Is Tesco Ashback water still a good option?

[gingerneil]

I've just been into tesco and picked up 30l of ashbeck. I also noticed they have a cheaper 'mineral' water too... Specs attached. Looks pretty stacked tho compared to ashbeck!

 

[AJA]

That's almost as hard as London tapwater

 

[gingerneil]

I did a quick compare with the Ashbeck when I was picking it up, and yeh - looks a bit nuts!

 

[SMP Brewery]

I think a lot depends on which side of Sheffield you're on. I used to live on the Peaks side (Nether Green) and the water was soft there.

My Dad lives in Deepcar and his water is very soft.. Comes from Langsett. He's currently in a Nursing home convalescing in I guess the Burngreave area and he recons the water is horrible there.

His Hardness is 53.3 ppm CaCO3 compared to my 336!

When we first moved there the water was always brown, probably from the Peat... Tasted lovely though.

 

[nickjdavis]

Interesting.. We have a spotless water point not too far away, and I could easily fill old Ashbeck 5L bottles. I'm early within my all grain journey, and to be honest I cant really be arsed with water profiles etc yet! Using Spotless would be cheaper than Ashbeck.. but if I dont want to do anything with the water, would I better with Ashbeck, Spotless with no further additions or tap water (I'm Suffolk, and its pretty hard!) ?

If you dont want to do ANYTHING with your water, then, unless you are brewing a Czech Pilsner which requires about as soft a water as you can get, I would advise that you use the Ashbeck/Spotless to dilute your tap water.

Being in Suffolk myself, I am familiar with the water you will be getting out of your tap and to keep things simple for the short term, perhaps a 40/60 mixture of Ashbeck (or Spotless) to Tap would do you for dark amber to dark beers, and maybe 80/20 Ashbeck(Spotless) to Tap for Paler beers would be good starting points.

I would absolutely recommend that you do not use Spotless on its own, in isolation, without any adjustment. There are other minerals in water besides the half a dozen or so that we worry about when doing water treatment that have a contributory effect to the finished beer (e.g. zinc which yeast need).

For the record, as background to the above advice...once I started getting into looking at water seriously I initially used Ashbeck and in the last couple of years have used Spotless....always to dilute my tap water initially before building up with salts to my desired profile.

 

[Braumeister]

If you dont want to do ANYTHING with your water, then, unless you are brewing a Czech Pilsner which requires about as soft a water as you can get, I would advise that you use the Ashbeck/Spotless to dilute your tap water.

Being in Suffolk myself, I am familiar with the water you will be getting out of your tap and to keep things simple for the short term, perhaps a 40/60 mixture of Ashbeck (or Spotless) to Tap would do you for dark amber to dark beers, and maybe 80/20 Ashbeck(Spotless) to Tap for Paler beers would be good starting points.

I would absolutely recommend that you do not use Spotless on its own, in isolation, without any adjustment. There are other minerals in water besides the half a dozen or so that we worry about when doing water treatment that have a contributory effect to the finished beer (e.g. zinc which yeast need).

For the record, as background to the above advice...once I started getting into looking at water seriously I initially used Ashbeck and in the last couple of years have used Spotless....always to dilute my tap water initially before building up with salts to my desired profile.

Do you think it’s ok to use spotless with gypsum or calcium chloride added? I’ve done that the last couple of brews. You think it is preferable to use it to dilute tap to ensure you get a small amount of natural minerals?

 

[nickjdavis]

Do you think it’s ok to use spotless with gypsum or calcium chloride added? I’ve done that the last couple of brews. You think it is preferable to use it to dilute tap to ensure you get a small amount of natural minerals?

My personal preference is to always cut with tap water...my last 25 brews I've averaged a 15/85 ratio of TAP to SPOTLESS and then added salt additions to get to my desired water profile.

I've never personally brewed with Spotless (or other RO) in isolation, but others I know locally, who have done, have sometimes reported that their beers have been perhaps a touch lacking in "something"...depth, character, something undefinable.

If you are happy with using Spotless/RO in isolation with appropriate salt additions, then fair enough...though it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to try say a 20/80 mix and see if you think it makes a difference.

 

[gingerneil]

My personal preference is to always cut with tap water...my last 25 brews I've averaged a 15/85 ratio of TAP to SPOTLESS and then added salt additions to get to my desired water profile.

I've never personally brewed with Spotless (or other RO) in isolation, but others I know locally, who have done, have sometimes reported that their beers have been perhaps a touch lacking in "something"...depth, character, something undefinable.

If you are happy with using Spotless/RO in isolation with appropriate salt additions, then fair enough...though it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to try say a 20/80 mix and see if you think it makes a difference.

sorry - going back to this!
Do you then have to test the water each time and adjust as needed, or do you assume consistency across batches if the ratio you use is the same?
I was hoping to use spotless so that I didnt have to keep testing, but I get what you mean about tap containing other minerals etc of use.

 

[nickjdavis]

sorry - going back to this!
Do you then have to test the water each time and adjust as needed, or do you assume consistency across batches if the ratio you use is the same?
I was hoping to use spotless so that I didnt have to keep testing, but I get what you mean about tap containing other minerals etc of use.

No...I dont test the water each time.

I assume that Spotless does what it says it does and is utterly free from TDS (I will test it once in a blue moon just to check but nothing regular). Although the tap water can be variable, because I'm diluting mine by a considerable amount, any variation in the mineral content will be much reduced by the dilution rate (so even if the content of a particular mineral jumps from 100ppm to 200ppm, in reality, at the 80-90% dilution rate I'm typically using, that will result in a change from 10-20ppm to 20-40ppm in my base liquor...so not a great deal to worry about really).

I keep a record of all my brews, the colour of the beer brewed, the ratio of tap/RO water used, a rough summary of the malt base (pale/crystal/dark), the mineral and acid additions made and the target water profile and then the predicted mash pH and recorded mash pH. If I see any significant variation between the last two then I might give the tap water a test before the next brew to see if anything significant has changed.

So when I'm brewing a beer I will look back at the record of previous similar brews in terms of wort colour, malt bill, type of water used, target water profile and how the mash pH turned out, and then make any tweaks to the salt additions from there.

I don't try to build specific water profiles to emulate a traditional water....not much point to it in my opinion because we don't know how brewers in these traditional brewing centres used the water from their supply....whether they treated it in any way or not.