Water Treatment in Spalding/South Lincolnshire area

[Bentbarrel]

Afternoon all,

I normally use cheapo supermarket water for brewing but i think ill start using treated tap water.

Is there any specific treatments that you add to your water? A mate that has a local brewery sends water samples off so that he can 'Burtonise' his water but I think that may be a bit extreme for me!

Thanks

 

[strange-steve]

You can ask your local water supplier for a report which will give you a rough guide as to what's in your water. However the 2 most important figures you need are alkalinity and calcium, both of which can be determined by use of salifert test kits. This will give you more up to date results than a water report.
Common additions are calcium chloride for malty beers and gypsum for hoppy beers. Also crs or lactic acid can be used to reduce alkalinity to get your mash ph in the correct range.

 

[needabrew]

I am living in Copenhagen and the water is quite hard over here. I add a teaspoon or two of citric acid to to drop the pH (no effect on flavour - fully digestable by yeast despite advice otherwise) to my strike and sparge water (approx 20L aiming for a mash pH of 5.2). I have a feeling that this may precipitate CaCO3 and have been toying with the idea of adding Gypsum (CaSO4) to replace some of the calcium lost to help the enzymes in the mash and improve my efficiency. Would be interested to hear whether this is a good idea or not...

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