My Water Chemistry - Page 2

Gremlyn · 09-18-2009, 01:39 PM

So just thinking a little more about this. If I adjust my water to be neutrally balanced, wouldn't that give me the ability to influence the beer more with the ingredients? boredatwork, given your example of decreasing the IBUs when using high sulfate water, the reverse would be true if I am 'neutrally watered', right? What I mean is if I want to go more bitter with neutral water, I just increase the hop additions. Theoretically my IBU ratings should be closer to whatever is calculated when brewing with neutral water, and the beer more true to the expected stats for malt as well. I would expect that trying to increase bitterness with adding sulfates too much, instead of with hops, could lend to the wrong kind of bitterness in my beer (which I think I have experienced with some extract batches in the past).

I guess we'll after tomorrow's batch (the GreenwoodRover memorial). I won't have anything to directly compare it to, but I recently brewed my own ESB, which isn't all that dissimilar, so it should be possible to get a good idea of the difference the water makes.

boredatwork · 09-18-2009, 11:42 PM

Yes. I don't think it would be a bad thing to always target balanced. Of course, there might be some subtleties that you are missing - but I think part of this goes back to city specific targets. In other words, some recipes might be assuming the recipe is using XXX city water. And going balanced is definitely a better starting point that being on the wrong side of the flavor scale and wondering why the recipe didn't turn out correctly.

At the end of the day you are working on creating the right flavor - however you arrive there doesn't matter.

lazybean · 10-14-2009, 09:32 PM

Any update on how the water worked for you? I am brewing my first AG (ESB)next week end and want to know how the 50/50 water worked.

Gremlyn · 10-15-2009, 12:56 AM

Not yet, the firs brew with it just went to bottles, so it'll be a few more weeks yet before I can report back. I don't think my water changes would have hurt anything, so if you wanted to give it a shot...

Almighty · 02-16-2010, 04:21 PM

Gremlyn1,
Thanks for starting this thread, I would like to revive it a bit for fellow San Diego Brewers. I live downtown so I'm also using Alvarado Treated Water. I have two follow-up questions:

1. So you guys seemed to focus on the Sulphate Chloride Balance which you do a wonderful job on explaining as does the Brewer's Friend Calculator. But my following up question is does the amount of Sulphate and Chloride matter or just the ratio. On Brewer's Friend: # Sulfate (SO4-2) – above 750 ppm and # Chloride (Cl-) – above 300 ppm are dangerous. But if kept below this does it matter. Because with SD water having a Sulphate value at 172 that means you are getting very close to the Chloride limit if you want a 2:1 ratio as recommended for Mild Ales.

2. My next question is if I want to brew ESB or stouts and want London Style water,

then just using the Sulphate concentration I would need to dilute my water with DI water at a ratio of 1:7 or is there another way?

Gremlyn · 02-16-2010, 05:42 PM

Thanks for bringing this thread back up. I've recently, through talking to some other HBT members, decided that the Brewer's Friend calc isn't quite right. Saq has a water calc spreadsheet he put together based on Palmer's calculations that is a little more detailed, and the water profile I originally was using actually isn't quite as good as I hoped and I have since switched it up a little. I don't have it on my at work, but I'll try to remember to post it later. Saq's spreadsheet bases things more on residual alkalinity (RA) to determine what profile is good for what SRM, and it still uses the SO4:Cl ratio for malt balance. The SO4:Cl ratio will have a negative impact if you go super high or super low, and I'm not sure what those thresholds are; I base my decision on other profiles I've seen.

From memory, I currently do 5 gal tap + 3 gal DI, and add in some baking soda and CaCl2.

Almighty · 02-17-2010, 05:39 PM

Thanks for the quick response.
I have a few more things to follow up on. So this is the water report I was using and it looks like you originally were. Did you have your water tested and find another source?

First off do you have a reference document for water profiles?

Also do you have a good list of styles and city profiles (Ex. Pilsen- Pilsners ..)

Gremlyn · 02-17-2010, 07:14 PM

Saq's spreadsheet has some on there: http://www.thesaq.net/beer/waterprofile/

There are some profiles link the sticky: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/brewing-water-profiles-tools-131443/

I haven't independently tested the water and that is the spreadsheet I was using to get my values. I've thought about testing the water, just haven't done anything about it yet. I'm hoping to buy a house soon and not long after install an RO system anyway, but who know when that'll actually happen.

Almighty · 02-17-2010, 08:12 PM

Thanks for your help,
I am going to mess around with a couple of these and see what works. I'll post what I figure works for a few different styles of beers so people can use my work for an example.

And good luck finding a place. I got lucky a few months ago and got a place downtown at 50% the 2005 price. So it is definitely a good time to buy if you can.