How do you treat your water?

I'm just curious how others prepare their brewing water?

I use plain ol' tap water with a campden tablet and a couple teaspoons of gypsum. I let it sit overnight and use it for the mash and sparge. I'm in Columbus OH and we received a report in the mail over the summer the had the water breakdown for all the treatment plants in the city. Seems like we have good water for brewing.

Charcoal filter. 5.2 pH stabilizer in the mash.

depends on the brew, but charcoal filter for sure, lactic acid and gypsum in the mash and lactic acid in the sparge water.

Eastside

What kind of charcoal filter do you use?

Straight from the tap into the HLT.

Well water.

I shake it like a crying baby. Sometimes I turn the lights down low, and treat it right all night long....

I use the 5 gallon Culligan jugs from WalMart. I bought 2 at about $13 each (full). After you buy the jug, a 5 gal refill is only $1.65. Much better water than my kitchen sink.

I usually don't do anything to it, although I probably should be adding a little calcium, since my water is deficient in that. Eventually I'll get to tuning my brewing water to be style-appropriate, but I figure that's overkill while extract still makes up well more than 50% of my fermentables.
I do boil my top-off water for half an hour to get rid of the chlorine, let it cool and fill it into 1-gallon jugs to chill in the fridge overnight.

And sometimes I'll just get bottled spring water if I feel like being lazy.

I use RO water and then build it up for the style of beer I am brewing. I get my RA inline first and John Palmer free spreadsheet helps a ton.

I used to fill up jugs at the water store, then I built this:

It works great. Or at least did, now I use a whole house filter system with a 5 micron filter

Water from the outdoor spigot through an RV hose (white, for drinking water). 5.2 Stabilizer in the mash, then before the boil it gets the salts. I tailor the minerals for each beer based on the water analysis I got from ward labs, beersmith, and I choose my target using these two websites:

How to Brew - By John Palmer - Reading a Water Report
Homebrewing and water quality

It has noticeably improved the quality of my beer.

My water is high in carbonates so I treat it with a little pickling lime and also some metabisulfite for chlorine. I let it settle overnight and then check the pH at mashing in and add 5.2 if needed.

I boil it.

Used to use a charcoal filter, but I have done 4 batces now w/o filtering and its not any different. Still gets the chlorine out either way.

2 micron filter backed up with potassium metabisulfite in the HLT.

5.2pH stabilizer in the mash.

Lactic Acid in the HLT for sparge water.

So far, I use an inline waterfilter from the garden hose spigot to fill my keggle before heating my mash and sparge water, and ph5.2 stabilizer in the mash.

Coastarine said:

Water from the outdoor spigot through an RV hose (white, for drinking water). 5.2 Stabilizer in the mash, then before the boil it gets the salts. I tailor the minerals for each beer based on the water analysis I got from ward labs, beersmith, and I choose my target using these two websites:

How to Brew - By John Palmer - Reading a Water Report
Homebrewing and water quality

It has noticeably improved the quality of my beer.

Click to expand...

I am trying to find good target profiles, how do you reconcile those two pages though? Palmer states that for a darker brew you want 150-250ppm of Hco3 and the other site lists a porter as 60 ppm of Co3 (= 120 ppm of Hco3) and for stouts it says 20-80 ppm (= 40-160 ppm Hco3)

I mention this because my water is ~300ppm Hco3 so I'm always trying to figure out where it should be.

I am a newbie (5 batches) but I don't treat it at all. It tastes good from the tap and during a local brew pub tour I seem to recall them saying it was pretty good as is for brewing. Is this bad?

You are probably fine for most styles. Most of the time the big issue is with alkalinity, basically if you have a lot of bicarbonates in your water then your dark beers will turn out better than your lighter brews. Using 5.2 in the mash will help even if you don't know your water profile. For extract you don't need to worry about water much at all. (Except don't use water-softened water, way too much Sodium)

Just tap water and 5.2 for me.

conpewter said:

I am trying to find good target profiles, how do you reconcile those two pages though? Palmer states that for a darker brew you want 150-250ppm of Hco3 and the other site lists a porter as 60 ppm of Co3 (= 120 ppm of Hco3) and for stouts it says 20-80 ppm (= 40-160 ppm Hco3)

I mention this because my water is ~300ppm Hco3 so I'm always trying to figure out where it should be.

Click to expand...

Well, Dublin is about ~300ppm Hco3 so I would think that should be fine. Munich is ~150. I think the second source is a bit off.

I got the water analysis from the company that I buy bottled water from. They sell Spring Water, Drinking Water, and Distilled Water. The Spring and Drinking Waters are slightly different. Then I either add salts to Drinking Water (the more alkaline of the two...also a tiny bit harder) for dark brews...usually adding mainly CaCO3. Or for light brews I cut the Spring water with Distilled water (mainly to reduce the alkalinity) and then add a combination of CaCl, CaSO4, and MgSO4...these are added to add Calcium (to aid in mash acidification), add a leeeeeetle bit of Mg (for the yeasties), and then to adjust the Cl:SO4 ratio to where I want it (usually close to 1:1...more SO4 for 'crisper/mo bitter' brews and more Cl for 'maltier/mellower bitterness' brews.

But I never really do any controlled experiments so I have no idea if this is doing any good.

I do use those tools on Palmer's site. I'm starting to sound like a broken record but I would encourage anyone interested in this subject to print out that blank nomograph (several copies!) and plot your water on it (so you'll need your water analysis). Then try to add salts to get the residual alkalinity really low...then try to get it really high (insert Micheal Phelps joke here). I promise just doing that will put a lightbulb or two over your head. Also play with that spreadsheet...the spreadsheet does the exact same thing as the nomograph but def print out the nomograph and plot some stuff on it...the visual aid is very helpful imo.

EDIT: Here is an article I thought was pretty good.

I bypass my water softener, filter using whole house charcoal filter from HD. I use mash 5.2 at half the recommended rate in my mash and hit 5.2 every time.

My beers have gotten much better with this method of treatment. Water softener is not good for beer.

I run my water into my HLT through an old garden hose, and use 5.2 stabilizer in the mash.

Denver's water is pretty good for brewing, though:

conpewter said:

I am trying to find good target profiles, how do you reconcile those two pages though? Palmer states that for a darker brew you want 150-250ppm of Hco3 and the other site lists a porter as 60 ppm of Co3 (= 120 ppm of Hco3) and for stouts it says 20-80 ppm (= 40-160 ppm Hco3)

I mention this because my water is ~300ppm Hco3 so I'm always trying to figure out where it should be.

Click to expand...

I worry very little about the minerals that determine mash pH, since my minerals go in at the beginning of the boil. I use 5.2 to stabilize the mash pH. I worry more about SO4, Na, Mg, Cl. If I can get the Ca, HCO3, etc in to the limits then that comes next.

Brew-boy said:

I use RO water and then build it up for the style of beer I am brewing. I get my RA inline first and John Palmer free spreadsheet helps a ton.

Click to expand...

This, I put together a binder with a profile built for every style.

Coastarine said:

I worry very little about the minerals that determine mash pH, since my minerals go in at the beginning of the boil. I use 5.2 to stabilize the mash pH. I worry more about SO4, Na, Mg, Cl. If I can get the Ca, HCO3, etc in to the limits then that comes next.

Click to expand...

Ah ok, since I have such alkaline water I have a bit of trouble even with 5.2 so I am trying to adjust it down some for my lighter brews.

I use a blend of distilled water and tap water (bypassing softener) and then use phosphoric acid to remove some of the carbonates and usually will add a little gypsum or calcium chloride salts to bring the calcium levels up to at least 60ppm. Where I live (guelph) the city is supplied by well water and has a lot of carbonates. If I were to use tap water and phosphoric acid I think I would start to taste off flavors from the acid so I dilute it to a level that I can use less acid to remove the carbonates but usually need to add a little bit more salts to get my calcium to proper ranges. I like to use gypsum (CaSo4) and calcium chloride (CaCL) so I am not overloading the water with either the chlorine or sulphate ions.

I am in Houston, which has a ton of carbonates in it, and a fair amount of calcium. If I want those minerals in my water, I treat tap water with campden, and then dilute 50% with RO water. If I want something softer, I just buy RO water ($0.35/gallon at the kiosk a quarter mile away) and add minerals.


TL