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water preparation for belgian strong golden ale

reemj

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hi, i am looking for a professional opinion, on how should i prepare or what needs to be done to my water for brewing this specific beer style, Belgian strong golden ale. attaching the water analysis
i am using a one step mash.
thanks

dissolved solids ** 299 mg/L
pH * 7,48
Turbidity ** 0,16
Free chlorine ** 0,01 mg/L
Combined chlorine ** 0,00mg/L
Total Hardness ** 295 mg/L
Calcium ** 274 mg/L
Magnesio ** 21 mg/L
Color apparent ** 0 mg/L (U-Pt-Co)
Total Metal ** 0,01 mg/L
Manganese ** 0,034 mg/L
Sulfat ** 23 mg/L
Nitrate ** 0,8 mg/L
Conductivity * 615 μS/cm
Salinity ** 0,30‰
 
The first thing is to treat for chlorine. This is the best choice for brewing. If you can't use a suitably sized charcoal filter, then potassium metabisulfite may be the fastest way to treat water on a commercial scale. You might have to label the beer as containing sulfite, even though the treatment is below the level that naturally occurs in fermentation. Check with your local labeling laws.

The water you're showing closely matches what might be found in Brussels & Brabant, Belgium. So there's not much to do, there.

With water use in brewing, Residual Alkalinity (RA) is the power of the water to buffer mash pH. The higher the RA, the higher the mash pH. Yours seems to be well over 150, which suggests that you'll want to adjust your mash and sparge water. The time tested treatment is to boil and cool the water to precipitate CaCO3. In your case, this can reduce the RA to where further adjustment may not be needed. If you don't have time or space to do that, you'll need to adjust your mash and sparge water.

To find out how much treatment is needed, you'll want to conduct a test mash.

Pulverize 100 gm pale malt
Add 225 gm* hot water to target 65 to 70oC mash. The actual temperature isn't too critical.
Hold for 15 minutes, then chill to room temperature. >>*The amount of water added should reflect your actual liquor to grist ratio.

Measure the mash pH with a calibrated meter. The meter needs to have a resolution of +/- .01 pH to be accurate. Make sure that the calibration solutions match that spec, too.

What you'll read is the resting pH of the mash without treating your water. It's important to test your pale malt because differing maltsters end up with differing acidity and this can throw off mash pH significantly.

Once you know your pH, you can look at adjusting. The easiest mash adjustment is acidulated malt. Starting at 2% of the pale malt is going to bring you close and likely no more than 3%. Sparge adjustment is equally easy if you titrate the acid of your choice into room temperature water until you get a pH of 6. Some brewers want to go lower, but that's not my preference.
 
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