Water treatment advice

[Martybhoy]

Could someone please advise me if I am making reasonably good water adjustments? I making an APA, analysis of my own tap water and the calculator from this site.

My water -
Calcium - 10.8 ppm
Magnesium - 0.5 ppm
Sodium - 4.8 ppm
Chloride - 7.5 ppm
Sulphate - 20.1
Hardness (CaCO3) - 7 ppm

The treatment recommended for a 32ltr mash and a 5ltr sparge, is

Mash
Gypsum - 15.5g
Chalk - 0.54g

Boil
Gypsum - 2.4g
Table salt - 2.37g
Epsom salts - 7.3g
Calcium chloride - 0g

Would adding a Campden tablet be of any benefit?

I appreciate any advice you guys may give.

 

[Simonh82]

That seems awfully complicated given that your water is basically a blank slate.

For an APA I would start with 15g of gypsum (calcium sulphate) in the mash. Never use chalk it doesn't dissolve properly and will slowly change the pH of the beer.

The rest of it seems unnecessary to me. Perhaps you could add a couple of grams of calcium chloride if you don't want the sulphate to chloride ratio to get too skewed towards sulphate but for an APA it should be sulphate heavy to emphasise the hoppiness.

 

[henteaser]

For an APA I would start with 15g of gypsum (calcium sulphate) in the mash.

I'd agree, the rest seems unnecessary. You have a nice, soft water profile to start with. For a pale, hoppy beer using soft water, you certainly don't want to be adding alkalinity in the form of chalk.

If you start with a high pH and pale malts, you'll struggle to get in that optimal ~5.3 pH during the mash without some kind of acid addition.

To keep things simple, I'd collect all 37 litres the night before, and add your water additions. I'd suggest 10g of Calcium Sulphate (Gypsum).

This will give you the following profile, with a high sulphate: chloride ratio, which will give you a crisp, bitter quality;

Ca+2 75
Mg+2 1
SO4-2 170
Na+ 5
Cl- 8
HCO3- 10

Would adding a Campden tablet be of any benefit?

Not really, unless you have a noticeable amount of chlorine in your water? It would add some sulphates but marginal.

Hope that helps!

 

[strange-steve]

I think the advice above is spot on, keep water treatment to a minimum. You should never have to add table salt or epsom salts to your brewing water (unless you're brewing a gose or something).

If it were me I'd add a total of about 10g of gypsum and maybe 3g of calcium chloride.

 

[Martybhoy]

Thanks for the advise guys.

My last 4 or 5 brews have been either failures or disappointments. These coincided with changing my water treatment to that in my original post, getting a brewfridge, doing half batches, and being complacent (brewing without my notes/guide, think I was an ace brewer!).

I'm going back to basics for my next brew (to methods where I used to be successful). And I'm happy to reign in my water treatment.

Cheers again.

 

[strange-steve]

If you want a really simple approach to water treatment have a look at this post from Homebrewtalk, your water is perfect for it. I've been using this approach recently for my last few batches and I'm pretty happy with it so far, I love the simplicity of it.