Brewing, Spring water vs. Tap water quality?

I have been traveling to a local Spring, getting the water to brew with. The ph is lower, the mineral content is higher, over several days it starts "changing" since there is no preservatives in it (chlorine, flouride) and "black lumps come out and settle". (bought two 15 gallon hdpe food-additive drums to go along with my FDA white buckets) Both are still giving off vanilla smell after numerous washings, so that is my "reserve water" for brewing.

Wild but: coffee tastes better made with it fresh, tea, cola, beer.
Drinking it over a few days makes your taste buds come alive, I started tasting the "dish soap" the wife uses to wash the dishes and she rinses well. Plastic glasses and cups withholds more residue taste than glass. Drinking my beer, I can't get enough to decipher the ingredients and smells.

Victor Shauberger, a Austrian forestry expert has some interesting ideas on cleaning water, he uses a vortex funnel that spins the water and puts a charge on it, noticing the "lord kelvins" thunderstorm, water can be electrically magnetized and visualized as it orbits and rotates around the electrodes. So there is some truth to that. I picked up a large piece of copper to make a funnel to spin it, then thought, gee, my lil giant pump spins it.. it just needs a magnetism charge added. (still working on that) THE Out there- tin foil hat nuts say that Victor invented a anti-gravity device too, so how much is BS?? [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wl-Temag9E"] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wl-Temag9E[/ame]
A Himalayan "singing bowl" also charges water, those are popular in China also, it "alters the ph" somehow?? No clue how. Sunlight "kills" the water somehow making it go bad??

A true water filter bed probably would have to be the +size of a 55 gallon drum, layers of leach beds, ph modifiers, charcoal, and vortex magnetism separation. Cleaning it out would require clean water pumped in reverse, and then.. well.. it'd have to be renewed at times.

Ph, mineral content, how do you determine the "best" for your beer? repeatability?

Ph is only a (percentage of hydrogen) test, not a mineral test.

I have made a adapter to go onto the bottom of a pan to hold $0.10 Coffee filters. It only catches sediment.

Dawai said:

Ph, mineral content, how do you determine the "best" for your beer? repeatability?

Click to expand...

I use Bru'n water program......

Water is definitely important in brewing beer. But, to be honest, I think a lot of what you are touching on is bordering on giving properties to water, that water does not possess. Water does have chemical properties that certainly do affect things like beer, coffee, tea, etc. So, the success you have are having with using the spring water could be very real. But, that success is more likely due to the absence of chlorine and a mineral/hardness profile that works well with those beverages.
As soon as you get into 'energized" or "magnetized" etc....... well, I think at that point you are getting into an area with no actual support or testable/repeatable results as to effects or benefits. At least that I am aware of.

Some of the things you are mentioning are sort of the basis for a lot of scam products related to water - things that make great claims with zero actual evidence that they do anything that they say they do -

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/wonkywater.html
Not saying everything in there is what you are talking about, but a lot of related things in there.

So - yeah - water is super important in brewing, and there is a lot of evidence as to the reasons why, and how to control for it - thus, the reason I use Bru'n water.

YES, I agree, put on your tin foil hat before believing all that (those) links.

Minerals do affect the way water "associates" with other things. When you affect the ph by the charged electrode method it does not exhibit the same actions-reactions with plants as the chemical method. I have been experimenting here. Water picks up a "charge" while suspended in the sky or tumbled down a hillside, or trickled through a underground spring in between minerals and rocks. I water my garden here nightly with a City purified hose, and yet a small rain makes the garden grow in inches per day. I was saving my rainwater in a barrel, till the mosquitoes and sun started ruining it.
I hate being bit by tiny vampires who "spit" in a anti-coagulant before sucking my blood.

Bottled water, mostly just bunk, they filter it, shoot ultraviolet light through it, bottle it. Sometimes it comes out of a city tap in the beginning.

BUT getting consistent results requires consistent methods. (learned that in target shooting and reloading) I live on top of a ridge here, it seems I have more chlorine in my water than my lower land neighbors. Same pipe, same water.

Victor's implosion engine was successfully used in the nazi hanebu (sp?) to utilize the static energy created by the internal spinning rotors collected by field coils around the perimeter of the rotors. The original idea was a sort of internal rotor helecopter that was more highly manuverable. But developed into magnetic drive envelope craft by way of victor's implosion engine,said to have been built by BMW! Think about that for a minute...
So what he did not only allowed water to generate certain properties,it revitalized it,making it more sapportive of life than the stuff we have which he concidered dead. Easily observed in our modern world.
Beyond all this,I just find that spring water from the source makes a better beer. It gives the yeast trace minerals they seem to need,& brings out finer,more defined flavors & aromas. It is my current belief that the beer is more "alive" than mearly so by way of the yeast. Not much other way to describe the difference. Spring water comes from pockets deep in bedrock,tap water is treated surface water,which by Victors standards was "dead". Not hard to imagine where/why the difference lies or is.
Rain water is natures way of distilling it. It also washes particulate matter out of the air placing it back on the ground,making the air smell fresher. I think it is these particulates combined with the "cleaned" water that makes things grow faster.