I am usually an all grain brewer, but just recently availed myself of six homebrew kits from Wilco's recent Father's Day half-price sale. I go to great lengths when adjusting my water for grain brewing, usually using Bru'n Water as my guide, but not quite sure how to proceed with water changes when using a kit since mash and sparge adjustments are irrelevant. What are people's views on water adjustment for kits? An obvious thing to do of course is still to remove the chlorine/chloramines, but are any other adjustments necessary?
Water treatment when using beer kits
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Vossy1
Landlord.
This could be a load of tosh...but bare with me :lol:
My thinking is that kits are just dehydrated wort, ergo they should still contain the relevant minerals but in a more concentrated form which, when you reconstitute the kit, means the levels will return to those in the wort pre dehydration (or near as dammit).
I'm thinking that's logical, but as I said could be tosh :hmm:
My thinking is that kits are just dehydrated wort, ergo they should still contain the relevant minerals but in a more concentrated form which, when you reconstitute the kit, means the levels will return to those in the wort pre dehydration (or near as dammit).
I'm thinking that's logical, but as I said could be tosh :hmm:
morethanworts
Landlord.
Vossy1 said:
In that case, surely they would have the minerals from the 'original wort' PLUS the minerals in your own tap water :hmm:
[Added] - minus anything that boils off...if anything does.
I tend to agree with your logic here, and the kits simply say add cold tap water (apart from a litre or so of boiling water to get the extract out of the tins easily). What concerns me is the bicarbonate level of untreated tap water. Will this have a detrimental effect on the reconstituted wort? Or doesn't this matter at yeast pitching stage? Then there's the sulphate and calcium levels to consider too - they are needed for that bitter or pale ale "bite", but are noticeably absent from my untreated tap water.Vossy1 said:
adomant
Regular.
Other than to remove a bit of chlorine from tap water by boiling or metabisulphate + citric or using mineral water in order to help the yeast, there is not much else you can do since you don't have an analysis of the mineral content of the hydrated kit.
One can assume that the producers have done the required water analysis / treatment for the particular kit style and that there are residual minerals left for the yeast, but I have never seen a wort analysis on a kit I have used in the past.
One can assume that the producers have done the required water analysis / treatment for the particular kit style and that there are residual minerals left for the yeast, but I have never seen a wort analysis on a kit I have used in the past.
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In the ideal world you would use deionised or RO water to make your kits up, as (again ideally) the manufacturers have produced the wort using a liquor with the ideal wort profile 
.
In reality carbonates (or more properly hydrogen carbonates) don't make that much difference as it is the mash pH where these have a massive effect, in the FV the buffering effect is much reduced.
What can make a difference, is the levels of sulphate and chloride (the flavor ions), but unless you have incredibly high (and / or unbalanced) levels of these again it is not something to worry about.
You can always use Tescos Ashbeck or ASDA smartprice water which is a low mineral water to make the kits up if you are worried about it. . . . in fact it would make an interesting experiment to make up two kits one with tap water and one with 'low mineral water' and see if there is any difference.
If you are using tap water . . . always use a Camden tablet.
.In reality carbonates (or more properly hydrogen carbonates) don't make that much difference as it is the mash pH where these have a massive effect, in the FV the buffering effect is much reduced.
What can make a difference, is the levels of sulphate and chloride (the flavor ions), but unless you have incredibly high (and / or unbalanced) levels of these again it is not something to worry about.
You can always use Tescos Ashbeck or ASDA smartprice water which is a low mineral water to make the kits up if you are worried about it. . . . in fact it would make an interesting experiment to make up two kits one with tap water and one with 'low mineral water' and see if there is any difference.
If you are using tap water . . . always use a Camden tablet.
morethanworts
Landlord.
All this makes sense, and I'm happy to continue just to add a Campden Tablet. My kit beer is fine.
But maybe a real 'premium' kit would be produced with all the right mash pH and all that, but somehow still leave us with a very low mineral content, so tap water would at least be less likely to double the amounts - if that is indeed what happens when we add tap water to an already boiled-down kit.
Or just a mineral content on the kit, as someone said.
But maybe a real 'premium' kit would be produced with all the right mash pH and all that, but somehow still leave us with a very low mineral content, so tap water would at least be less likely to double the amounts - if that is indeed what happens when we add tap water to an already boiled-down kit.
Or just a mineral content on the kit, as someone said.
Good advice here. Thanks.Aleman said:In the ideal world you would use deionised or RO water to make your kits up, as (again ideally) the manufacturers have produced the wort using a liquor with the ideal wort profile
In reality carbonates (or more properly hydrogen carbonates) don't make that much difference as it is the mash pH where these have a massive effect, in the FV the buffering effect is much reduced.
What can make a difference, is the levels of sulphate and chloride (the flavor ions), but unless you have incredibly high (and / or unbalanced) levels of these again it is not something to worry about.
You can always use Tescos Ashbeck or ASDA smartprice water which is a low mineral water to make the kits up if you are worried about it. . . . in fact it would make an interesting experiment to make up two kits one with tap water and one with 'low mineral water' and see if there is any difference.
If you are using tap water . . . always use a Camden tablet.
After giving this further thought, and revisiting my tap water report and Murphy's paid-for analysis, I have come to the conclusion that boiling my batch of tap water before use will be the answer. My bicarbonates are quite high at nearly 300 ppm, so the key thing is reducing alkalinity. A good boil and rack-off from the precipitate will get this down to about 80 ppm. I think it's safe to assume that the extract already contains the correct water minerals from the maltster, so I will not add anything else. I know boiling the water will drop the Ca level, but the extract should have enough Ca in it anyway. I did consider using sulphuric acid, but when I calculated the acid amount needed to drop the bicarbonates to the desired level, my calculation showed the sulphates and hence the SO4/Cl balance would be too high. If my pitching temperature ends up too high I can always use my immersion cooler (sterilised) to lower it.
