Beer Brewing Water with John Palmer - BeerSmith Podcast #60

This week my guest is John Palmer. John joins us to discuss brewing water and pH control for mashing in beer brewing. He explains why understanding your brewing water and controlling your mash pH is very important as well as describes how to calculate residual alkalinity for your local water source.

[@thomashood3748]

Still love these. Got the book! Outstanding information. Thank you!

[@BIABHomebrewAdventures]

John and Brad thank you for this topic that is close to my heart. I am a operations manger of a Culligan Water dealership in North Central Ohio, namely Mansfield, Ohio where our city water supply like many has a high alkalinity and moderately to very hard water. As a Culligan Man for the last 22 years and a home brewer for a whopping 4 months, I found your discussion to be very informative and eye opening. It seems that the major focus should be to get the mash ph where you want it and then refocus on the chloride to sulfate ratio for the style of beer you want at the end. I plan on diluting with some revere osmosis water and then recalculating the effect of my grain bill on the remaining dissolved solids to minimize the amount of salts needed. Brad, I want to thank you not for just this podcast but also for many, many of the other podcasts. They really have enlightened me on the whole brewing process from start to drink. I'm not sure my wife would agree with me though since she is sick of me talking about beer :) Prost ! Cameron Karger Mansfield, OH

[@chrisnewton9788]

It's a great book, worth every penny/cent

[@TonyYates]

Good Stuff gentlemen, looking forward to Johns Book!

[@1rrelssek]

Great info yall! As a freshwater biologist I really like how John talks about ratios of.. vs exact concentrations of ions/compounds... Water chemistry is vastly different city to city, river to river, creek to creek. Which is why ratios are important and not the exact numbers. I look forward to reading the Book John!

[@andrewtroup4956]

Great great great video! Need to explain why an $80 pH meter only lasts a year or so.

[@thomassjoberg5786]

to calculate alkalinity of water palmer said meq of acid are needed to reach a PH of 4.3. my question is what acid does he refer to and if he refers to multiple acids, how does meq translate into ml/Litre? thanks

[@Mrjohndoe525]

How to calculate The final ph of Wort diluted by a certain amount of Water a speciifc ph? Thanks in advance for help

[@revansCAAD8]

Thank you! Can you recommend a PH Meter?

[@ch0jin]

So my Mash Ph is around 5.8-5.9 with my untreated soft water A bit high, I tend to not get full conversion, im usually off a bit with my pre boil gravity. Im going to brew with treated water, my plan is to treat 7 gallons of my water, Ca - 145ppm Mg - 21ppm Na- 26ppm SO4 - 309ppm Cl - 90ppm. If I use my treated mash water and use Mash Stablizer will that affect my adjusted water profile? Or, will I hit my target mash pH of 5.2-5.4 with the treated water and no Mash Stablizer?

[@MrBeersmith]

No - a much better option is to use lactic acid, phosphoric acid or acid malt. Lactic acid is probably the easiest to obtain and a few ml of it will lower your pH to the desired range without upsetting the water chemistry.

[@ch0jin]

Also, when do you add the treatment to your water? I was thinking of collecting my total volume, add the salts, then pull out my strike water, heat it up for the mash, then use the left over for the sparge...will that work? I see alot of guys just adding it to the mash directly.