Water Treatment(s)?

DirtyCaner · Jul 2, 2011

I been thinking a lot about water treatments recently. Does treatment really make big difference? Or should I just be getting the hang of doing an AG brew before I worry about it?

I'm thinking specifically about using campden tablets to treat and also something to make my soft water hard, if anyone can recommend a decent product? Most of my recipes call for hard water...

Cheers,

DirtyC

user 2461 · Jul 3, 2011

Hi Dirty,

I've been thinking about water treatment a lot recently too. so much so that I registered onthis forumso I could post a question about it. There were lots of helpful reply's. the tread is on in the Brewing disucssion section. somehwere- not sure how to cut and past the link. Might be this one

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=16750

I'm going to get me one of the kits and check the alkalinity and then add some chems to the my water for the next brew. Seems to me that beer is mainly water and the styles are depended on the water you have. Smell the sulphur on pedigree or look at the lack of foam and head retention in the beers round my way.

funny though, my water is really hard. prehaps we time our brews and could swap a couple of gallons to balance things out. are jiffy bags waterproff?

Vman

DirtyCaner · Jul 4, 2011

Thanks Vman, yeah I noticed your post yesterday, had I seen it before i wouldn't have bothered posting. Still thats what u get for posting when inebriated! :drunk:

Some good advice on there, I'll definately be using campden from now on. If the water round ur way is hard have a look at the St Michael book " home made wines & beers" by Ben Turner. Although the AG section is very small, this is what I'm using for starters. There is about 8 AG recipes in the last section, mostly calling for hard water.

Cheers,

DirtyC

Aleman · Jul 4, 2011

DirtyCaner said:
If the water round ur way is hard have a look at the St Michael book " home made wines & beers" by Ben Turner. Although the AG section is very small, this is what I'm using for starters. There is about 8 AG recipes in the last section, mostly calling for hard water.

If that is the case all you need to do is to add one 5ml teaspoon of gypsum to the dry grain and one to the boil before running in the sweet wort from the mash tun.

DirtyCaner · Jul 4, 2011

Cheers Aleman, that's what I'll do. The recipes are using between 3-5kg grain each for a brew of 20L. Is 5ml still the correct dose for this volume or does it not really matter?

DirtyC

Aleman · Jul 4, 2011

DirtyCaner said:
Cheers Aleman, that's what I'll do. The recipes are using between 3-5kg grain each for a brew of 20L. Is 5ml still the correct dose for this volume or does it not really matter?

It's a good ball park figure, without really going into the really technical nitty gritty