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  • Water issues for Pilsner

    Hey guys,
    Quick question . I am looking to brew a pilsner, and my water profile, though not bad is not to spec for a pilsner profile.
    My water profile is :
    Calcium 37.4
    Mag 5.8
    Sodium 5.2
    Chloride 7.1
    sulfate 50.7
    CaCO3 124
    pH 7.4

    I don't have an R.O. system .
    Are there any tricks to get me where I need to be ?

    Thank you guys so much for your help .
    Work is the curse of the drinking class

  • #2
    That's not bad for pilsener water - a little high in calcium compared to the original, but not seriously. I'd be tempted to try treatment of the cold liquor with lactic of phosphoric acid to achieve pH 7 and remove the bicarbonate, without increasing the calcium. Downside is that the water needs to be degassed, i.e. the CO2 produced as a result of the acid treatment removed before you heat it up or pass it through the PHE to cool the wort. One way is to bubble air through it, but you could recirculate from the bottom of the tank through the sprayball, recirculating for a while, until any CO2 tingle is absent and the pH stabilises. How long? No real idea, but I would expect no more than a couple of hours should do it - for each batch.

    Failing that - RO
    dick

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    • #3
      Could try to pre-boil the brewing waters for a little while and let them settle overnight to help precipitate minerals and remove some of the temporary hardness.
      Todd G Hicks
      BeerDenizen Brewing Services

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      • #4
        Originally posted by dick murton View Post
        Downside is that the water needs to be degassed, i.e. the CO2 produced as a result of the acid treatment removed before you heat it up or pass it through the PHE to cool the wort.
        I just add enough lactic acid to a cold liquor tank to hit a target effective alkalinity (e.g. 1 mEq/L with an assumed dissociation fraction of hydrogen ions from the lactic acid at my target mash pH) and use the water as-is for filling hot liquor tanks, cooling wort, and feeding the hot/cold water blenders for mashing and sparging. Doesn't the kettle boil get rid of the CO2? All my water ends up there regardless of the path it takes from the CLT, and I haven't seen any chalk deposits since implementing the treatment in early 2012.

        Joe

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        • #5
          Yes, the boil will get rid of the CO2, but you want rid of it before then as it might cause cavitation and (reputedly) corrosion problems particularly in the PHE when using the treated water for cooling the wort. If you haven't suffered with it yet, then it would seem you have got rid of the CO2 OK - in which case I would just continue as you have been doing.
          dick

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          • #6
            Cavitation has never been an issue for us (if all the bicarbonate/carbonate/carbonic acid molecules I neutralize with acid were converted to carbon dioxide and remained in the water, it would carbonate the water to approximately 0.13 volumes of CO2), but I wasn't aware that CO2 is corrosive. Good to know! Maybe I haven't had problems because CO2 corrosion is - as far as I can gather - mostly associated with carbon steel, and my heat exchanger plates are made of 316 stainless. The heat exchanger documentation also specifies "acid proof stainless steel" connections. The CO2 pressure from my water is also nowhere near what may be experienced in something like an oil pipeline, where CO2 corrosion seems to be a common problem.

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