Tesco Ashbeck Replacement?

[foxbat]

Just been looking at alternatives but they are all over 7.2ph, whereas Ashbeck is only 3ph.

Ashbeck has a pH of 6.2 but in any case it's the pH of the mash that matters, not the pH of the water.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I really would suggest that you just get one of these cheap RO filters.

The membrane that's supplied is a bit slow (about 6 litres per hr) but you can either collect it overnight or swap it for a higher capacity one (see Doubled my RO flow rate).

Anyhow for £40 I would suggest you will fairly quickly be saving money and saving a few journeys by Tesco lorries.

RO is basically just normal tapwater with almost all the minerals removed - the profile is typically something like Ca: 1, Mg: 0, Na: 8, SO4: 1, Cl: 4, HCO3: 16.
As with using bottled water, unless you're making Pils you'll need to add some minerals to it or your ale is at risk of turning out a bit thin and characterless. Hence I tend to use RO water to 'dilute' my tapwater rather then trying to brew with pure RO. There's no point filtering out all the minerals just to add 'em back in again.

Note that an RO filter isn't particularly good at removing chlorine so it's advisable to still add a half tab of Camden.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Ashbeck has a pH of 6.2 but in any case it's the pH of the mash that matters, not the pH of the water.

And Ashbeck has minimal buffering capacity, so you can make big changes to its pH with minimal amounts of acid/alkali. But then that's true for almost any low-mineral water, pH shouldn't be a major consideration in choosing water as long as it has low mineral content.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I bought some dehydrated water and it’s so simple to rehydrate from the tap.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I bought some dehydrated water and it’s so simple to rehydrate from the tap.

Do you remember there was a lorryload of that crashed on the M1 a few years ago - caused all sorts of problems

 

[peskytat]

Ashbeck has a pH of 6.2 but in any case it's the pH of the mash that matters, not the pH of the water.

Back to the good old days of using citric acid to get the pH down for me then as I mostly use spraymalt now, less mess and I can accurately predict the abv

 

[peskytat]

Hmm... Maybe I should bite the bullet and look at tap water with a campden tablet. I do need to chill some as I only boil around a third of the volume of liquor. It seems like a faff compared to opening 11 bottles less sanitising or treatment with bottles. If however I could powder the campden tablet then add tap water to 2l starsanned bottles that would work. Then that means I always need to keep 11 X 2 litres bottles handy.

I do the same boil half as a concentrated wort and top up with the other half chilled Ashbeck after hop stand, no clart on with any wort chillers, I get it down to 20c straight away

 

[crowcrow]

Did they handle the carbonation without splitting or leaking gas from the cap?

Yeah they were fine, I even took one bottle in the car to a party to drink there with my handpull and it survived the journey - they looked rather swollen - but did the job. I reused them again but then moved away from the handpull onto corny kegs. I should do another brew into a bottle like that (or a polypin) so I can vert the handpull out again, it has been too long!