Water chemistry

The app works out what water you get from your source water and the salts you add. None of it is required. If you don't treat your water, leave the fields empty and the batch goes ahead.

Source water analysis

1. Open Settings → Water analysis.
2. Copy the ions from the water utility's or lab's report: calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate, chloride and bicarbonate, all in mg/l.
3. Fill in the Date of analysis and the Source of the analysis, for example the water utility or your own well.
4. Click Save analysis.

The app shows the Residual alkalinity straight away and hints which beers the water suits. The analysis applies to every recipe.

The target in the recipe

Each recipe has a Water card. You enter the target profile in ions, not in grams of salt. That way it holds in another brewery with different water.

• You can Prefill from a city: Pilsen, Munich, Vienna, Dortmund or Burton.
• Fill in the Brewing water volume, meaning mash and sparge water together. Without it, a salt dose cannot be turned into a concentration.

Salts and the resulting water

For each ion, the table shows the Source, Target and Resulting columns.

• The app suggests salts for the target sulfate and chloride. Click Write among the materials to add them to the recipe.
• Salts are ordinary materials. They come off stock and appear in the batch sheet like everything else. In stock, each one must be marked as a Water treatment salt, otherwise it is left out of the calculation.
• The calculation works with gypsum, calcium chloride, Epsom salt, table salt and baking soda. Chalk is not offered, because it barely dissolves in the mash.
• You see the Sulfate : chloride ratio and how it shifts bitterness and fullness.

Alkalinity and acid

From the beer's colour, the app shows the recommended range of residual alkalinity. When the water sits above it, the app works out a dose of 80 % lactic or 75 % phosphoric acid in millilitres. This is an exact calculation, not an estimate.

The app does not calculate mash pH itself. An estimate would be off by around ±0.1 pH, so measure pH with a pH meter.