Mashing or Finished Water Profile?

The Supporter's version of Bru'n Water includes an interesting dual reporting of both the water profile in the mashing water and in the overall finished water. Why are there two? Which should I target?

The program reports these two results because sometimes their concentrations can differ.

Usually, we are trying to match the overall finished water profile to your targeted water. We do that generally for beer flavor reasons. However, there are cases where it is helpful to add ALL the calcium salts (that were calculated for the entire batch) to the mash. This drives the calcium content higher in the mashing water which helps to reduce oxalate content in the wort. Oxalate is not desirable in wort since it leads to beerstone in your brewery or kidney stones in you!

It is this case where you should monitor the mashing water profile and its calcium content. It appears that about 40 ppm Ca in the mashing water is sufficient to remove a significant amount of the oxalate from the wort.

Since all the calcium salts for the batch were added to the mash with this technique, the overall calcium content is reduced when the low calcium sparging water is added to the mash. So, there is a need to know both the mashing and overall finished water profile information.

Even if you can't get your mashing water Ca content to 40 ppm, driving it higher with this "add all the calcium salts to the mash" technique does still help reduce some of the oxalate. In addition, this technique also helps drive down mashing pH, which can help reduce the amount of acid you add to the mash. This is a win-win.

Having this dual water profile report and Bru'n Water's capability to manage this "add all calcium salts to the mash" technique is another reason to become a Bru'n Water supporter.