After being away from brewing for a while, I've started brewing again. In the past I haven't put much thought into my water profile and all has gone well. Since the last time I brewed I have moved however and have a new water supply. My latest brew went fairly well despite having everything that could have gone wrong, go wrong - including an ice storm showing up a day early and starting to sleet while I was brewing outside, hose on my counterflow chiller came loose spraying water everywhere while transferring to the fermenter, coaching basketball that went into double overtime so I got a late start, power went out and ended up brewing by flashlight because it was late and a few other odds and ends.
Anyway, I've tried a beer a week over the past couple of weeks just to see where it's at and even with all the issues I had on brewday it has a pretty good flavor - however, I can taste the local water in it. It tastes like a good beer mixed with tapwater - if that makes any sense. With as wrong as everything went, it could have been any number of things that are at the root of that taste, but it caused me to think about my water supply. I decided to look more at water treatment before I start my next brew (Chimay Red clone) and see if that helps any. I got a copy of the annual water profile for my town (Commerce, TX) and am trying to work through it. Right now my thoughts are to dilute using about 50% distilled water and adding 3tsp of gypsum, but I'm not sure what else, if anything, I need to do with it. I've been reading through everything I can find, and was tinkering with the brewing water chemistry calculator I found on another post here as well. Any thoughts on what you would do with this water would be greatly appreciated. Also, is there anything else on the profile I need to look for?
Calcium 1.4
Magnesium was not listed
Sulphate 45
Sodium 132
Chloride 67
Bicarbonate 233
Hardness as Ca/Mg 28
Alkalinity as CaCO3 18
pH 7.7
Anyway, I've tried a beer a week over the past couple of weeks just to see where it's at and even with all the issues I had on brewday it has a pretty good flavor - however, I can taste the local water in it. It tastes like a good beer mixed with tapwater - if that makes any sense. With as wrong as everything went, it could have been any number of things that are at the root of that taste, but it caused me to think about my water supply. I decided to look more at water treatment before I start my next brew (Chimay Red clone) and see if that helps any. I got a copy of the annual water profile for my town (Commerce, TX) and am trying to work through it. Right now my thoughts are to dilute using about 50% distilled water and adding 3tsp of gypsum, but I'm not sure what else, if anything, I need to do with it. I've been reading through everything I can find, and was tinkering with the brewing water chemistry calculator I found on another post here as well. Any thoughts on what you would do with this water would be greatly appreciated. Also, is there anything else on the profile I need to look for?
Calcium 1.4
Magnesium was not listed
Sulphate 45
Sodium 132
Chloride 67
Bicarbonate 233
Hardness as Ca/Mg 28
Alkalinity as CaCO3 18
pH 7.7