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Date: 28 Nov 2006 16:14:05
From: JoeyB
Subject: How much Salt to Add to Adjust Water ?
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Ok. I'm baffled. I've been using Promash to adjust my water for a
Kolsh. I've got the amount of salt to use as ounces of NaCL. So now I
go to the store to buy 'salt' I find non-iodine, table salt, sea salt,
canning salt, and kosher salt. Not ONE of these are pure salt or NaCL.
At the most, some are 25% 'sodium' (I'm taking sodium to mean sodium
chloride right? Its not catching fire in water so I guess that's right)
So I'm wondering what Promash means when it says NaCl? Pure NaCl? In
which case I'd need to put 4 times the mass Promash specifies into my
water treatment if what I'm using is only 25% 'sodium' ? I'm hoping the
other stuff in the salt doesn't impact my mineral content. These
additives include Yellow Prussiate of soda in the kosher salt (80%) and
calcium silicate (75%) in the table salt. What does this stuff do to
brewing water.
So what do I do? For 25% sodium salt use (Promash NaCl mass / .25) ???
Anybody want to take a shot?
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Date: 28 Nov 2006 18:54:39
From: JoeyB
Subject: Re: How much Salt to Add to Adjust Water ?
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Ahh Yes. Thanks Dave. It's all clear now. You're right. I was thinking
of the 25% as a percentage of the mass that was NaCl and that they
really meant NaCl when they said sodium. I should have taken a moment
longer to look at the label. They really are talking about sodium too -
just bound to chlorine in the molecule. It gives me a warm and fuzzy
when the numbers come out identical like that. You know your doing
something right.
Thanks - I'll now brew with the confidence that my kolsh embodies water
that is as close a facsimilie to Cologne water as one might ever hope
to achieve with science! Hopefully it'll taste good too.
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Date: 28 Nov 2006 20:29:41
From: David M. Taylor
Subject: Re: How much Salt to Add to Adjust Water ?
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"JoeyB" <joseph.burgel@gm.com > wrote in message
news:1164759245.165320.5610@n67g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> Ok. I'm baffled. I've been using Promash to adjust my water for a
> Kolsh. I've got the amount of salt to use as ounces of NaCL. So now I
> go to the store to buy 'salt' I find non-iodine, table salt, sea salt,
> canning salt, and kosher salt. Not ONE of these are pure salt or NaCL.
> At the most, some are 25% 'sodium' (I'm taking sodium to mean sodium
> chloride right? Its not catching fire in water so I guess that's right)
> So I'm wondering what Promash means when it says NaCl? Pure NaCl? In
> which case I'd need to put 4 times the mass Promash specifies into my
> water treatment if what I'm using is only 25% 'sodium' ? I'm hoping the
> other stuff in the salt doesn't impact my mineral content. These
> additives include Yellow Prussiate of soda in the kosher salt (80%) and
> calcium silicate (75%) in the table salt. What does this stuff do to
> brewing water.
>
> So what do I do? For 25% sodium salt use (Promash NaCl mass / .25) ???
>
> Anybody want to take a shot?
Okay, I'll bite. I haven't done this in a while, but I am a chemical
engineer by degree so I'm pretty sure I know what I am talking about.
First things first, I think you are confusing the %Daily Value on the
Nutrition Facts with the atomic constitution of the salt. There is no
comparison. 25% of the Daily Value for sodium is NOT the same thing as
saying that 25% of the stuff in the salt container is sodium. Perhaps the
average human body needs 2.36 grams of salt per day to run efficiently, but
this has absolutely nothing to do with the percentage of sodium ions in the
container of salt that you bought. I don't know exactly where you're
getting your figures that 75% of the salt is calcium silicate, that is
simply not true. I'm pretty sure the calcium silicate is only present in
trace amounts, probably no more than 2% or something like that (or whatever
the government allows). Okay, now for the real chemistry stuff....
I took a look at the Nutrition Facts on my ordinary everyday Morton salt in
the cupboard, and found that it has 590 mg sodium per 1.5 g serving. Sounds
like we can get a simple percentage by weight using that information. So,
dividing that out, you've got 590/1500 = 39.3% sodium by weight. Okay.
Using the molecular weights for sodium and chlorine (available on any good
periodic table, I got mine from wikipedia), you can figure out what you'd
expect to get percentagewise between sodium and chloride ions. Since the
chemical formula for salt is NaCl, there is one sodium ion for every
chloride ion. Looking at the molecular weights for each of these elements,
one gram-mole (consisting of 6 times 10 to the 23rd molecules) of salt
contains about 22.98977 grams of sodium ions and 35.453 grams of chloride
ions, for a total of about 58.443 grams per gram-mole. The gram-mole thing
doesn't mean much, in fact when you divide the numbers out for a percentage,
the units disappear, so it's really pretty much an arbitrary amount. So
anyway... dividing the numbers out, the percentage of sodium ions in a mole
of salt is 22.98977/58.443 = 39.3%.
Well, whaddaya know.... we got precisely the same number here as we did from
the Nutrition Facts on the salt container! 39.3% for both calculations.
So anyway, the conclusion is this: ordinary Morton table salt contains 39.3%
sodium ions by weight, and 60.7% chloride ions by weight. Like I said
earlier, the calcium silicate that they have listed there is really
miniscule in comparison and for our purposes you can ignore it. You've got
basically a very pure sodium chloride salt. You do NOT need to do any funky
adjustments like multiplying by 4 or anything like that. Use what Promash
tells you and you'll be fine. It seems you've confused the %Daily Value
with something other than what it really represents, which has nothing to do
with brewing chemistry whatsoever. In short, you're worrying and you
shouldn't worry. Haven't you heard? Worrying is bad for your beer! ;)
I don't have any sea salt handy in my cupboard so I can't run the same
analyses for that, sorry. And I'm sure it would be a much more complex
calculation since there's probably numerous different salts in it, not just
sodium chloride. You're better off staying away from sea salt, IMHO.
Hope this helps.
--
Dave
"Fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking." -- Brad Paisley
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Date: 28 Nov 2006 17:53:21
From:
Subject: Re: How much Salt to Add to Adjust Water ?
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Thats a good question. I know that typical Sodium content for light
lager beers is in the range of 15-170 ppm with an average content of 58
ppm. Ales may range from 40-230 ppm but once you get above 150 ppm the
salinity is noticed so 150 ppm is often mentioned as the upper limit
for finished product.
Luckily, living in Portland, the water is so good for brewing...I
rarely have to treat at all. What is the data for the water you are
using? Are you using tap water? Filtered tap water? Spring water? Your
local water company should have data for you. Do you plan on adding
other minerals?
JoeyB wrote:
> Ok. I'm baffled. I've been using Promash to adjust my water for a
> Kolsh. I've got the amount of salt to use as ounces of NaCL. So now I
> go to the store to buy 'salt' I find non-iodine, table salt, sea salt,
> canning salt, and kosher salt. Not ONE of these are pure salt or NaCL.
> At the most, some are 25% 'sodium' (I'm taking sodium to mean sodium
> chloride right? Its not catching fire in water so I guess that's right)
> So I'm wondering what Promash means when it says NaCl? Pure NaCl? In
> which case I'd need to put 4 times the mass Promash specifies into my
> water treatment if what I'm using is only 25% 'sodium' ? I'm hoping the
> other stuff in the salt doesn't impact my mineral content. These
> additives include Yellow Prussiate of soda in the kosher salt (80%) and
> calcium silicate (75%) in the table salt. What does this stuff do to
> brewing water.
>
> So what do I do? For 25% sodium salt use (Promash NaCl mass / .25) ???
>
> Anybody want to take a shot?
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