all my beers taste the same

[Runwell-Steve]

Your alkalinity is probably very high based on the info you have given and what I understand of your local water source.

You really need to test your Alkalinity with a Salifert Kh/Alk test kit, and then learn how best to reduce it using acid.
Water is the key to good beer, the starting point to know what your water is made up of, the next is understanding what you want your water to be to make the perfect beer, and finally working out what chemical additions are required to get there.

I'll be honest for a non chemist like me it was quite daunting at first, but following the advice of people like Aleman and others I have finally got to the point where I know what I need to do to my water to make it as I want it to brew the style of beer I am after.

 

[PaulCa]

Am aquarium test kit will tell you your KH (Carbonic hardness). This one is easy to deal with as carbonates react with both acids and alkaline. They will upset your mash pH as they are pH buffers, in that they react with acids and alkalies neutralizing them and keeping your pH constant. I understand you need your pH to be unbuffered so the pH drops in the mash.

All you need is an appropriate acid and enough of it to "use up" the buffering capacity of the carbonates. Finding that acid I will leave to other experienced brewers, but citric acid is readily available.... no idea what it will do to you beer strike water though :)

To get rid of the "general hardness" which is mostly "stuff", noncarbonic minerals, metals etc. You might only be left with a RO process.

 

[Runwell-Steve]

As for Acids there are a number of options and which you use depends on what is on your water already and how you want it to be.

CRS/AMS is a ready made combination of Sulphuric and Hydrochloric Acids. This will reduce your Alkalinity but increase your Chloride and Sulphate levels, this might be OK for you depending on what water you are starting with.

My Chloride levels are high enough already so I just use Sulphuric Acid. Phosphoric Acid is also quite popular, but i can't give you any advice about that as I haven't done any research on that yet.

 

[naturals]

The London Amateur Brewersmeet regularly, and they do tasting sessions of each others beers.

Strongly recommend this group - I started brewing back in September and have been to their meetings 3-4 times since. They're absolutely great, loads of inspiration, tastings and practical lectures. I even plan my holidays to avoid clashing with their meetings now :)

 

[BIGJIM72]

If you are doing All Grain then you do need to look at your water. Your Alkalinity is probably quite high which will be OK for a dark beer like Stout or Porter, but it will need some tweaking with Acid if you want to brew anything else.
If your water Alkalinity is too high your Mash pH will be wrong and this will throw some harshness into your beer.

I would have a browse of the water treatment section.

well my water is report says that...
total hardness is 280
magnesium estimated 25 to 50
calcium they sais that is total hardness divided by 100 and multiplied by 40 that means 112
they didnt tell bicarbonate as they said they do not analyze that or something like that.
i treat my water with candem tablet and i used 5.2 estabilizer for the mash.
do you think i have to use some salts or something into the sparge water or in whole amount of water i use to brew?
thank you.

By the sounds of it your water will be around 7.4 Ph ( total hardness is high )or more and when mashing i would expect too high a mash ph and so you're probably getting astringent off flavours ? , a bit sharp leaving a not so great after taste not sour but somewhere close .
Try some acid malt this will help out , i find i can use 300g with no sour taste at all .

I met up with Iker & tried his brew. When he cracks this issue I think he may well make some stunning beers. I think I would have been pleased with this as an early attempt at AG.

Having talked it through it may be one or more things causing the issue:

With the beer I tried he missed his target volume by several litres-might be that the hop schedule was a bit off with the volume he got

Maybe a sanitiser residue issue-some folk seem to have trouble with VWP

His beer was bright,well carbonated & the initial flavour was fine. Could have happily drunk a few. But there was a slight metallic aftertaste-almost like licking a penny. Could a too long or too hot sparge caused this?

All in all a nice guy-had a good chat & a few beers- hope to do a brew day with him in the future sometime.

 

[Jeltz]

to quote the BJCP Beer Faults guide for metallic flavours

Check water for metallic ions. Reduce water salts. Check equipment condition for rust. Make sure stainless steel equipment is properly passivated. Fully rinse sanitizer. Try using RO water and add salts as needed.

Don't know if that helps