Very limey water - advice?

[padraic_]

So I am doing my first all grain brew this Saturday. We've moved into a new house and our water is really limey - enough so that you can see it if you don't use a Brita jug.

I guess I'll buy water this weekend but for the future what can I do? Buying 25L of water at a go is going to work out pricey.

[on that topic where's the cheapest place to buy water?]

I live at the Ballymun end of Glasnevin, Dublin - I wonder if any other members up this way have a similar problem?

[Drum]

I bought a 5L bottle of whatever water aldi sells for 1.29 today. Might be cheaper elsewhere but thats less than 6.50 for 25L.  For an all grain batch you will probably need more than that. Assuming you're brewing 20L with 5kg of grain you would be starting with close to 15 L for the mash (3L/kg) and then losing about 5L to grain absorbtion. Another 10 L for the sparge and you would get 20L ish pre boil. If you evaporate 4 or 5 L and factor in trub losses then your at less than 15L into the fermenter at a higher gravity than you were expecting.   I'd buy at least 35L to be sure you have enough.

As for the lime, I think the recommended method is to preboil and cool all of your brewing water. this will precipitate a lot of the lime.  then decant the water leaving the solid behind. Running it through a brita first would probably help aswell.  One of the elders will be along shortly to correct me if i'm wrong on that.

Good luck with your first all grain, and welcome to the slippery slope   

[phynes1]

I also have very limey water. I'm not an expert on water chemistry, but from what I gather, limey water means a lot of dissolved Calcium. Which means my water is more alkaline than required for brewing. This was impacting my beers, they were very minerally, and mouth feel wasn't great. I read that a small amount of acid malt in the mash can drop your mash pH, I tried this, and it has definitely improved my beers.

Someone with more knowledge on this subject may be able to shed more light on this for both of us.

[Tom]

I'll wade in here, with a water alkalinity of between 120 and 240 ppm!
Now, you can't necessarily see the alkalinity, so if it's cloudy it's possibly some sort of water treatment, rather than alkalinity.

If your kettle is furring up, though, or you replace dishwashers every 8 months, then yes, alkalinity is your expensive PITA.

For very little money you can get kH indicators from Salifert, which are easy to use, and provide you with enough information to be able to deal with your alkalinity on a brew by brew basis. For the £7 - 8 they are, for over 100 goes, well worth the money.

Alkalinity reduces the effectiveness of phosphates in the mash, which WOULD otherwise bring your mash into the perfect pH range for good conversion (5.2 - 5.6pH). In order to counter this, you need to remove the alkalinity by:
Pre-boiling the water and siphoning off the liquor
adding an acid.
Adding acidic malts

My advice is to pretreat ALL of your brewing liquor, not just the mash liquor.

CRS is available from home brew shops, and is a blend of Sulphuric and Hydrochloric acids, and you'll need about 20 - 50ml depending on your alkalinity. I use about 2/3s of what I have calculated I need using the Salifert, then remeasure, to make sure. The current batch of CRS is weaker than the product spec says, so you will need a little more (about 25% more).
This acid turns the calcium carbonate or bicarbonate into Carbon Dioxide and Calcium Sulphate and Calcium Chloride in easily calculated amounts. This is ideal if you're brewing something to which you were already planning on adding those salts.

Acidic malts are either roasted malts, crystal malts, or rather obviously Acid malt. These will all help lower the pH using, off the top of my head, the acids generated by maillard reactions, or by using lactic acid in the case of acid malt (also known as Saurmalt).

I haven't tried lactic acid by itself, but it's recommended for lagers, as it doesn't add any sulphates or chlorides.
Phosphoric acid has been more trouble than it's worth.

Having water high in alkalinity doesn't necessarily mean you have water high in permanent hardness (which is sulphates and chlorides). You'll need a water report to figure those out, though the alkalinity is the first thing to get right.

A final note, if you're brewing a pale ale with no character malts in alkaline water, bring your alkalinity ppm down to TEN, not the recommended level of 50ppm which is for pale ales WITH character malts (such as crystal).

If anyone wants more info or clarification, please ask away.

[cruiscinlan]

I haven't tried lactic acid by itself, but it's recommended for lagers, as it doesn't add any sulphates or chlorides.
Phosphoric acid has been more trouble than it's worth.

Do you mind saying why you've trouble with phosphoric acid?

Also what calculator do you use to decide the acid additions?  Do you use a syringe or add by weight?

[padraic_]

thanks for all that folks.

That's a lot of info to take on.

I'm going with Aldi bottled water today, but will try to take all this in and use water from home next time.

[Beerbuddha]

Limey water will inactive star San if you use it. I have well it's hard as nails like me but it neutralizes the star san.
Correct me if I'm wrong anyone.

[BrewDorg]

Could you just add more Starsan until the pH drops? Or is that somehow unsafe?

[Beerbuddha]

It's a blend of phosphoric acid I'd say you could but I'm no chemist. I use phosphoric to adjust acidity of mash but no issues issues issues.

I remember when I used CRS years ago and after I added it to water it made water crystal clear thats when I started looking closer at my water.

[Tom]

I haven't tried lactic acid by itself, but it's recommended for lagers, as it doesn't add any sulphates or chlorides.
Phosphoric acid has been more trouble than it's worth.

Do you mind saying why you've trouble with phosphoric acid?

Also what calculator do you use to decide the acid additions?  Do you use a syringe or add by weight?

Happy to! Phosphoric acid behaves differently to hydrochloric & sulphuric acids, somehow, and where the last two don't negatively affect the calcium in your mash, by adding phosphoric acid you can actually limit the amount of calcium that your water can 'hold', in other words it lowers the saturation point, to levels depending on your starting alkalinity and your finished pH. At the levels that I have, above 150ppm, it would bring my liquor's calcium saturation point to 30ppm, which is way below useful. I did faff about with it twice, but it's simply too much hassle given that I'm happy with CRS, and the salts that it adds (Sulphate and Chloride). For more detail read Palmer and Kanninsky's 'Water' in the brewing elements series. It's a challenging read though, if like me you're a trained musician and not a trained chemist!

I have a chart roughly printed out to decide my additions. It says basically how much alkalinity can be removed by a certain quantity of CRS, and what quantity of CaSO4 and CaCl would be added by that.

http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=107

It gives you a series of additions, so 6mls CRS in 10l will reduce 112ppm alkalinity. If you want to reduce 100ppm, you can divide 6mls by 112, and multiply by 100 to get your answer. Remember, that's in TEN litres.

I don't use a syringe, as I'm brewing 220 litres, so treating 300 litres of liquor. I use a bottle and a half per brew!

[edit to add apostrophe].