Water Chemistry – do you care?

[chasjs]

I am trying to control more of the details of my brewing. I am now moving into the area of Water chemistry in my brewing – I recently purchased a pH meter to attempt to be able to monitor and record the pH on my batches. But that is about as far as I have gone with tweaking water chemistry. I read in books about water profiles for different styles of beer. I was wondering what others in the club do about water.

Does anyone start off with distilled or RO water and then build a profile from there?

My tap water is pretty soft (TDS of 22 ppm with about 15 ppm of Sulfate) so I it seems like I am not that far from distilled water to begin with. I talked to the engineer at the water department and he sent me a years worth of sampling and the variability was very small.

I do treat my water with a camden tablet to remove chlorine.

I was wondering what others in the club do with water profiles and how much do you think it impacts your beer?

[Sam]

I use RO water because my tap water has very high chloramine levels because I’m about .5 mile from the water plant. During the 2020 isolation, I did use tap water with camden tablets, and everything seemed OK.

I get my RO water from nearby Natural Grocers for 25cents a gallon. I add salts/minerals (gypsum, CaCl, salt, MgSO4, baking soda,…) to attempt to meet water profiles for different styles. I use the water calculator on Brewer’s Friend. It is simple to use and I hope it helps the beer. I haven’t yet experimented with changing mineral amounts to see how it affects beers, but that could happen… 🙂

Sam

Serving:
Genmaicha Brown Ale
Munich Dunkel
IPA

Conditioning:

Fermenting:
House Amber

Planning:
?

[Spauld]

Hey Chuck, you are now venturing down a path with many dark hidden tunnels! LOL That said, I think it’s a good idea for us brewers to give at least some thought to the water we use. That said, I stopped trying to mess with my water (for the most part), though I do monitor pH of my mash and boil… but not of the strike or sparge water. I stop short of trying to match the water for specific brewing regions (I used to do this for my various styles, depending on what I was brewing that weekend). Now I just adjust some of the mineral elements to help with the finished character but with an eye on pH, first and foremost. You discovered the same thing I did; Arvada water is reliably soft. Back when I ran a water report (many years ago) the profile came back almost identical to the town of Pilzn, Czechia. I thought perhaps that was why my pale biers always turned out pretty good! So brewing a darker bier is a bit more of a challenge for us Arvadans, since we generally do well to to adjust the carbonate levels UP. I’ve found that once you get this dialed-in, it tends to be somewhat consistent from one batch to another, thought I’ve heard that our tap water tends to vary in hardness over the course of the year, so I’m not sure how we would adjust fot that short of using R.O. water, and starting from a “clean slate”.

Your question about R.O. water will draw some hits. I know there are several in the club that take this approach. I’ve actually been interseted in experiementing with this as well.

[Author]

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