Refining you home brew method - what's made the biggest impact?

[dad_of_jon]

Water treatment only has an impact on the final beer with AG beers. All the water treatment will have beer done by the kit/DME manufacturer.

Your right, the reason why your 2nd/3rd beer has better body/head is because you used DME. Brewing Sugar is almost completely fermentable so leaves no body behind

yes, but here welsh water added something to the water a few years ago that leaves a film on cups of tea with no milk. So having a neutral baseline to start out from worked for me. The water is still soft but not a good as it used to be :-(

 

[Slid]

I'm confused by all this I have very soft water here (central Scotland) and my first Coopers kit stout is thin and headless after 2 months and following the instructions to the T. The second and third Coopers stout kits I've done have a great body and head but I used DME instead of brew sugar for these. This is where it starts to confuse me! Does the kit have all the additions the harden the water but the brew sugar thinned it with barely no unfermentable sugars in the brew or is the body and head purely because of using DME and some unfermentable sugars with treacle and syrup added?

Head retention depends on having a high proportion of unfermentable sugars in the original wort and this is why your second and third stouts went better for head retention. Brewing sugar is almost 100% fermentable and DME more like 75%.

This will have much more impact than messing with the water, which is something to think about perhaps a bit further on in your brewing career.

Water in Central Scotland is very soft and if you get particularly serious about it all, there are things that can be added. They won't be in any kit, though.