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Water tab questions

Gaartok

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Two questions:
1. What does the Amount field in the Water Profile area do?  Isn't that just describing your source water (no amount needed)?
2. I have a HERMS system, and my sparge water volume that needs treating is much higher than the amount that gets into the wort.  Is there a way to increase the sparge volume on this page, but not in the mash page?  The "Sparge Vol" field is read-only on the water page.

Thanks,
Dave
 
In answer to your first question, one tactic that people use when their water is OK, but some content is too high for the type of beer they are trying to brew is to dilute their base water with distilled, deionized, or spring water to bring the overall mineral or salt content down before building back up the components that need to be replenished.

This spot allows them to add the waters in quantity to perform that task and to adjust the amount of each used.
 
Ok that makes sense.  So the "Base Water Profile" is the sum of the above water profiles, in proportion to each of their "Amounts".

 
I'm still trying to figure out the whole water thing but Beersmith 3 is making it a lot easier (for me anyway) to understand. I recently had a Ward Labs Brewers Test done on my water and set up a custom water profile. That is your "Base Water Profile". You start with that and then select a target profile that best fits the beer you are brewing. BS3 will compare the target with your base and tell you what you need to add in order to match that target.
 
Oginme said:
In answer to your first question, one tactic that people use when their water is OK, but some content is too high for the type of beer they are trying to brew is to dilute their base water with distilled, deionized, or spring water to bring the overall mineral or salt content down before building back up the components that need to be replenished.

This spot allows them to add the waters in quantity to perform that task and to adjust the amount of each used.

I normally add the RO/distilled water to my mash only, not the sparge water.  Is it possible to direct BS3 to do this?  It seems as though the amount added for dilution will be spread across both mash and sparge water, unless I am misunderstanding what is happening

Thanks
 
While the program will allow you to enter multiple water sources, it does not let you specify a source for each addition point (mash, sparge, top-off) but takes a combined profile from the water sources for its calculations.  Since you do not treat your sparge water at all, I would enter your RO water as your base and set the volume requirement to the level for the mash.  Then the program would only use that volume and mineral composition to match to the target profile.
 
Thanks, Oginme

Trying your suggestion now - BS3 still requests treatment of sparge water with CaCl, etc, so it doesn't seem to work (putting only the volume of the mash water including dilution).  If the recipe is set to include a sparge step, BS3 calculates additions for it, treating the mash water volume only.  As such, the final estimations will be out because the additions and results are only for 17.6L in this recipe, the total volume of water that is used 33.5L.

Does that make sense?  I hope my explanation is clear enough

I'm going to put a suggestion in for Brad to consider being able to indicate the mash and sparge water separately, as the current setting is based around collecting the entire volume of water (mixed in whatever proportions the user chooses), then treating it as mash or sparge.  It would also be useful to be able to just add the salts to the mash only (as Bru'n water is able to do)
 
You can adjust or delete the recommended salt additions as you want.
 
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