Beersmith 3 - Total Water Mineral Content

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cheeseyfeet

cheeseyfeet

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Hi all,

I'm still getting to grips with BS3 and the water tab. I thought that I had it cracked but something is puzzling me.

I add salts to both my mash and sparge water. I had always assumed that the adjusted water profiles section related to the profile of the whole volume of water (i.e. mash + sparge), but I now know that it only displays the mash profile.

The section I mean is highlighted in the red box -

BS3Water.jpg


As you can see, the calcium value is 51 which equals the mash salt additions + my base water. I would have expected this to read 100.7 which is (mash + base) + (sparge + base).

My questions are -

  • When people talk about a water profile for a style, don't they mean the whole volume of water? Or are they just talking about the mash?
  • This doesn't make sense to me, you could target a specific mash profile for a pilsner, then add a crazy amount of salts and completely ruin the final taste?
  • If I want to target a specific style, how would I go about understanding what proportion of mineral content should come from the mash vs the sparge, should I target an overall content then divide by the water ratios?
  • When Beersmith matches a target profile, is it therefore only matching a mash water profile? If so , then why does it add sparge salts?
  • Why doesn't Beersmith give me an overall water profile for the full volume of water used, am I missing it?
Oh dear, lots of questions!

If anyone can help me navigate this I would really appreciate it!

EDIT - wait, have I completely misunderstood how ppm adds up?
 
Last edited:
I dont use beersmith and dont know a huge amount about water jiggery pokery, but when you adjust your water profile you do the whole volume, so I assume thats what BS3 means. Sorry cant answer any other Q's
 
Your mash water profile = mash water profile + sparge water profile. Sounds a bit weird I know, but your sparge water profile is effectively zero I think.

Imagine it this way, you adjust your mash to meet your target profile. You then sparge which is effectively diluting everything. So the adjustments to your sparge water are just enough so that when added to the mash, the values stay the same (i.e. don't decrease by becoming diluted).

So lets take Ca for example. If that was 97PPM in the mash, once you've finished your sparge it should still be 97PPM.
 
Last edited:
Ghillie said:
Your mash water profile = mash water profile + sparge water profile. Sounds a bit weird I know, but your sparge water profile is effectively zero I think.

Imagine it this way, you adjust your mash to meet your target profile. You then sparge which is effectively diluting everything. So the adjustments to your sparge water are just enough so that when added to the mash, the values stay the same (i.e. don't decrease by becoming diluted).

So lets take Ca for example. If that was 97PPM in the mash, once you've finished your sparge it should still be 97PPM.
Click to expand...

Nail on the head there Mr G.

This is why the mineral dose is that much smaller for the sparge. Ok the water vol is that much less. But ultimately you want to maintain that water profile your aiming to hit.

But - it does not take account of any difference the grain may make to absorbing any ions and any changes that may come about from that.

So you could just treat the whole vol with the base adjusted profile and then tick the box for adding during the boil which will ultimately correct your water overall.

Make sense?
 
I've realised that this boils down to me having a senior moment and not understanding PPM! i.e if I have 10 litres of mash water at 100PPM of calcium and 10 litres of sparge at 100PPM calcium this does NOT = 200PPM!

Looking at beersmith again, it attempts to make the mash and sparge waters match the selected profile, therefore keeping the overall PPM of minerals the same for the whole volume of water.

It is a bit annoying that it doesn't display your overall mineral contents for mash and sparge if you've added salts yourself, but I've now got a wee spreadsheet knocked up to help me.

Thanks all!
 

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