Water amendments, the ideal and Beersmith?

  Hi folks.

  First post here, and fairly new Beersmith user, lovin the software!

I do have a question though. Our water is very soft and seems to be abundant in little but chloramine. I am working up a Wee Heavy, and was targeting Edinborough water. With the fact that there are ideal amounts, and also that the ratios are as important, if not more important, than the amounts, it seems that the software came up way short on the calcs for amendments. It wouldn't seem like there would be a limit to additions and unless it negatively impacts pH I don't see why it didn't get closer? With a little fiddling I could get pretty darn close to the target and still keep ideals in balance. Is it me????

Thanks
  Scott

Scott,

I too have very clean water and find I need to make additions frequently to my water.    I'll let BS2 estimate the additions, but then I always adjust them myself to get the profile I need.    You are correct that you don't need to hit the exact numbers, ballpark the Ca and HCO3 numbers and focus on the ratio of the Cl and SO4.    One caution, take posted city water profiles with a grain of salt.  You don't know what a brewery may do to the water or what their water chemistry is.    Instead I would focus on the style of beer you want to brew and adjust from there.  Make sure you know your TA and water pH since that is where the mash pH will be made.     

For a malt forward Scottish Ale that is a deep amber color I would target:
Ca around 100
HCO3 around 150
Cl:SO4 balanced more to the Cl side

I believe the BS water profile has the Cl:SO4 ratio at 1:3 where I tend to keep mine closer to 1:1 since these are malt forward beers. 

A couple of important caveats:

• Try to keep the total salt additions less than 1g per gallon.  If you have really soft water it can be very tempting to over salt the water to reach the "targets"
• Try to keep the Cl levels below 100 ppm.  Particularly if you are adding a lot of CaCl to increase the Ca levels.  You can quickly develop a very minerally tasting water. 

Great post and a big help! Thought I was doing something wrong!

Thanks Ghosttrain.

Scott