is their a need to acidfy the water

Czech Pale Lager  ingredients 7.5 lbs. (3.4 kg) German Pilsner malt,7 oz. (0.2 kg) Caravienne malt,6 oz. (0.17 kg) German wheat malt, and 5 oz. (0.14 g) German acidulated malt.
using RO water, is their any need to add calcium chloride to either the mash or to the sparge.
The recipe calls for 5 grams in the mash and a further 3 grams in the sparge.

any comments would be appreciated.

onedown

There's a couple of issues going on in this recipe.

The concept of adding CaCl is to aid both the mash and fermentation. The Chloride is a mash buffer and the Calcium is an important yeast nutrient.

The acidulated malt is there to help put the mash pH into the proper range for complete conversion.

So, on the face of it, they make sense.

The CaCl additions are backwards, to me. I'd use 1 gm/gallon, max. So, the 3 gm is better for the mash. The acidulated malt shouldn't be more than 2% of the total grist, and the recipe calls for 4%.

In my opinion, the acidulated malt isn't needed at all and the CaCl could be cut in half to .5 gm/gallon.

A couple of comments on this.  Brewfun is basically right in his analysis.  The ratio of Calcium Chloride should be based upon the water volumes of infusion vs sparge and without that understanding it is hard to decide how to split the CaCl addition.  I would guess that Brewfun has the basic split correct based upon the most common infusion methods used.

Chloride helps to lower the pH, but it also helps to emphasize malt flavors over hop bitterness in the final beer.  As such, the mineral additions may be customized to the particular water source the author of the recipe had on hand.

the water profile is Pilsen, I'm going to use 14 quarts of water in the mash and sixteen quarts for sparging.
I can't alter the grain bill because the malt has been crushed. I'm thinking now of just adding a 1/2 gram per
gallon of calcium chloride to the sparge water.

onedown

onedown said:

the water profile is Pilsen, I'm going to use 14 quarts of water in the mash and sixteen quarts for sparging.
I can't alter the grain bill because the malt has been crushed. I'm thinking now of just adding a 1/2 gram per
gallon of calcium chloride to the sparge water.

Click to expand...

Just realize that the dosing rate I gave you is for the full batch volume. That'd be 2.5 g CaCl for the batch.