My ward labs report came in

[bpgreen]

I sent a sample to Ward Labs. I use filtered water (filter on my faucet), so that's what I sent to them. I did let it run for 5 minutes, although I don't do that one I gather my water for brewing (since I'm getting a lot of water, it probably runs for 5 minutes by the time I get all the water).

I may send another sample at some point. I realized after the fact that this filter is long in the tooth.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I thought my pH was about 8. It was 7.3. That's still pretty basic, but not as bad as I thought.

Details:
Sodium, Na 35
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 49
Magnesium, Mg 15
Total Hardness, CaCO3 185
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.6 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 10
Chloride, Cl 49
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 197
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 162
Total Phosphorus, P 0.02
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

I've made a water profile in BeerSmith. I'm a creature of habit and will probably continue to use BeerSmith. BeerSmith says I should add 2.5 tsp of lactic acid to my mash.

But lately I've been steering people to @screwybrewer's EZRecipe. I'm kind of curious how the two would compare in recommendations about how to treat the water. I'm actually more inclined to trust Vince's calculations after following (or, rather, trying to follow) a recent discussion on HBT. But I'm not familiar enough with EZRecipe, so I couldn't figure out how to do this.

[Beer-lord]

I use Brun Water and EZRecipe and depending on my recipe, while both are close enough for me, they do seem to differ in opposite directions. I find for my IPA's, Screwy's is closer but for my darker beers, Brun Water is closer.
I'm sure Vince would offer you any help needed. He's been very helpful with me as I somewhat tested some things for him. He has tons of patience and knowledge but I think he'd tell you he's still tweaking it as he learns more.

[BlackDuck]

I use BeerSmith for everything except my water profile, for that I use EZ Water Calculator. I find the water profile thingy on BeerSmith to be rather hard to understand.

So BeerSmith says to add 2.5 tsp of lactic acid? And that addition gets you to what? The reason I'm asking is that 2.5 tsp seems pretty high. I add 2-4 mL to my recipes depending on the grain bill and the amount of water used for the mash. Usually lactic acid is used to adjust the pH. So you would need less lactic acid if your were mashing with 3 gallons and more lactic acid if you were mashing with 4 gallons. You would not use 2.5 tsp of lactic acid on every thing you brew.

I wish I had your water profile. Mine is so out of whack I usually use all or almost all distilled water and add stuff back in. My sodium level is 215, at least it was back in 2016 when I had it tested. I think I should go to Ward Labs and order a new test kit.

[bpgreen]

I use BeerSmith for everything except my water profile, for that I use EZ Water Calculator. I find the water profile thingy on BeerSmith to be rather hard to understand.

So BeerSmith says to add 2.5 tsp of lactic acid? And that addition gets you to what?

5.2 (making an IPA)

The reason I'm asking is that 2.5 tsp seems pretty high. I add 2-4 mL to my recipes depending on the grain bill and the amount of water used for the mash. Usually lactic acid is used to adjust the pH. So you would need less lactic acid if your were mashing with 3 gallons and more lactic acid if you were mashing with 4 gallons. You would not use 2.5 tsp of lactic acid on every thing you brew.

I don't remember for sure, but I think it's set for 4.5 gallons of water in the mash.

I wish I had your water profile. Mine is so out of whack I usually use all or almost all distilled water and add stuff back in. My sodium level is 215, at least it was back in 2016 when I had it tested. I think I should go to Ward Labs and order a new test kit.

My water is actually much worse. I have a water filter on my kitchen faucet and this is the water that comes out of the filter. I sent the filtered water to the lab because that's what I brew with.

[MadBrewer]

That is pretty nice, balanced water to brew with. But I do not think a standard water filter will strip out much if any of the mineral content of your tap water. They are designed to remove odor, off flavors, chlorine, etc. Depending on your water source, be careful of chloromines, most filters will not remove them. One thing to keep in mind is Ward Labs measures Sulfate as S04-S, where most water calculators use a measurement of Sulfate as SO4, so you need to multiply your Ward Labs number (10) by 3, so your Sulfate to enter into the water calculators is 30ppm Sulfate. Your water ph is not important, it is simply an indicator of the mix of hardness, bicarbonate and alkalinity in your water. What is important for mash ph is your Alkalinity and Bicarbonate which are middle of the road, maybe slightly high. So, yeah acid will be needed for the mash for just about any beer except darker styles. It will become vital to drop that alkalinity with acid to brew anything very pale.

IMO, I would strive for at least 5.3, even 5.4 for most beers until you get a feel for the calculators and how the acid responds in the mash. This will give a bigger window each way for a better chance to settle in the happy middle for mash ph. In all honesty, you will probably like most of your beers at a that ph rather than 5.2 anyway. Higher mash ph for darker beers smooths out the roast, while slightly higher mash ph for hoppy beers can help bring out better hop character. Don't forget about your sparge water, you will need to acidify that to at least 5.5

I use and like Bru'n Water, it looks overwhelming at first but it's loaded with a lot of great tools, it's also been very accurate for me.

[bpgreen]

That is pretty nice, balanced water to brew with. But I do not think a standard water filter will strip out much if any of the mineral content of your tap water. They are designed to remove odor, off flavors, chlorine, etc. Depending on your water source, be careful of chloromines, most filters will not remove them. One thing to keep in mind is Ward Labs measures Sulfate as S04-S, where most water calculators use a measurement of Sulfate as SO4, so you need to multiply your Ward Labs number (10) by 3, so your Sulfate to enter into the water calculators is 30ppm Sulfate. Your water ph is not important, it is simply an indicator of the mix of hardness, bicarbonate and alkalinity in your water. What is important for mash ph is your Alkalinity and Bicarbonate which are middle of the road, maybe slightly high. So, yeah acid will be needed for the mash for just about any beer except darker styles. It will become vital to drop that alkalinity with acid to brew anything very pale.

IMO, I would strive for at least 5.3, even 5.4 for most beers until you get a feel for the calculators and how the acid responds in the mash. This will give a bigger window each way for a better chance to settle in the happy middle for mash ph. In all honesty, you will probably like most of your beers at a that ph rather than 5.2 anyway. Higher mash ph for darker beers smooths out the roast, while slightly higher mash ph for hoppy beers can help bring out better hop character. Don't forget about your sparge water, you will need to acidify that to at least 5.5

I use and like Bru'n Water, it looks overwhelming at first but it's loaded with a lot of great tools, it's also been very accurate for me.

Thanks for the info. I couldn't figure out how to adjust the profile I already entered in BS. If I edited it in the recipe, it just changed it for that recipe. I'm sure there's a way to do it inside BS, but I ended up searching for Water.bsmx and editing that.

[mashani]

FWIW:

In Beersmith 3, you can add your water to the water list with all the numbers from the report.

Then make a recipe and add all your mash ingredients.

And then "add water" to the recipe and pick that water from the water profile tool and it will add all the water based on the mash profile you selected, and/or adjusted to match a target water profile. That will throw in any salts/minerals to adjust the water to match a specific profile, and it properly adjusts the water PH if additions would change it. And then now your mash PH will read some # that it figures based on your grain bill, IE 5.72 or whatever (5.72 is what my last beer was before acid adjustments).

Whether you can actually match another profile depends on what your water is and what profile you are going for. IE its really easy for me to match Antwerp water or Cologne water with my own tap water. It's impossible for me to match some really soft water profiles however.

Anyways, once you have all that settled or just chose to use your water as is, then in Beersmith 3 the PH adjustment tool actually works right now, so you can tell it to target 5.4 and based on your grain bill and water profile + salts/mineral adjustment it will tell you how much acid malt or lactic acid to add, and it will actually add it to your recipe now.

Also in Beersmith 3 you can simply plug the salts and acid malt or lactic acid right into the recipe if you think you have a clue what you want them to be on your own or calculated them somewhere else, and it properly adjusts the adjusted mash PH in the PH tool that is built in to account for those additions, so you can see if you were right.

None of that worked completely right for me in Beersmith 2 so I was always going out looking at other water/ph tools, but it does seem to work well in Beersmith 3.

Also I always treat my water with campden, because chloramines... most filters will not remove them unless RO.

[bpgreen]

I created my own water profile, then kept changing the amount of lactic acid to use until it was close to the target.

I later read about being able to have BS automagically figure everything out for me, so I'll do that next time.

[HerbMeowing]

... slightly higher mash ph for hoppy beers can help bring out better hop character.

You sure about that?
Bru'n Water claims the opposite.
Maybe it depends on the grist.

Motivated by your comment about adjusting water report values by x-factors to convert to the correct units; I dusted off my 2012 Ward water report and corrected an error in my Bru'n Water 'Water Adjustment' sheet. So far ... that's been the highlight of my day along with polishing off a liter of Smuttynose's Finest Kind IPA clone.

[MadBrewer]

... slightly higher mash ph for hoppy beers can help bring out better hop character.

You sure about that?
Bru'n Water claims the opposite.
Maybe it depends on the grist.

Motivated by your comment about adjusting water report values by x-factors to convert to the correct units; I dusted off my 2012 Ward water report and corrected an error in my Bru'n Water 'Water Adjustment' sheet. So far ... that's been the highlight of my day along with polishing off a liter of Smuttynose's Finest Kind IPA clone.

Good catch Herb, "better" is probably the wrong term to use there as better could mean different things to different Brewers. Seems like we are always trying to smooth out hop character, but a slightly higher mash pH, which in turn factors your boil pH can increase hop extraction, put more pop into the bitterness. But it's a fine line, as too high mash pH and boil pH can lead to a rough hop character. Probably wasnt even worth mentioning, the impact for darker beers and mash pH is much more relevant.

[BlackDuck]

All this talk about water reports forced me into another test. It's been two years ago almost to the day that I got my last test in. And of course my sodium level continues to be astronomically high, even higher than the last test. I guess I'll continue to either dilute with distilled are use 100% distilled. Here are my numbers:

Details:
Sodium, Na 233
Potassium, K 1
Calcium, Ca 31
Magnesium, Mg 10
Total Hardness, CaCO3 119
Nitrate, NO3-N <0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 60 (SO4, 180)
Chloride, Cl 51
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 429
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 357
Total Phosphorus, P 0.83
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

[HerbMeowing]

Seeing how we're sharing the intimate details of our brewing water: coastal plain of SE VA - shallow well (Ward Labs - 2012)

pH 5.9
Sodium, Na 3
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 5
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 17
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.4 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S < 1
Chloride, Cl 3
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 38
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 31

Per Bru'n Water ... some gypsum & Epsom salt + smidge of CaCl makes for tasty IPAs

[ScrewyBrewer]

I've made a water profile in BeerSmith. I'm a creature of habit and will probably continue to use BeerSmith. BeerSmith says I should add 2.5 tsp of lactic acid to my mash.

But lately I've been steering people to @screwybrewer's EZRecipe. I'm kind of curious how the two would compare in recommendations about how to treat the water. I'm actually more inclined to trust Vince's calculations after following (or, rather, trying to follow) a recent discussion on HBT. But I'm not familiar enough with EZRecipe, so I couldn't figure out how to do this.

Knowing what's in your brewing water is a very good start. But understanding how each of the grains in your mash interacts with your brewing water is a challenge. As Paul correctly pointed out every tweak of your recipe's grain bill will influence mash pH. Example if using the same brewing water to brew a Porter and a Pilsner the pH of both mashes will be wildly different.

What the HBT threads are focusing on has to do with two very different approaches to mash pH prediction. I've used both over the years and find myself on the fence trying to decide which is better. The original approach is based entirely on grain color. Where darker grains (lower pH) like those in a Porter require little or no acid to hit a mash pH. While lighter grains (higher pH) like those used in a Kolsch or Pilsner require more acid to hit a mash pH. Grain color information is readily available to us brewers.

The second approach relies on the DI pH of each grain. This is where most people's eyes begin to glaze over. The challenge here is getting accurate DI pH values of every grain from all maltsters. To get the values myself I made small mashes of a single grain in pure RO water. After 20 minutes I cooled the sample and recorded the pH value. This is the first step in getting the grain's DI pH. The next steps require adding measured amounts of acid and taking more pH readings. The additional steps give the true buffering strength of the grain. Accurate grain DI pH information is very hard to come by and beyond the reach of most brewers.

So what AJ is proposing is a way to better predict mash pH. By including the buffering strength of the brewing water and the known DI pH values of each grain. I feel it's an interesting approach that is worth pursuing. I've been recording predicted mash pH values and actual pH values for several years. I've found the predicted and actual pH values of some recipes to be the same in some instances. The majority of recipes require tweaks when brewing them a second or third time to hit the predicted pH. I hope this helps.

[mashani]

@Screwy, just curious how this works out with grains that might vary greatly in color. Say for example "Special B" which might vary from between 130 to 180. Some British dark roasted malts can even vary by a bigger margin then that. The maltsters aren't targeting a specific color as much as a specific flavor, and the point where they reach it depends on the grain they were using and who knows whatever other factors.

So clearly the color based method would come up with different PH numbers if you plugged in the actual value for the batch of grain you got (if you know it and not just the possible range).

But how does this affect DI pH? And how would you know how to adjust it from one batch of malt like the above to another without totally re-testing the grains? If you did know the actual color of the grains, would it be more accurate to use the color method in this case (or at least a lot less trouble and get you in the right ballpark?).

EDIT: Just playing around in beersmith it's clear it's using color, what is interesting though is if I plug in 1# of roasted malt in that is 300 SRM and reduce it to 200 SRM the mash PH stays about the same. But at 150 SRM, it calculates a much lower mash PH then it was at 200. At 100 SRM it starts to go back up a little bit. And if I go down to say 80 it jumps back up to around the same PH as it was at 200/300. Is that how it's supposed to work? Not that roasted malt would ever get down to 100, or 150 (although I think pale chocolate might get as low as 180), it's just odd seeming.

EDIT EDIT: FWIW, throwing in 8oz of Special B since I used that above as an example, and tweaking it between 130 and 180, there is up to 0.11 variance in a recipe where I start at 5.7 (IE it changed it anywhere from 5.3 to 5.41) with 5.3 being what it calculates at 180, and mash PH is always going up as I lower the SRM in this case.

That seems "right" but why it's different then the roasted grain is odd. Although as an old ochem person I do realize that ochem things are often non linear so maybe not, but ?

[ScrewyBrewer]

@Screwy, just curious how this works out with grains that might vary greatly in color. Say for example "Special B" which might vary from between 130 to 180. Some British dark roasted malts can even vary by a bigger margin then that. The maltsters aren't targeting a specific color as much as a specific flavor, and the point where they reach it depends on the grain they were using and who knows whatever other factors.

So clearly the color based method would come up with different PH numbers if you plugged in the actual value for the batch of grain you got (if you know it and not just the possible range).

But how does this affect DI pH? And how would you know how to adjust it from one batch of malt like the above to another without totally re-testing the grains? If you did know the actual color of the grains, would it be more accurate to use the color method in this case (or at least a lot less trouble and get you in the right ballpark?).

EDIT: Just playing around in beersmith it's clear it's using color, what is interesting though is if I plug in 1# of malt in that is 300 SRM and reduce it to 200 SRM the mash PH stays about the same. But at 150 SRM, it calculates a much lower mash PH then it was at 200. At 100 SRM it starts to go back up a little bit. And if I go down to say 80 it jumps back up to around the same PH as it was at 200/300. Is that how it's supposed to work?

@mashani therein lies the problem. Both color based and DI pH based approaches to ph prediction are subject to the same vagarities. Differences between maltsters and batches sometimes vary a lot. Another example of DI pH discrepancies is with Pilsner malts. Their colors are similar but their documented DI pH can range between 5.50 to 6.0. There is no silver bullet with either approach. Unless you are willing to run a series of pH titration tests on each batch of grain prior to treating your brewing water.

If you know the true color of a malt and it's type the color based approach would be easier. In the case of Caramel malt the color based formula is different than that used for roasted barley. I'm not at all familiar with BeerSmith's pH prediction. But based on your scenario and description there's clearly something weird going with their pH calculations.