Water Calculator
Adjust water mineral content, pH, and acid additions to match target profiles for any beer style.
Set up your Source water profile
Go to profiles in the main menu and select Water. Select the default source profile, and adjust the values to match your water report. For more info click the link below.
WaterQuick Start Workflow
Set up your source water — Go to Profiles > Water and enter your municipal water report values (see Water Profiles for unit conversions)
Open the water calculator — In your recipe, scroll to the Water section and click Calc
Check your source — Your default water profile is pre-selected. Click Change if you need a different source
Pick a target profile — Select a target matching your beer style (e.g., "Pale Ale", "Hoppy", "Lager")
Click Auto — The magic wand button calculates mineral additions (Gypsum, Calcium Chloride, Epsom Salt) to reach the target
Adjust acid for pH — In the Acid section, select your acid type, set the concentration, and adjust the amount until the estimated mash pH reads 5.2–5.4. You can also use Auto calculate to calculate the mash acid amount from your target pH
Set sparge acid — If sparging, enter your source pH and target sparge pH (5.5–6.0 recommended)
Save — The mineral and acid additions are saved with your recipe
Locate the water calculator
Normally you do not want to start adjusting your water until the rest of your recipe is done. When you have created your recipe and are ready to start adjusting your water you will find the water calculator in the water section of the recipe designer.
This will open the water calculator.
At the top you will see your current mash water room temperature pH. All pH values should be measured when the wort is cooled down to room temperature.
The top of the calculator also shows the selected pH calculation engine. Use the edit button beside the engine name, or open the cog icon, to choose the engine and adjust water calculator settings.
pH calculation engine
Brewfather includes multiple pH calculation engines so you can choose how you want the Water Calculator to estimate mash pH:
Water Engine 1 (Default) — The default Brewfather pH engine.
Water Engine 2 — An alternative engine that is tuned differently from the default engine, with extra settings for crystal, roasted, and acidulated malts.
Water Engine 3 (Advanced) — An advanced engine with Grain pH Profiles and per-malt profile assignments.
The selected engine affects the estimated mash pH and acid suggestions in the Water Calculator. Water Engine 2 and Water Engine 3 can give different estimates than the default engine for the same recipe. If you change engine on an existing recipe, review the estimated pH and acid additions before saving the adjustments back to the recipe.
Grains
The first section of the water calculator shows your grain bill, and the calculator automatically assigns a grain type to it. Verify that the grain and grain color matches the grains you will be using, and that the grain type is correct.
If you use any crystal, roasted or acidulated malt, make sure they are assigned the right category as they have a big impact on the estimated pH. Adjust if needed.
You can also ignore the grain, making it not count towards the pH calculation. Useful if you are just steeping that specific grain.
Grain pH Profiles for Water Engine 3
When Water Engine 3 (Advanced) is selected, the grains section shows Grain pH Profile controls for each fermentable. These controls let you:
Use automatic matching
Choose a built-in malt profile
Choose a custom Grain pH Profile
Enter custom values for one grain in the recipe
Mark acidulated malt
Ignore a grain for mash pH
Use Manage in the Grain pH Profiles section to add, edit, delete, and assign custom profiles. Assignments are useful when a malt name in your recipe should always use a specific profile.
Water Volumes
Next section shows your water volumes, pulled from your recipe and equipment profile. Make sure they are correct. Adjust levels if needed. For example you might want to add more sparge water volume if you have some dead-space in the sparge water heater.
Water Source
Your default water source profile is preselected and should normally not need any alterations if you have already set up your water profile. If you have multiple source water profiles, you can click the change button as needed to choose another profile as your source.
Target Profile (optional)
If you want to target a specific water profile for your water adjustment you can optionally select or create a target profile. The target profile is used for when you want to use the auto adjust feature to match your source water against this target. The target water profile is also what shows as a diff under your total water profile when adjusting.
Style Comparison
The style section allows you to compare your total water profile against a general recommended range or against a specific style recommendation.
If your target profile is above or below the recommended range it will show as red. And green if you are within the recommended range.
To select other style range recommendations click the dropdown to the right and select the style you want to compare against.
Adjusting your minerals
This section of the water adjustment calculator is where you alter the actual water mineral additions. If you have created or selected a target profile, you can click the AUTO button to get a close match or starting point to fine tune the additions.
With a click on the auto button you will get a closer match to your target profile depending on what ingredients are activated and set to be auto adjusted.
In this example we got a good match on the values that the activated ingredients adjust and more or less hit our desired Calcium, Magnesium, Chloride and Sulfate levels and our desired Sulfate/Chloride ratio.
Fine tune as needed or manually adjust your values to hit your desired total water profile.
Potassium Carbonate is available as a water agent. It can be enabled or disabled for mash and sparge additions from Water Settings, like the other water adjustment ingredients.
Sparge Water
When adjustment of sparge water is enabled, it will automatically calculate the needed amount to match your desired total water profile. When deactivated these minerals will be added to your mash water.
Note: In the current UI the sparge mineral addition fields are calculated automatically and shown as read-only (greyed out). If you want to tweak the numbers manually, disable sparge adjustments and adjust the mash additions instead.
Acid
Mash
This section allows you to adjust your mash pH down with acid. Select your acid type with the dropdown, set the concentration to your acid strength, and adjust the amount to match your desired mash pH.
The mash acid selector includes Acetic, Hydrochloric, Lactic, Phosphoric, Sulfuric, Citric, Tartaric, Malic, and CRS.
Use Auto calculate to calculate the acid amount from the target pH entered in the acid row. After using Auto calculate, review the resulting amount and save the water adjustments to the recipe when you are ready.
Sparge
This section allows you to get a calculated amount for how much acid to add to your sparge water to reach a desired target pH. Enter your source pH and sparge water target pH. Usually you want your sparge water pH between 5.5 and 6 to reduce tannin extraction.
Save adjustments to your recipe
Changes made in the water calculator are applied to the recipe only when you click Save adjustments to recipe. If you close or cancel the water calculator, the recipe keeps its previous water settings and misc additions.
To automatically save your ingredients to the Misc section of your recipe, click the green Save adjustments to recipe button at the bottom.
Water Settings
To show the water settings click the cog in the top right of the water calculator.
In the water settings you have a list of all the ingredients available to the calculator. By default only a few of them are activated as these are the most common ingredients used in water adjustments. And only Gypsum, Calcium Chloride and Epsom Salt are activated for auto adjustment by default.
In the advanced section you can choose what form of Calcium Chloride you are using. The default is Dihydrate (flake). You can select Dihydrate, liquid or anhydrous. If you select liquid you can enter your concentration.
You can also select if your sparge water adjustment should be activated by default.
pH engine settings
Water Settings includes the pH calculation engine selector. The extra settings shown below the selector depend on the selected engine:
Water Engine 2 can remove crystal malts and roasted malts from the main mash calculation and lets you adjust acid malt strength.
Water Engine 3 (Advanced) shows the malt buffering correction factor and enables Grain pH Profiles in the Water Calculator.
Liquid Calcium Chloride unit
When Calcium Chloride is set to Liquid, you can choose whether the liquid amount is entered as g or ml. Set the concentration to match the solution you are using, then use the selected unit consistently when weighing or measuring your addition.
Potassium Carbonate
Potassium Carbonate can be enabled for mash and sparge additions in Water Settings. Enable it only when it is part of your water adjustment process.
Chalk
Using Chalk is not recommended, it is much preferred to use Baking Soda NaHCO3 (or Slaked Lime) to increase pH. The reason for this is that under normal conditions Chalk reacts slowly and you will not get the effect on pH that you want when you need it. Much of the Chalk you add to mash will end up sitting on the grains after sparging and some will make it through into the kettle and fermenter where it will continue to react and raising pH during parts of the process where you would want it to be falling.
There are work-arounds such as dissolving it in acid but you need to be careful that you don't acidify below pH 8.4 (at which pH all the carbonate has been converted to bicarbonate which does react rapidly enough to do what you want to do). One of the acids for this purpose is carbonic acid. To use it the Chalk (CaCO3) is placed in a pet bottle with water and CO2 injected to raise the pressure to the point where enough H2CO3 is dissolved to, in turn, dissolve the CaCO3. The goal is to get the CO3-- converted to Bicarbonate (HCO3-) and the tricky part is that as soon as the pressure is released the HCO3- will convert back to CO3-- and re-precipitate as microcrystals you cannot see and you think you have dissolved all the Chalk. And some of it is still dissolved. The problem is that you won't really be able to tell exactly how much you have dissolved. (Source: AJ Delange)
The option to activate Chalk is still there but use it carefully knowing the limitations.
General help
Solubility of minerals
Calcium Chloride is quite soluble. Calcium Carbonate (Chalk) is quite insoluble. Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) is not as soluble as Calcium Chloride, but much more soluble that Calcium Carbonate. Calcium Carbonate and Calcium Sulfate are both less soluble in hot water than cold (which is the reverse of the usual case). (Source: AJ Delange)
Calcium Chloride form
In the water calculator settings you can select between Anhydrous, Dihydrate and Liquid.
Anhydrous
Anhydrous is defined as without water. Therefore the anhydrous Calcium Chloride has a higher overall amount of calcium by weight.
CaCl2 which has a molecular weight of 110.98 g/mol. Allegedly this would mean it is 100% Calcium Chloride.
Anhydrous Calcium Chloride can be sold in pellet form.
Dihydrate
Calcium Chloride Dihydrate: CaCl2·2H2O has a molecular weight of 147.0 g/mol This means the dihydrate is theoretically at most: (110.98 g/mol/147 g/mol x 100%) = 75.50 % Calcium Chloride.
In the real world the Calcium Chloride Dihydrate is said to vary from 77% to 80% Calcium Chloride. But selecting Dihydrate / Flake in the settings is recommended.
Dihydrate is typically in a flake form.
Liquid
When selecting Liquid as form you can enter the strength/concentration of your solution.
When using liquid as form for the Calcium Chloride it will still save to your recipe in grams since the most accurate method to measure the liquid is by weighing it. Since the liquid can change volume based on temperature and other factors. This is intentional and means you should weigh the solution.
(Source)
Related docs
Last updated
Was this helpful?