Water Test

After about three quarters of a year of tinkering with various salts to enhance either the malt or the hop flavors in finished beers and at least 2 years of using 5.2 pH stabilizer to find the correct mash pH, I finally have the exact values of six of the key ions in my water that are central to brewing. 

Calcium, bicarbonate, chloride, sodium, magnesium, and sulfate are the ions that play the biggest part in brewing water chemistry. Thanks to John Palmer's How to Brew, I knew to look for these values when I looked into testing my well water. The results of the test are below:

As I had expected, I found that our well water is incredibly soft. However, without these values I would have had little knowledge of our water's capacity to buffer the mash. Using John Palmer's nomograph I was able to utilize my level of water hardness (determined by mg/l [ppm] levels of calcium and magnesium) in comparison with my water alkalinity ("alkalinity as CaCO3") (determined by mg/l levels of alkalinity) to find the amount of residual alkalinity as CaCO3 when mashing. This value indicates the mash pH of a beer mashed using only a light base malt, which would have little ability to acidify. If I was to mash pure pilsner malt for instance, my mash pH would come out to ~5.7, a pH that is slightly higher than the desired range of 5.2-5.5. 

In order to find a mash composition that would produce a mash within the correct range, the nomograph also provides a beer color scale. This scale indicates the color of the beer you should be brewing, based on your water's buffering characteristics, and assumes you are not using either acid nor salts to alter the chemistry in any way. Based on this color scale, I should be able to take my unaltered tap water and mash a beer of ~7-13 SRM (yellow to light orange) without the use  of acid or salts. Now I'll be able to adjust my water profile to brew any beer that is either lighter or darker than this SRM range and still be able to find the correct pH range.

In addition, the mg/l values of calcium, chloride, sulfate, and bicarbonate will help me to accurately alter my water's profile to more closely model the water used when brewing various styles. Due to my water's extremely soft profile, I should be fine brewing a Czech pilsner if I ever feel the need to. Knowing these values will also allow me to "Burtonize" water when brewing an English Bitter or to build up levels of carbonate when brewing Irish  Dry Stouts.

It looks like according to these numbers, my most recent brew, the American IPA, should have been spot on as far as mash pH is concerned. I added a small amount of calcium sulfate and hit about 5.4 pH. I will have to continue measuring mash pH using the pH meters I purchased a while ago and see how accurate the nomograph method is with respect to predicting mash pH, but I hope that it at least gets me in the ballpark.

The English Pale Ale with American hops finally kicked about a week ago so I'm currently trying to cold crash the German Kolsch that I've had in a keg for a while now. There still seems to be quite a bit of yeast/sediment that is hindering the flavor of the beer, so I hope with a bit of time in the kegerator at about 35-40 F the sediment will slowly fall to the bottom of the beer. The Scottish Wee Heavy and the Barleywine are both bottled and are conditioning, and the Biere de Table and Biere de Garde have finished fermentation and are conditioning in a keg and carboy respectively. 

The Belgian IPA is just about wrapping up fermentation after a week and a half of fermentation starting at 68 F, up to 80 and 85 F after a few days, and even up to 90 F at one point. Unfortunately I can't maintain such a high temperature at 90 F, so the temperature eventually fell and is about 80-85 F. The IPA should go into a keg in the next few days to cold crash the yeast, then through a 5 micron filter into another keg, and dry hopped for about 7-10 days.