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water profile

Russell

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when I set up an Irish Red ale in the beer smith water profile it calls for 1.8 grams of Calcium Cloride and .1 gram of Epsom salts. I match that with using Brun water I get different inforation. The PH goes down to 5.16 and it calls for 6.3 grams of Calcium cloride in the mash and .35 grams of Epsom salts in the mash with 9 Grams of calcium clorid and .5 grams of epsom in the sparge. it seems like a lot from the Brun water profile.

my water..... Calcuum 37, Magnisium 8, Sodium 45, Sulfate 53, cloride 37, Barcarbonate 145.

malts...... 9 lb Pale malt (2row),  6 oz. Crystal 40,  6 oz. Crystal 120,  6 oz. Roasted Barley.
 
First, make sure that the volume of water being treated by each program is the same.  Make sure they are treating the same volume.  IMHO, the values you are seeing from BrunWater seem to be a bit out of norm from what I am used to seeing, but I don't know the specific profile you are trying to match.

Next, are those salts the amounts that are added in the recipe by BeerSmith or just in the water profile tool?  When you add the profiled water to a recipe, BeerSmith will scale the water salt additions to match the water requirements of the recipe. 
 
The salts are my water from Aurora, Colorado.  The beer is an Irish red ale. OG of 1.047.
I made sure everything was the same, the water amounts along with the Grains. I chose the Amber setting for the beer because it is 17 srm. I will use 8.5 gallons of water all together so I chose 3.5 gallons for the mash in Brun water and 5 gallons for the Sparge. I have been told that Beer Smith goes by the total water used so I put 8.5 gallons in that space. The only thing that I could think of being different is the equipment profile, if that matters.
 
It matters quite a bit.  If you are using the salts strictly for pH control (which I am pretty sure BeerSmith assumes), then the salts will all be scaled for the initial infusion volume.  So, if you base your salt additions on 8.5 gallons of water, but add only 3.5 into the initial infusion, BeerSmith will scale the salt additions by 3.5/8.5 = 41%.

There are so many ways people have managed water salt additions and so many recommendations around it.  When I use my mash tun system and thus do a batch sparge, I add all the salts to the initial infusion water and leave the sparge water unadulterated.  I add other salts for profile matching to the wort just before the boil.  Other brewers I have talked to split the salts between the batch and sparge (like you seem to be doing).  There is no right or wrong, but BS2 seems to be set up to perform salt additions much in the same way I do.

So one way to set up the water profile is to base your salt addition on the initial infusion volume and add the sparge volume in the "dilute with" line on the water profile tool.  This, however, will not do what you are specifically doing with your process which is treating all the water to a common profile.  For that, you would probably be better off using BrunWater to calculate for you.

 
I normally get my water ready the night before adding .25 of a Campton tablet, on brew day I add all the salts to the water and split it to normally 3.5 or so gallons to mash with and the rest to mash out and sparge. But I think I have learned maybe it is best to add salts first to the mash then the sparge water.
I think I figured out my problem and that is that beer smith additions are for the full 8.5 gallons and bru'n water uses grams per gallon and breaks it up to mash and sparge water. What I was doing to compare them is to put the same amount from the Beer Smith recommended range of salts which are total grams per the 8.5 total gallons into Bru'n water grams per gallon space . Bru'n water is completely different and the additions are grams per gallons and the totals are separated under the Mash and sparge which should add up to the total amount of salts found on BrewSmith.
I hope I got this right.
thanks for putting up with my dense brain
 
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