1st foray into water treatment…

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Yeah I’ve already tried that, they can’t.
I’ll be honest when I found that water calculator on this forum it seemed to look like water treatment was quite a simple thing, input your water and it tells you what to add to make it better- is this not the case? If not then I think I’m in way over my head.

Get the Brewfather web app - makes it a doddle.

 

[Monkhouse]

Are there some water companies that don’t use Chloramine? I can’t see chloramine listed on my water report?

 

[JockyBrewer]

Are there some water companies that don’t use Chloramine? I can’t see chloramine listed on my water report?

There are. Some will only use chlorine.

Do you get any kind of swimming pool smell from your water? That's chloramine. If you can't smell it then it's not worth worrying about.

 

[Agentgonzo]

Yeah I’ve already tried that, they can’t.
I’ll be honest when I found that water calculator on this forum it seemed to look like water treatment was quite a simple thing, input your water and it tells you what to add to make it better- is this not the case? If not then I think I’m in way over my head.

Water treatment is a simple thing. Add a few salts from the calculator, see how it turns out!

I don't understand why this has suddenly exploded into telling you that your need to buy a pH meter, grain mill, change malt supplier, steep separately and add campden tablets.

It's your beer and your brew, so you get to decide how to do it - not random strangers on the internet. If you want to add some salts to change the water profile and see how it turns out, then go for it! If you  don't want to do all the other stuff suggested here, then don't! You can still make fantastic beer without any of that complication!

Relax, don't worry, have a home brew.

 

[Agentgonzo]

I’m planning on doing the Jon finch hefe Weiss on the weekend, what beer style do I select in the water calculator to get the right water profile?

From the list of options on the forum calculator, I would probably pick 'lager' as that'll be closest to a hefe. Other calculators like brewfather (mentioned above) give more options, but are more complicated

 

[Monkhouse]

Water treatment is a simple thing. Add a few salts from the calculator, see how it turns out!

I don't understand why this has suddenly exploded into telling you that your need to buy a pH meter, grain mill, change malt supplier, steep separately and add campden tablets.

It's your beer and your brew, so you get to decide how to do it - not random strangers on the internet. If you want to add some salts to change the water profile and see how it turns out, then go for it! If you  don't want to do all the other stuff suggested here, then don't! You can still make fantastic beer without any of that complication!

Relax, don't worry, have a home brew.

Thankyou

 

[tigertim]

I'm on the same journey and watching this thread with interest - I'd previously never really had to worry about much more than just a half crushed campden tablet but, now that I've moved, I have water which is somewhat harder so I probably need to start doing something about it.

I enjoy good results but, I'm not sure I strive for the degree of perfection which would involve asking MM to bag all my crushed grains separately.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Steeping grains separately is not required to make good beer. Neither is milling your grain. Your water looks fine but you could add 2ml of acid to lower the alkalinity.

 

[Cwrw666]

Ok, while we're on the subject, I've never had my water analysed. It's spring water from volcanic rocks so I'd guess low in minerals but very low pH. It actually makes excellent pilsner, pale ales, bitters, even brown ales. But stout isn't nice at all. Just wondering if steeping the dark grains separately would solve that without adding minerals?

 

[Agentgonzo]

Just wondering if steeping the dark grains separately would solve that without adding minerals?

What difference does steeping separately make? This is the first I've ever heard of it.

But chucking a tea/tablespoon (whatever is the required quantity) of calcium bicarbonate into the mash water isn't exactly a difficult thing to do to balance the dark grains when making a stout.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Stout profile from Strange Steve

150 calcium

75 sulphate

180 chloride

100 alkalinity

 

[JockyBrewer]

I'm on the same journey and watching this thread with interest - I'd previously never really had to worry about much more than just a half crushed campden tablet but, now that I've moved, I have water which is somewhat harder so I probably need to start doing something about it.

I would say that if you're not seeing any recognisable change in the character of your beer then I don't think you need to change anything.

 

[tigertim]

I would say that if you're not seeing any recognisable change in the character of your beer then I don't think you need to change anything.

I've only got three brews under my belt whilst using this water so it's probably too early to say for certain, but I've been struggling with clarity more than I normwlly would and it feels like the beers are possibly slightly more bitter than I would expect. I'm not sure if these are traits I would expect from the change to this particular water but I may well do nothing for the next couple of brews and see how it goes. Appreciate the advice At least I know there's nothing horrific with this water which needs urgent correction!

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I've only got three brews under my belt whilst using this water so it's probably too early to say for certain, but I've been struggling with clarity more than I normwlly would and it feels like the beers are possibly slightly more bitter than I would expect. I'm not sure if these are traits I would expect from the change to this particular water but I may well do nothing for the next couple of brews and see how it goes. Appreciate the advice At least I know there's nothing horrific with this water which needs urgent correction!

What’s your local water profile and what beers are you planning?

 

[tigertim]

What’s your local water profile and what beers are you planning?

The profile is as above in post #27 and my next planned beer is David Heath's Verdant IPA, hopefully on Friday!

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Looking at the recipe on BF then using Strange Steve calculator

to 16 litres of mash water
Gypsum 5g
CaCl. 1.3g
Bicarb. 1.5g
Acid. 0

to 16 litres of sparge water
Gypsum 5g
CaCl. 1.3g
Bicarb. 0
Acid. 0.3 ml

plus 1/2 a campden tablet to both.

 

[foxy]

Ok, while we're on the subject, I've never had my water analysed. It's spring water from volcanic rocks so I'd guess low in minerals but very low pH. It actually makes excellent pilsner, pale ales, bitters, even brown ales. But stout isn't nice at all. Just wondering if steeping the dark grains separately would solve that without adding minerals?

Steeping the specialty / none fermentable grains or adding them at mash out leaves the base malt at a constant. The darker the grains the more acidic. If I am making a pale ale or a stout my salt additions remain the same, around the 5 gram of chloride and 5 gram of gypsum. The reason being I am only getting the buffering effect from the base malt.

I add my none fermentable at mash out 77C for 20 mins, cuts out the astringency associated with roast malt, also the foam negative effect the crystal brings to the beer.

Alexander L Combe 1, Justin K Ang, Charles W Bamforth
Cereal products differ enormously in their foam-stabilizing capabilities. Heavily roasted grains, notably black malt and roast barley, do have superior foaming properties. However, certain specialty malts, notably crystal malts, display inferior foam performance. The observed foaming pattern is a balance between their content of foam-positive and foam-negative components. Products such as pale malt do contain foam-negative materials but have a net balance in favour of foam-stabilizing entities. By contrast, wheat malt and especially black malt have a heavy preponderance of foam-positive components. Crystal malt displays the converse behaviour: it contains low-molecular-weight foam-negative species. Several of the cereal products appear to contain higher-molecular-weight foam inhibitors, but it appears that they are merely species that are of inherently inferior foam-stabilizing capability to the foaming polypeptides from egg white that were employed to probe the system. The foam-damaging species derived from crystal malt carried through to beers brewed from them.

 

[Monkhouse]

Steeping the specialty / none fermentable grains or adding them at mash out leaves the base malt at a constant. The darker the grains the more acidic. If I am making a pale ale or a stout my salt additions remain the same, around the 5 gram of chloride and 5 gram of gypsum. The reason being I am only getting the buffering effect from the base malt.

I add my none fermentable at mash out 77C for 20 mins, cuts out the astringency associated with roast malt, also the foam negative effect the crystal brings to the beer.

Alexander L Combe 1, Justin K Ang, Charles W Bamforth
Cereal products differ enormously in their foam-stabilizing capabilities. Heavily roasted grains, notably black malt and roast barley, do have superior foaming properties. However, certain specialty malts, notably crystal malts, display inferior foam performance. The observed foaming pattern is a balance between their content of foam-positive and foam-negative components. Products such as pale malt do contain foam-negative materials but have a net balance in favour of foam-stabilizing entities. By contrast, wheat malt and especially black malt have a heavy preponderance of foam-positive components. Crystal malt displays the converse behaviour: it contains low-molecular-weight foam-negative species. Several of the cereal products appear to contain higher-molecular-weight foam inhibitors, but it appears that they are merely species that are of inherently inferior foam-stabilizing capability to the foaming polypeptides from egg white that were employed to probe the system. The foam-damaging species derived from crystal malt carried through to beers brewed from them.

As helpful as I’m sure this is to allot of people I just find all that information to be daunting and quite frankly mind-blowingly scary. Like many others on this thread I’m happy with the beer I brew atm all I’m after is dipping my toes into water additions on a very basic level.
The calculator on here makes sense to me in that I’ve given it my water profile and it’s come back at me with what additions I could add if I wanted to possibly get an even better beer after fermentation.
It’s clearly going to take me a good many years of brewing experience to understand the ideas behind the benefits of cold steeping speciality grains overnight and the science behind it but for now, for me I’m comfortable with trusting an online forum calculator and peoples very basic instructions for improvements.
I’ll do a brewday on Monday and hopefully add the gypsum and the calcium chloride to see what if any benefits I see. Do you think I need to bother about the table salt or just use the 2 salts most people use and go from there?

 

[Agentgonzo]

Do you think I need to bother about the table salt or just use the 2 salts most people use and go from there?

I wouldn't worry about the table salt.

 

[The Baron]

Hi sorry to piggy back this thread but trying to put my profile together which I have got from the YWA website but it does not show HCO3 and Alkalinity anywhere on the report. Any help welcome