North Texas Homebrewers Association

Just curious, who converts their solid Calcium Chloride to liquid?

Jimmy has mentioned that he does. I read about it on the Bru'n Water here: https://www.brunwater.com/articles/a-be ... m-chloride

I just made a little over two liters of liquid CaCl with a pound of anhydrous CaCl and two liters of distilled water. Pretty easy, you just want to use an ice bath for while you are mixing the solution. CaCl and water creates an exothermic reaction. Bru'n Water supports liquid CaCl.

I use the liquid CaCl method. You then have to take the specific gravity of the CaCl solution you created and plug that into Bru'n Water.

I use Beersmith to calculate my salt additions using the auto calculate part of the calculator. I then have to go back to Bru'n Water and input my salt additions to match what Beersmith calculated.

I have to play with it each time to remember how to do it. Then Bru'n Water tells me how many grams of the CaCl solution to add. I end up adding 10 to 20 grams of my CaCl solution, much more than the dry CaCl.

For a given Specific Gravity of the CaCl solution, I think I could just come up with a factor to multiply by the convert the dry mass to the liquid mass.

Is there more information on conversion? Martin references a chart but I don’t find it. I’d be interested in doing this. Seems like a good education article for the newsletter Jimmy, to your point about converting yourself, how do you know your CaCl hasn’t already been diluted by atmospheric humidity?

I'll write something for the newsletter but it will not make the June newsletter.

Homework assignment for those using dry CaCl, What form of CaCl are you using?

anhydrous
monohydrate
dihydrate
tetrahydrate
hexahydrate

The form you used affects how you weigh out your salts.

Post your homework below.

What type is LD Carlson? That’s what I use.

Exactly. You don't know. Also CaCl is so hygroscopic, meaning is absorbs water from air, you will never know what you have.

The water mixture solves that problem. That is why I moved to it.

I am using brewersfriend for my water calculations and it does not have an option for liquid CaCL, only a choice of anhydrous or dihydrate.

I did go to LDCarlson storefront and they have the spec sheet available, and it lists it at Anhydrous. If that is correct them I have been selecting the wrong form (mostly) when setting up my water salt additions.

https://storefront.ldcarlson.com/storef ... a942ed987d

I did not get my Liquid CaCl article in the newsletter this month. The problem with CaCl is it is so hygroscopic that you will never know what you have. It could start out as anhydrous when you buy it. Every time you open the package it absorbs water from the air.