Does preboiling water loose anything

**tv187u** · 01-21-2012, 06:50 PM

I'm new to the whole modifying water deal. I am trying to wrap my head around everything. Here in slc, Ut we have near perfect water for darker beers. Lighter beers on the other hand, the water is too hard and causes cloudy high acid mashes which also clouds my finished product.

I just finished reading over this http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2008/08/24/brewing-water-hard-or-soft/ and in it it states that you can pre-boil the water and drop the bicarbonate levels. Does doing so cause anything else to drop out? How does carbon filtering affect these levels?

Ideally I would love to hear nothing but the bicarbonate levels change. I am trying to avoid having to add lots of minerals back into the water since everything but the bicarbonate is perfect. Any thoughts or reading info would be great. And thanks in advance.

mabrungard · 01-21-2012, 08:51 PM

Boiling a water with high temporary hardness does drop out calcium carbonate from the water when properly performed. So the calcium level of the water will be reduced by the boiling treatment. You can read about the process and its effect on calcium level in this article:

Decarbonation by Boiling

In that article, I provide a way to estimate the calcium reduction due to the decarbonation of the water.

Carbon filtering does not affect any mineral concentrations we are concerned with in brewing. It removes halogens and volatile organic compounds.

If alkalinity is the only problem, then acidification might be a good alternative for brewing lighter colored beers. Bru'n Water has the calculator for that.

**tv187u** · 01-24-2012, 04:52 PM

Thank you Mabrungard for the solid reply. Alkalinity is what I meant, not acidity. I have read over all your notes and will be using your system for water treatment from here on out. Lots of great information in your web site. You bring a great deal of knowledge to the Home-brewing table.

onthekeg · 01-24-2012, 05:00 PM

One caveat though, you may drop out the alkalinity some, but you will concentrate everything else accordingly if your steam escapes.

**ajdelange** · 01-24-2012, 05:56 PM

True, but you don't even have to bring it all the way to the boil it if you can figure out some way to get air to it. A popular way to do this is to use a pump to spray heated water through a shower head or garden sprinkler. The reaction is Ca++ + 2 HCO3- --> CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O. If you remove the CO2 the reaction is forced towards the right and that is the idea here. If you boil, the steam purges the CO2 but if you sparge air through it (or it through air) you get the same result.

Even with boiling it only has to boil a few seconds so this is not really something worth worrying about.