Hi everyone,
I've been brewing for a bit over a year now and have finally come to a point where I'm happy/comfortable enough with my process and beer that I am ready to get into water adjustment and continue to improve.
I know next to nothing about water chemistry so I wanted to make sure I'm on the right path. I've done a lot of research and have read through the primer. I'm not trying to do anything crazy or delve deep into water chemistry right now, but I want to make my pale beers pop more. Right now my hoppy beers seem a bit...muddled/muted. The porters I've been experimenting with already have a nice flavor I'm happy with.
I use water that comes from the Boonton reservoir in NJ (link to report below). I already bought a cheap ph meter, campden tablets (I've never bothered removing the chlorine since the water tastes good to me...haha oops), gypsum, and citric acid.
I know I'm painting broad strokes here, but after playing around with a couple water calculators it looks like I should be fine (as in getting my hoppy beer "cleaner") with finally treating the chlorine with campden, adding a bit of Gypsum to increase my Sulfates since they're much lower than my chloride content, and adjusting the ph with a tiny amount of citric acid. Am I correct in this?
I wanted to get lactic acid but, well lets be honest, I'm impatient and could get citric readily from amazon with free 2 day shipping. I brew all small batch (2 gallons) in my kitchen so I'm hoping the amount of citric I need with what I think is low alkalinity water won't impart any flavor to my finished beer. If it does....oh well; I apparently love learning things the hard way.
Also, do I add all the gypsum to the mash or divide it between the mash and sparge water (I batch sparge)? Or does it simply not matter since I'm batch sparging?
Thanks in advance for the help everyone. This site has been a wealth of knowledge since I first got into this hobby.
https://www.unitedwater.com/uploade...oboken/20/UWHB_Consumer_Confidence_Report.pdf
I've been brewing for a bit over a year now and have finally come to a point where I'm happy/comfortable enough with my process and beer that I am ready to get into water adjustment and continue to improve.
I know next to nothing about water chemistry so I wanted to make sure I'm on the right path. I've done a lot of research and have read through the primer. I'm not trying to do anything crazy or delve deep into water chemistry right now, but I want to make my pale beers pop more. Right now my hoppy beers seem a bit...muddled/muted. The porters I've been experimenting with already have a nice flavor I'm happy with.
I use water that comes from the Boonton reservoir in NJ (link to report below). I already bought a cheap ph meter, campden tablets (I've never bothered removing the chlorine since the water tastes good to me...haha oops), gypsum, and citric acid.
I know I'm painting broad strokes here, but after playing around with a couple water calculators it looks like I should be fine (as in getting my hoppy beer "cleaner") with finally treating the chlorine with campden, adding a bit of Gypsum to increase my Sulfates since they're much lower than my chloride content, and adjusting the ph with a tiny amount of citric acid. Am I correct in this?
I wanted to get lactic acid but, well lets be honest, I'm impatient and could get citric readily from amazon with free 2 day shipping. I brew all small batch (2 gallons) in my kitchen so I'm hoping the amount of citric I need with what I think is low alkalinity water won't impart any flavor to my finished beer. If it does....oh well; I apparently love learning things the hard way.
Also, do I add all the gypsum to the mash or divide it between the mash and sparge water (I batch sparge)? Or does it simply not matter since I'm batch sparging?
Thanks in advance for the help everyone. This site has been a wealth of knowledge since I first got into this hobby.
https://www.unitedwater.com/uploade...oboken/20/UWHB_Consumer_Confidence_Report.pdf
