Water Chemistry Adjustments using Brewfather

In my previous blog post, I gave a high level overview of water chemistry and how some of the key elements can impact on your brewing, and final beer product.

In this post, I'll be covering how to take the information you already have about your brewing water, and enter it into the Brewfather app, so it will tell you how much of each of the four (3) key water adjustment ingredients you need to add. 

The key ingredients I'm talking about are;

1. Calcium Chloride
2. Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salts)
3. Calcium Sulphate (Gypsum)

Step 1. Adding your Water Profile to Brewfather

1. Login to Brewfather
2. Select Profiles from the left hand menu
3. Select Water
   
   
   
   
   
4. Click + Add Profile (lower right corner) to add a new water profile
5. Enter the name for your water profile and enter all the values. If you have a value range - then take the average of the values and enter that. For example, my pH is  given as a range of 7.64 - 7.96. So I'll add 7.64 + 7.96 then divide it by 2 which gives 7.8
   
   Values are in ppm which is the same as mg/L.
   
   If your Bicarbonate is given as a HCO3 value, then multiply it by 1.22 to get the HCO3 value.
   
   
6. Click Save to save your water profile
   
   
   
   
   

Step 2. Apply your water profile to a recipe

1. Assuming you're still logged into Brewfather - select Recipes from the left menu and open the recipe you wish to apply water adjustments to
2. Scroll down to the Water section towards the bottom of the page and click the Calc button
   
   
   
   
   
3.  Click the gear icon in the top right corner to open Settings
   
   
   
   
   
4. Check the boxes for Mash, Sparge and Auto for the ingredients Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate), Calcium Chloride and Epsom Salt (Magnesium Sulphate)
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Click the green gear icon in the top right corner to close the Settings window
6. Scroll down to the Source section then click the button to change the water source
   
   
   
   
   
7. Select the Water Profile you setup previously then click the Save button
8. Scroll down to the Target Profile section and click the change target water profile button then select the target water profile you wish to use. There is a decent range of default target profiles such as Balanced, Hoppy, Lager, Pale Ale etc. 
   
   In this example I'm going to use the Pale Ale profile. Click Save once you've selected it
9. Click the Auto button to have the adjustments automatically calculated and added to your recipe
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. Click the button to Save Adjustments to Recipe
11. Under the Misc section of your recipe you should now see values added for water chemistry (as per the options we set in point 4 above)
    
    
    

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