The Honey Amber continues this time with Water

It’s a blog blitz.  The next chapter of the Honey Amber takes a ruthless twist.  Now we enter the realm of Water. I think I have a decent grasp on this because I get a kick out of reading water reports.  Yes, I'm weird but it's also for that good ol' Recipe Formulations and butt-tons of math class.

Marcus Brody may not be into water but then again, he's not a wannabe brewer like me!

 

Just a review here readers, here is what we’re working with.

Style: American Amber Ale but this one I want to eventually have a honey leaning to it.  

Is this where you bore with numbers and such?

Why yes. Yes I am, so get some caffeine. Just kidding. I’ll try and make it as painless as possible. The following is a chart of some of the stuff...I mean ions in brewing. We want to keep within specific ranges for beer style. Referencing local water reports will allow us to get a better handle on how we can adjust the water to better meet style.  The chart is a mere overview of what would happen if I added Gypsum to the brewing water.

Ion	Acceptable Range* (mg/L)	Olds Water Report (avg of 3 pumps) (mg/L)	Within range?	Targets (mg/L)	After Gypsum* (mg/L)	Still in range?	After (2g) Salt added	Still in Range?
Chloride	0-100	4	Sure, but low				28	Yep
Sulfate	0-250	40.7	Sure, but low		179.5	Yes!	179.5	Yep
Calcium	50-100	57.7	Yeah barely	90	90	Yep	90	Yep
Magnesium	0-40	18.3	Good to me					Yep
Sodium	0-50	7.9	Low				47.4	Whew!

*Gypsum is CaSO4(2H20) for all you science-y types

And that’s Gypsum! Not Gyprock! You’d be surprised how many early mornings I’ve swear my prof has said: “So how much GYPROCK are you going to add to 500 L of wort?” Yeah, I think I need to up my caffeine on those days.

Now I remember our prof mentioning something about chloride to Sulfate ratio which is why it’s listed in the chart. I’ve looked over trying to find a clear understanding on what it should be with not a lot of luck and just a lot of banging my head on the desk. 

Before you criticize, yes, I looked at homebrew forums...do you know how many contradicting viewpoints there are?  This is the reason why I need to buy more beer books.  Regardless, I’m going to go out on a limb and shoot that it should be closer than 179.5 to 4. I do remember that the more sulphate then the more bitter a beer would seem and the more chloride the more sweet or maltier. I need to get this to be maltier tasting so I need to get my Chloride up from a mere 4 mg/L

I would decide to add salt (remember NaCl?) to get those levels up. I don’t want to put my Sodium range out of whack so after some calculations. 

If we fast forward to the end of the chart, you'll see that I'm just in range for Sodium and my Sulphate to Chloride ration is 179.5 to 28 which is 6.4 to 1. To me that seems better. Now, if I could only find those numbers as to what the proper ratio is. (There goes getting an "A" on this assignment).  

When all is said and done everything appeared to be within spec! YAY!  I could almost do a happy dance but that would be embarrassing. 

So what did you learn out of this?

I learned that when you adjust water for one ion, you have to look out that you don’t put other ions out of balance. This will be an ongoing item for me to look at with future brews. I know I’m probably going to look at other people’s beer recipes that brew FAR more often than me, and see what can be done with calculations. It’s about practice.  Good thing I’m not using an abacus. Could you imagine?

This kid is getting started early on how to calculate brewing water adjustments. He's obviously good at it because look at all the profit he's made from hiring out his services. Waitasec, I wonder what his going rate is?

 

Time to sign off!

Keep on learnin’ stuff and things.

Cheers,

BL

Disclaimer: No children were actually harmed, used as child labour (abacus or otherwise), or remotely near any beer during the creation of this blog post.