First all grain water

I hope to try my first all grain this weekend. 10 lbs of 2 row in a light german style ale (no pilsner malt available locally) I have adjusted my recipe a couple of times. I am not sure of my water chemistry. I do have a water softener also. When I was in MI, i purchased water. would that be the best solution here?

Buy the water - don't use DI or RO however. Water that has been through a water softener is not recommended for brewing.

GT

I believe Natural Spring Water is what you want. Should be around 99 cents a gallon at your local supermarket.

If your tap water isn't overly hard or soft and tastes good, I'd just go with that.

How much water do you need for an AG batch? At 99 cents a gallon it could add up...

I am looking at 12 gallons or so. I thought about mixing some water out of the tap with some RO water. I can add some chemicals if necessary. Is there a certain chemical I should add to my water no matter what?

If your tap water tastes good, use it. I would only purchase the spring water if you have really bad tap water.

+1 Use your tap water. If your water is OK to drink, you'll end up with great tasting beer.

bgrubb7 said:

+1 Use your tap water. If your water is OK to drink, you'll end up with great tasting beer.

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I have to disagree with this. I do use my tap water, though! But.........I have a water filter set up to remove chlorine, and I don't brew many light beers.

I'm no chemistry expert, but my understanding is with beers like pilsners, you should have soft water without alot of alkalinity. I tend to make amber ales (although a few cream ales occasionally) or darker. A little dark roasted malt can really lower the mash ph.
Alkaline mashes would cause the mash ph to be higher than normally, but using water softened water would have sodium ions (I think) added. In general, you should never use softened water for mashing. You probably needed the calcium it replaced and you definitely don't need the high sodium levels.http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15.html

You can certainly try it, but with the cost of hops and malt and yeast right now, I wouldn't risk it until I had a water report, or made a super small "test batch" first.

I have never used anything but tap water and have no clue what any of the chemistry lay out is of my tap water. I just use it and drink but I probably don't know what a bad beer taste like.

Although once I had some natural light the was cold, hot, cold, hot. It was pretty bad

lol

evolute99 said:

I have never used anything but tap water and have no clue what any of the chemistry lay out is of my tap water. I just use it and drink but I probably don't know what a bad beer taste like.

Although once I had some natural light the was cold, hot, cold, hot. It was pretty bad

lol

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Yeah but even a bad homebrew taste better than a natural light

So for a light german style ale, I should purchase water?


I used bottle until I moved from MI to IN. Now I use tap water, but this is my first all grain. If I buy water at Meiers (similiar to a super walmart) by filling up a couple of 5 gallon jugs, do i need to do anything to the water? I have gypsum here, but I think it makes it harder.

If your tap water tastes good, use it. If you're still hesitant, run it through a brita filter (painfully slow). Because this is a lighter beer and you don't know your chemistry, using half tap and half spring or even distilled water may not be a bad idea (depending on how hard your water is). Using spring water alone, the cost can definitely add up. Don't play with adding any salts unless you know your chemistry...chances are you wouldn't be adding much if anything to a light beer mash except maybe some pH stablizer.

My wife has pointed out to me that we drink filtered water from the fridge. I am sure that would work. I should have thought of that to begin with. Too many IPA's while thinking about this.

We've used a brita filter hooked up to the kitchen faucet for our water, and we've had great results without adding any salts. We've made weizen, ipa, irish red, stout, oberon...all have turned out great. I've never checked our mash pH though...the best thing to do right now is add pH stablizer if you're doing a light beer...not enough or no dark malts to bring down the pH. You'll do fine, and then you'll be addicted like the rest of us!

Thanks


Is your oberon clone recipe from one of the clone brew books?

I have to overwhelmingly disagree about the tap water suggestion. Don't do it. If you have a water softener, that adds considerable sodium to the water while removing calcium, which is an ion that is critical to the mash.

From How to Brew:

Sodium (Na+1)
Atomic Weight = 22.9
Equivalent Weight = 22.9
Brewing Range = 0-150 ppm.
Sodium can occur in very high levels, particularly if you use a salt-based (i.e. ion exchange) water softener at home. In general, you should never use softened water for mashing. You probably needed the calcium it replaced and you definitely don't need the high sodium levels. At levels of 70 - 150 ppm it rounds out the beer flavors, accentuating the sweetness of the malt. But above 200 ppm the beer will start to taste salty. The combination of sodium with a high concentration of sulfate ions will generate a very harsh bitterness. Therefore keep at least one or the other as low as possible, preferably the sodium.

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I like the spring water suggestion, I think that's your best bet at this point. You could also buy RO water and add minerals yourself.

Nyxator said:

I have to overwhelmingly disagree about the tap water suggestion. Don't do it. If you have a water softener, that adds considerable sodium to the water while removing calcium, which is an ion that is critical to the mash.

From How to Brew:



I like the spring water suggestion, I think that's your best bet at this point. You could also buy RO water and add minerals yourself.

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Does filtered tap water remove enough out of it? I could then add PH stabilizer

Short answer no with a but. Long answer yes with a maybe.

I don't really know St. Louis water but over 80% of North American tap water is "Moderately Hard" and suitable for most types of beer.

The maybe. Find out if your local water is "clorinated" with clorine or cloramine. Clorine evaporates completely. Leaving the water out at room temp with an open lid evaporates all clorine within 24 hrs. Or boiling the water acomplishes the same thing.

Cloramine stays in the water much more. (thus water companies using it) It dosen't really evaporate or boil off. One option is to use Campden tablets (sodium metabisulfite). The other might be a active carbon filters. (Although that one's been debated here and I don't really know.)

The but. Some beers Czech Pilsners use very soft water and you should cut your tap water with 50% (or so) RO water. German beer (even German Pils) use pretty hard water. So with a German ale you should be good to go.

Rudeboy

Nyxator said:

I like the spring water suggestion, I think that's your best bet at this point. You could also buy RO water and add minerals yourself.

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For the first AG batch, this may be a little extreme, but definitely an option...you'd then know exactly how much of each ion is in your water by creating it yourself.

I had forgotten about the water softener issue. If you can't get around it, use the above method or spring water only. Water softeners don't agree with beer brewing, and I wouldn't trust a simple brita filter to remove the excess sodium.

I don't know where the oberon clone came from, it was my friend's recipe.

If you want to use your tap water, I'd suggest getting a water analysis done on it first. Once you have that you can then decide if you want to use it and how to modify it for a given brew. The nomograph in How To Brew is great for that.

In the meantime you may want to just use bottled spring water with some Five Star 5.2 Stabilizer.

For some personal experience: I use my tap water and a PH 5.2 stabilizer. I have hard water and have a water softener. When I get the water for brewing I go downstairs and bypass the water softener and clear the lines of the sodium-filled water. I then will get all the water for brewing and turn the water softener back on. I normally brew darker beers so the hardness is not a big issue.

When I do brew a lighter beer such as a pilsner I'll cut with 1/3 - 1/2 RO or distilled water. The villiage water profile doesn't give me a lot of useful information, other than that they use chlorine instead of chloromine. Even so I sometimes sprinkle in a tiny amount of Potassium metasulfate to break down the chlorine or Chloromine in case they are lying to me . It doesn't take very much at all to make that conversion.

My water softener has a bypass valve that can be activated. That way I don't water my lawn with softened water. For brewing I just activate the bypass run a load of laundry or dishes to clear out the pipes and I have my non-softened water to brew with.