Let's debate about water

I have been brewing everything with either spring water right out of the bottle or local spring water perking out of the hills without adjusting it.

On one hand spring water is clean and easy. No fuss.

On the other hand some beers call for specific water profiles.

Is adjusting the water profile worth it?

Thanks for you 2 cents

Worth it, that's your call. Does water have an effect on the final product? You better believe it. If what your brewing with now is fine by you then I don't see a reason to change.

Absolutely. I was just talking about this with another board member/friend and he pointed out that he thinks there are three things that make beers stand out from the crowd, and understanding the brewing water is one of them.

The way we do it makes it nice and easy. Many people add the minerals to the mash in order to get both the flavor contributions from the water (e.g. the Cl:SO4 ratio that affects how your palate perceives the malt/bitterness) and the correct pH when the water combines with the grains. The way we do it is add the minerals to the boil, at the beginning, and just use a tbs of 5/2 stabilizer in the mash in order to get the correct pH no matter what style. That way we don't have to worry about our efficiency suffering based on the water profile, but we can adjust it as necessary to fit the style and enhance the flavor.

My water is pretty dry.

As to the ion profile, meh, it's up to you to make it easy or pick it appart by the ppm. The water chem stuff can be fun but can be intimidating too.

I think it would be fun to experiment with different water types, just to see if there is any noticable difference. You'd have to brew the same batch, preferrably a recipe you know well and can already reproduce easily. It might be an expensive test, but worth the effort if you could find a clear difference.

1. Tap water, run through a carbon filter.
2. Spring Water, bought from the store.
3. Reverse Osmosis (RO) water, with absolutely no additions.
4. RO water with brewing salts and other additions made to "build" the water.

There isn't much to debate. If you like your beer continue what you are doing. Water is not that big of an issue with extract beers as long as it tastes fresh and good. Water is 90-96% of beer and water profile does matter when you are mashing. If you ignore water when all grain brewing you are missing a big part of the equation.

TwoHeadsBrewing said:

I think it would be fun to experiment with different water types, just to see if there is any noticable difference. You'd have to brew the same batch, preferrably a recipe you know well and can already reproduce easily. It might be an expensive test, but worth the effort if you could find a clear difference.

1. Tap water, run through a carbon filter.
2. Spring Water, bought from the store.
3. Reverse Osmosis (RO) water, with absolutely no additions.
4. RO water with brewing salts and other additions made to "build" the water.

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I think a good addition to your list would be Distilled Water! It is pretty much all I use since our water quality and taste is so crappy ! ! !

This is my water profile:

Calcium: 13.0 ppm
Sulfate: 12.0 ppm
Magnesium: 4.0 ppm
Chloride: 21.0 ppm
Sodium: 11.0 ppm Bicarbonate: 29.0 ppm
PH: 7.2

I make IPA's. Pale Ale's and such.

Is there any reason to fidget with the water?

Thanks.

If it's tastes good, it brews good.

Simplicity is king.

I have used tap (smelled like chlorine and I vowed never again after my first batch) . Then used Crystal not much to drink about but workable with gypsum or water crystals. Diamonds Springs provided me with a water content profile before delivering which if you then look at the brewer's bible would let you get some idea where the water is in relation to some of their examples and you can fool around with a bit more confidence. Anyone else have a spring water they like?

bottleopener said:

If it's tastes good, it brews good.

Simplicity is king.

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For extract.

OK, I'm a real rookie to the brewing world but the water question interests me because our water is pretty crappy tasting. So, I installed a under the counter filter system ( GE Dual Stage Water Filtration System Model # GXSV65F) and the water from that taste good and leaves no sediment in a glass left sitting.

I have gone to the website and I can't find anything that tells me if there is charcoal in this filter. Below is what our water board says our water quality is. Can anyone decipher all of this, add in the filtration and tell me if I'm in the ball park? I've only brewed a couple batches (I'll be an extract guy for a good while I imagine) but I' would like to give my beer the best shot at coming out right.

Any thoughts?

Larry, you're missing a lot of info on that page right there, but from it you can tell that hoppier beers will be better to brew with that water because of the chloride to sulfate ratio. Try to find the amounts of calcium, magnesium, sodium, and bicarbonate, along with the chloride and sulfate you already have.

Extract or all grain, it's a good idea to try to make sure you have between 50-200ppm of calcium for good yeast health and performance.

I didn't realize they had broken the content up into two sections. Here's the other one.


I guess the good news is, IPA's are my favorite and I have one sitting here ready to brew (as soon as the temperature drops out of the triple digits)

By the way BarleyWater, nice photo gallery. What is the purpose of the water stirring plate?

I recently started with building water so I have limited experience but..... my lastest IPA turned out great after toying with the water while a previous IPA using just tap water had a muted hop taste. Both IPAs were made with my sink tap water but with the latest one I followed Mosher's Pale Ale water profile. Made a difference to me and the mineral additions are very cheap and relatively easy to calcuate with Beersmith.

It's a cheap stirplate I made for my yeast starters, I just put water in it to show it's effectiveness. Your water looks pretty good, if your making a hoppy style, no changes are needed. If you want to make a maltier style, adding a little calcium chloride could help out.

Thanks for the feedback! In about a hundred years maybe I'll have most of this stuff figured out...

I can't say that I have all of the water profiles figured out or that I know off the top of my head what every single mineral does. I do understand residual alkalinity and chloride/sulfate ratios and various other things but by no means am I an expert at it. Kind of like performing a mash, you don't have to understand every single enzyme to know how to do a decent mash but the more you do know the better.

When it comes time for me to figure out the nuts and bolts of a brew day I do a few searches on here about what water profile would be best for that particular beer and if I agree I'll try to emulate it. Figuring out what minerals to add is rather simple and I simply do it by trial and error of entering mineral additions with beersmith or brewater 3.0 (free). I still use pH 5.2 if the residual alkalinity is going to be off for that color of beer. Then all I do is weigh out the mineral additions for the mash water and then weigh out more for the sparge water additions. It really only adds about 5 minutes to my brew day and it seems to be helping me make better beer. Also the minerals are rather cheap in comparison to everything else we have to buy to make beer.

thantos said:

I think a good addition to your list would be Distilled Water! It is pretty much all I use since our water quality and taste is so crappy ! ! !

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Distilled and RO/DI are pretty much the same.


My worry about the whole "spring water" thing is that theres absolutely no consistency between spring water brands. Some are VERY HARD water, some are soft, some are just filtered tap from wherever.

Most all spring water/bottled water will tell you were it was bottled from or if it's filtered. There have been many people on here that have posted the water profile for the most common brands and you can always google the water profile. If you are getting it from an actual spring yourself then who knows.

The water at my house is pretty good and I start with that if I can because the mineral profile is relatively low. This allows me to hit most water profiles. If I can't hit the water profile using my home water I start with distilled water or RO water like most people.

For extract.

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The "tastes good = brews good" does not hold true - neither for both AG nor extract. Trust me, I know.

Go listen to the Brew Strong podcasts on water and you will have a better appreciation on beer quality related to water.