Water Preparation??

Just Curious.. What kind of water or How do you prep/treat your water for brewing?

Does anyone use campden tablets?

I Filter..

InfernoBrews said:

Just Curious.. What kind of water or How do you prep/treat your water for brewing?

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you know that is a good question, I wonder that myself...I've heard some add things like Burton salts when the boil starts, some add their salts when mashing...I would like to know also


I filter also, and just for good measure I use campden.

i use tap water. i have tried everything else and never made better beer thatn out of my sink. sometimes a recipe will call for gypsum or calcium sulfate, but you have to know your local water. take a sample of tap water up to the nearest spa dealership and they will give you a water profile. also, "beer Captured has a really good water modification chart. by the way, virginia beach happens to have great water for brewing. guess i lucked out.

No sense in treating your water until you know what you have. Finding out is easy enough, go to the town or city that it comes from and ask.

If you have no idea, then don't treat it. Just use it.

You may be more comfortable knowing what you have for water, so check it out, then if you need to treat, a starting point will be established.

David

I like to fill water bottles a day before I brew and leave them out in the sun. That removes any chlorine and gets my water to 90-100F for a afternoon brew. If I don't have water ready I usually boil it first. I do some pH adjustments for the mash and sparge.

The tap water in Denver is pretty damn good by itself and works particularly well for light-colored styles because it is soft.

The only thing I do is fill my pots with cold tap water through a sprayer (to help degas the chlorine) the night before and let it sit uncovered to further degas. Plus, the water warms up to room temp so my time on the flame is shorter.

Ok, so those of you that Use Campden how much are you adding? if you Read online and read Homebrewers Answer Book they have 2 Diffrent Amounts.. I Personally have never used Campden but Just reading made me Curious!

I add about 1/2 a tablet to my strike water and the other half to my sparge water. I try to crush them as best I can.

I use a carbon block filter and campden, usually 1/2 tablet in 8 gallons of liquor. Delicate beers get brewed with half RO water.

I always add calcium as CaSO4 and CaCl2, but where to add depends on the beer. Most beers, it goes into both the mash (directly) and sparge (liquor), but for very dark beers that don't need help getting the mash pH down, it gets added to the sparge liquor to keep the sparge pH down.

Anyone ever used a ratio of 1 tablet per Gallon??

+1 for filter only.

This should be a poll.

I have highly alkaline, very hard water. Pale beers were almost impossible. I used John Palmer's spreadsheet from chapter 15 of his online version of 'How to Brew' and it got me sorted out.

I think a little gypsum will always help out an IPA.

FYI guys.

Most major cities now chlorinate with chloramines rather than the older style hypochlorites. You can't boil out chloramines, they don't leave the water if you let it stand, carbon filters have little, if any effect on removal, and most test strips or kits can't detect it.... so be aware.

Find a test strip which is specifically for chloramines (aquarium or pet supply) and see what you're brewing with.

Don't believe me? Check it for yourself. I found I had been brewing with a full dose of chlorine thinking I had eliminated it with my carbon filter (filter had worker great on the hypochloraite chlorine previously used by my city). I was fooled by my test strip which couldn't detect the chloramine in our water so it indicated I had none when I actually had 2.0 ppm.

And the saving grace... A very small amount of metabisulfite will eliminate all available chlorine from either the hypochlorite or chloramine source in just a few minutes.

So if I fill a bucket with 4-5 gallons of water on brew day, how much sodium meta bisulfite do I add and can I use it right away? I brew from kits, mostly. I am working up to all grain, just not there yet.