a pain as i normally add the full amount of the brew to the HLT and dont do this in two parts ... *sigh* why not either add the *Lot* to the mash or add an option 'Delta' to the Mash Addition

thanks for the help !!

 
If you are adding all your water in the HLT at the start, then you can do it as dtapke suggested and just add all the salts in at once -- mash and sparge. 

When I do a batch with a sparge step, I usually add all the salts to the mash water and then (because I heat the water separately for mash vs sparge) I keep the sparge water as is.  To do this, I manually edit the amount to be added to include the mash + sparge additions and remove the sparge salts.

 
The "brew steps" page is never 100% accurate for every brewer everywhere, you'll have to adapt to your specific process a little bit.

if you usually heat all of your water in your HLT then dough in from there, just make the water additions accordingly. I actually treat water that gets tossed down the drain just for ease of use.

an example of a previous beer i brewed, i filled 28 gallons in my HLT, added my salts etc to get the water to my profile according to the "tools-water profile" section for 28g. from there I heat that water to dough in temp, and added 9.5g to the mash, recirculated through my HLT as per usual, and then sparged with 11.5g. this meant i had about 7 gallons leftover that i use for cleaning, or just dump, but it was treated to what i needed.
 
dtapke said:
The "brew steps" page is never 100% accurate for every brewer everywhere, you'll have to adapt to your specific process a little bit.

100% Accurate!  It is software and reports.  You need to adapt the brew steps or reinterpret them to match your style and process.

 
Whoa! My head is spinning! This is why I brew all my beers based on local water and work with the local flavors. Good on you guys for the added work of profiling.
 
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