Water Softener

Hi all!

I brewed today with a friend and forgot to #1 turn off the water softener and #2 add my 5.2 PH stabilier.

We have fairly hard water here but I've seen harder, so we have the water softener, I know this displaces some things such as calcium in the water with salt.

How will this affect my beer? I did get good mash efficiency so I don't think the PH was too off.

Salt can impair yeast growth, but if you used dry yeast or made a starter there shouldn't be too much impact.

I have really hard water too. I mix soft and hard water to get the hardness level which is associated with the particular style I'm brewing with good results. A lot of people poo-poo using soft water for brewing, but it works fine for me and they don't drink my beer.

- Eric

Well the brew is going along nicely. The yeast are doing their thing and it is bubbling away. So yeast health seems good (it was about 12 hours from pitch to krausen). Hopefully it will taste alright when it is all said and done.

I'm sure it'll taste ok. It may taste 'off' from the style, IF it was a beer that needed hard water.

then again I regularly make Kolsch...a soft water beer, with pretty hard, high buffer/alkalinity tap water, and it comes out awesome.

david_42 said:

Salt can impair yeast growth, but if you used dry yeast or made a starter there shouldn't be too much impact.

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Softeners do not put salt into the water.

My whole apartment building has softened water and my beers taste great, I wouldn't worry about it.

Glad that others have made good beer with softened water.

I was just reading up on water softeners and read

"The calcium and magnesium ions in the water are replaced with sodium ions." So I do think there is salt in the water (Sodium Chloride) I don't think sodium by itself is a safe element to work with.

conpewter said:

"The calcium and magnesium ions in the water are replaced with sodium ions." So I do think there is salt in the water (Sodium Chloride) I don't think sodium by itself is a safe element to work with.

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Sodium does not = Sodium Chloride. There is no salt in softened water, if the water tastes salty your water softener is not working properly. A water softeners cycle goes as follows:

Backwash
Brine rinse
Rinse cycle x2
Brine fill (adding water back to the brine tank)

So all of the salt has been rinsed off of your resin and does not actually end up in the water but rather down the drain.

Interesting, I'll need to look further into how a water softener works, I know it replaces the calcium and magnesium with a sodium ion. Thank you for cluing me in on it a bit more!

Heck - my entire TOWN is soft water, no softeners in our town.

Actually water softeners are rather interesting.

BUT - do this blind tasting = take GOOD water and tap soft water in two glasses. Put them in the refrig for an hour and then do a blind tasting - you might be surprised that you can not really tell the difference.