What would you do to this water?

This is my municipal supply.

Ca = 50
Mg = 28
Na = 161
SO4 = 119
Cl = 202
Alkalinity = 177
Bicarbonate = 215 (derived from Alkalinity)


I'm currently trying to brew a few English Bitters, and my last attempt wasn't spectacular. I used Jamil's ordinary bitter recipe (which I doubt is the problem), and it's got a pretty distinctive almost roast flavor that just dominates everything else. I feel like I hit all my times and temps, and the fermentation went well, so I don't know what the problem could be other than the water I used.

To make it, I diluted my tap water with 84% distilled water (1.5 gallons of tap into 8 gallons of distilled) and added 4 grams each of gypsum and calcium chloride to get a profile that looks like this:

Ca = 64
Mg = 4
Na = 25
SO4 = 81
Cl = 86
Alkalinity = 28
Bicarbonate = 34


Could it be a pH issue? Should I reduce the chloride? Just brew with my normal tap water and lower the sparge pH with acid? I'm kind of at a loss.

I just tinkered with the spreadsheet i use with your numbers and it looks like you could get both the ph and cl:s04 appropriate for a bitter if you used gypsum and some lactic acid. so yeah it looks like your chlorides aren't helping you.

just out of curiosity, what spreadsheet are you using?

been using v1.7 from http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

just noticed there's a v2.0, it's giving me similar results, too.

edit: although with the change of how it displays the SRM to RA relationship, the implication is that really you probably wouldn't even need to adjust your mash ph. just a teaspoon or so of gypsum in the mash and another teaspoon of gypsum in the boil. I like that, because it's simpler

Chloride isn't going to give a roast flavor. It will round out the beer a bit.

When I plug your original numbers into ezcalc with the 4 grams of each I get:

Ca - 96
Mg - 4
Na - 26
Cl - 117
SO4 - 117

This is a fine water profile for a bitter. In fact, it's about what ajdelange recommends in the water chemistry primer thread (cut water so that all minerals are at 20 or below and add 1 tsp of both calc chloride and gypsum). Don't think water has any issue in what you are doing assuming these numbers are correct.

If you want to play with the water profile a bit and read the recommendations for each style that ajdelange has you can download my Brew Chart/Workbook below in my signature. It's free to download and has lot's of useful info/tools/etc...

Good luck.

cp

Alright, I'm an idiot or something.

I tasted it today, and it's great. The best beer I ever made, even. The roastiness is gone like it never existed. I don't know why it's changed so much, but I'm not going to argue about it.

Glad to hear it. Don't drink it too fast.