Portland brewing and water treatment

My brewing has defintely improved over the past year and a half, (at hte cost of basement space and savings account...) but at times still has that home brewed taste. I am wondering if I need to look at water treatment, specifically to deal with the pH.

Ssytem / tech is as follows:
all grain, typically 5-10 gallons
Batch Sparge, no recirculation
can hit mash temps fairly accurately ,normally a bit on the low side (150 or so)
mostly APA, IPA, ESB's, but do an occasional stout or porter - currently fermenting a Steam

fermentation temps well controlled.

Any Portland area brewers routinely adjust their water?

Here is our water profile:

Primary Contaminant
Fluoride (F) <MRL
Secondary Contaminants
Chloride (Cl) 1.9
Fluoride (F) <MRL
Hardness (as CaCO3) 5.1
Sulfate (SO4) <MRL 3.7
Unregulated Contaminants
Alkalinity (as CaCO3) 8.5
Hydroxide (as CaCO3) <MRL
Carbonate (as CaCO3) <MRL
Bicarbonate (as CaCO3) 8.5
Carbon Dioxide, Free (CO2) 1.1
Carbon Dioxide, Total (CO2) 8.5
Calcium (Ca) 1.1
Cyanide (CN) 0.046
Magnesium (Mg) 0.6
Potassium (K) 0.2
Sodium (Na) 2.6

That water probably needs some calcium and magnesium for every beer (certainly pale ones) and you might want some carbonate for some beer (or need it for dark ones).

An equally large problem is that unless things have changed since I lived in Portland, you have multiple sources and that is only true of the Bull Run water.

I'll have to check on that - from what I hear there are times throughoutthe year when the water is multi-sourced, but Bull Run is the norm for most.

Looks like a very sensitive scale is in my future. I'll start with the Ca and Mg.

How would a high mash pH affect taste?

Yeah Portland water is about the softest you get in the US. I am in Seattle and pretty damn soft water here also. Definitely look into some additions to your water. As Remilard said you are shy on some base minerals that are not just tied to PH, but also to yeast health during the fermentation, and what profiles you want to enhance in the final product. ie malty vs hoppy.

Decent scales can be had on Ebay by searching for digital jewelers scales or gram scales.

Some excellent material in Palmers how to brew and on the Brewing Network "Brew Strong" podcasts 3 part series on water chemistry. There is a learning curve and you may have to go through the material a couple times to get a good feel for it.

I've been using Moshers Pale Ale profile with http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/ BreWater 3.0 and my RO water. In spite of what people tell you about Bull Run & Portland water being so clean, one only has to look at the filters I replace every 6 months to know that drinking that black stuff can't be all that good for you.

I agree, Portland water isn't clean It varies some. during the late summer due to low reservoir levels at bull run they pull water from wells near the Columbia river and fall from heavy runoff bringing dirt into bull run and we have issues old cast iron our pipes when they change water source in some area (my shop is in one) the water comes out brown/ yellow color

at a minimum a sediment & carbon filter

I just put my 4th all grain batch into the primary and for each batch I used the water chemistry calculator on brewers friend. The first two tasted great and my efficencies were 70% and 83%. Being my first all grain batches I have to assume the water chemistry adjustments helped! My last two were 74% and 85%!
I know it should not be my technique as a newbie so I can only guess the water adjust ments helped! IMHO

This is a controversial topic among Portland Brewers. There was a bit of a debate about this on the Oregon Brew Crew mailing list. A lot of the local brewers (including pro) don't treat water and don't think you should in Portland. Fred Eckhardt is one of those who is against it. I have never treated my water and am quite happy with my beer.

You say your fermentation temps are well under control - how about your pitch rate and aeration? How long do you ferment?

Edit: I'm not totally against adjusting for water chemistry, I just have a feeling the issue is elsewhere, as our water produces some really good beer. It would be interesting to do a survey of the commercial breweries in portland to see what they do. It is my understanding that a lot of them use our city water straight up.

Picobrew said:

This is a controversial topic among Portland Brewers. There was a bit of a debate about this on the Oregon Brew Crew mailing list. A lot of the local brewers (including pro) don't treat water and don't think you should in Portland. Fred Eckhardt is one of those who is against it. I have never treated my water and am quite happy with my beer.

You say your fermentation temps are well under control - how about your pitch rate and aeration? How long do you ferment?

Edit: I'm not totally against adjusting for water chemistry, I just have a feeling the issue is elsewhere, as our water produces some really good beer. It would be interesting to do a survey of the commercial breweries in portland to see what they do. It is my understanding that a lot of them use our city water straight up.

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Maybe that's why I felt like crap New Years day from drinking Widmer instead of my own brew. I can't believe that local breweries are not filtering the water.

samc said:

Maybe that's why I felt like crap New Years day from drinking Widmer instead of my own brew. I can't believe that local breweries are not filtering the water.

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I'm sure a lot of breweries at least do some kind of filtering, but they might not be adding salts.

Out of all the pdx breweries, widmer is the biggest and most likely to be managing their water. I was thinking of the smaller breweries like lucky lab and amnesia. I sent a mail to the brew crew - we'll see
If any of the commercial breweries respond.

I shot off an e-mail to widmer IF they respond i'll post it.

Portland water is chlorinated and treated with sodium hydroxide.

Not a bad idea - HUB folks are pretty forthcoming. I can shoot them an email. I have not had much luck interacting with Amnesia - do love their beer though.

As far as pitch rates - I am doing starters for every brew and am using a stir plate. Most of my fermentations go 10 days or so, occasionally a bit longer.

I found this interview with Widmer: Do you adjust the water (use water modifiers) for the different styles or just go with the local water source?
It's (filtered) local water coming into the brewhouse. Each brew has its own mineral salt cocktail added at various times in brew process.
http://www.brew-monkey.com/articles/interview.php?id=8

There's practically nothing in that water and probably only ideal for something like a Munich Helles without modification though Palmer would say you don't even have enough Ca and Mg for good conversion and fermentation. When you get to amber and darker beers like Porter, the mash pH is likely to drop into the 4's. It's not as bad as it sounds though because you can brew any beer with some modification.

Check out my water mod videos on youtube.

I understand the principles behind what you saying, but..... I am pretty happy with a wide range of beers made with untreated water here.

I just got a reply back from Alan at Hair of the Dog and he says they don't filter or treat the water at all.

Bobby_M said:

There's practically nothing in that water and probably only ideal for something like a Munich Helles without modification though Palmer would say you don't even have enough Ca and Mg for good conversion and fermentation. When you get to amber and darker beers like Porter, the mash pH is likely to drop into the 4's. It's not as bad as it sounds though because you can brew any beer with some modification.

Check out my water mod videos on youtube.

Click to expand...

Picobrew said:

I understand the principles behind what you saying, but..... I am pretty happy with a wide range of beers made with untreated water here.

I just got a reply back from Alan at Hair of the Dog and he says they don't filter or treat the water at all.

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By the way, I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't treat your water. I actually had Bobby's water videos on my 'xmas break to-do list' but haven't gotten to them yet.

With our soft water here, I have made nearly every style of Ale. I am not an expert taster, so I can't tell you if water treatment could have made them better, but none of my beers has had any glaring issues (as far as I have been told), and most of them have been damn tasty.

kcinpdx said:

Not a bad idea - HUB folks are pretty forthcoming. I can shoot them an email. I have not had much luck interacting with Amnesia - do love their beer though.

As far as pitch rates - I am doing starters for every brew and am using a stir plate. Most of my fermentations go 10 days or so, occasionally a bit longer.

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Your pitching sounds great. I do the same, except I ferment for 28 days in primary, pretty much every time. I do use two additives - yeast nutrient in my starter and whirlfloc in the boil.

got a msg back from Christian at HUB:

"We filter the incoming water with a 20 micron trap before it is de-chlorinated by a activated charcoal. This is highly effective and relatively inexpensive. A simple two stage home water filtration system could easily achieve the same result. Cheers!"

Sounds like zero adds.

In my mind I'm looking to go from good to exceptional. Then again, I am no expert in taste by any stretch. I still need to follow up with some of you locals and get some feedback on my brews.

I just got a msg back from the head brewer at lucky lab NW. They have about 20 styles of beer on tap at any time:

"we do not do any water treatment. We do heat up and hold the water at about 180. This should evaporate any chlorine that the city adds, but we don't add any salts or anything of that nature."

Here's the reply from Widmer


Thanks for your email, rg.

The answer to your question is sort of. The water that we get from the Bull Run water reserve is not run through a membrane filter, but there are a few things that we do to the water before it enters the brewing process. For starters, we run it through a sand filter, then ozonate it, and finally pass it through UV light. So, we don&#8217;t filter it as you may think of filtering water, but yes, it does get processed before it&#8217;s used.

Prost!

Hmm, maybe an experiment is in order. What would be the beer style that would theoretically benefit most from water adjustment? I could brew that style once or twice with and without treatment and see how it compares.

did a little research....

-A sand bed filter removes particulates in water some of what i'm reading indicates.. and here's the interesting part theses systems add minerals depending on the composition of sand used.... calcium, limestone, gypsum, quartz, silica... interesting....Eh basically brewing salts. I can't find anything that gives the specific mineral consistency of the output water with these obviously it depends on the size of the filter bed, flow and raw water quality so..?

-Ozone in addition to killing bacteria oxides iron, manganese, and sulfur in the water to form insoluble metal oxides or elemental sulfur

UV light destroys ozone and chlorine.

-so their system conditions water with some minerals, removes sediment, kills bacteria & parasites, removes undesirably chemicals such as chlorine & minerals


Humm.. sounds interesting

So, widmer is the only one adding salts so far, right? And it sounds like most filter the water in some way, but lucky lab and hair of the dog don't.

I think what you should be asking the brewers is what they are doing to meet their target mash pH. I think they think you are asking about filtration.

I doubt HUB is neither using salt nor acidification. Lucky Lab I can buy as their beer isn't that great.

remilard said:

I think what you should be asking the brewers is what they are doing to meet their target mash pH. I think they think you are asking about filtration.

I doubt HUB is neither using salt nor acidification. Lucky Lab I can buy as their beer isn't that great.

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I actually really like the beer at lucky lab NW, I haven't been to the others. Hair of the dog is pretty good... and I asked Alan directly about salts and he said none added.

Picobrew said:

I actually really like the beer at lucky lab NW, I haven't been to the others. Hair of the dog is pretty good... and I asked Alan directly about salts and he said none added.

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I think hair of the dog makes some great beer, but they do so in a pretty narrow SRM scale.

I'll eat my mouse if someone gets confirmation that HUB does nothing to set the mash pH other than adding filtered PDX tab water to malt for all of their beers.

The reason I am asking if the questions is flawed is that one posted posted a response from Widmer that only addressed filtration, and Widmer definitely does more. I am wondering if there is a disconnect in language between home and commercial brewers and commercial brewers don't think of mash pH adjustments as water adjustments.

I think that commercial breweries use less salts in general than home brewers, but there are other ways to change the mash pH.

remilard said:

I think hair of the dog makes some great beer, but they do so in a pretty narrow SRM scale.

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Adam, Fred, and Doggie Claws are all pretty dark.

I'd be interested to see exactly what kcinpdx asked HUB

Question:


Hello HUB folks. I was hoping you could answer a question or tow for me regarding brewing water. I am trying to improve my brewing techniques and wanted to know if you filter your water and or do any adjustments. I appreciate any help you could provide.

Answer From Christian E - owner/brewer
We filter the incoming water with a 20 micron trap before it is de-chlorinated by a activated charcoal. This is highly effective and relatively inexpensive. A simple two stage home water filtration system could easily achieve the same result. Cheers!

So perhaps not clear in my original question was the adjustment part.

kcinpdx said:

Question:


Hello HUB folks. I was hoping you could answer a question or tow for me regarding brewing water. I am trying to improve my brewing techniques and wanted to know if you filter your water and or do any adjustments. I appreciate any help you could provide.

Answer From Christian E - owner/brewer
We filter the incoming water with a 20 micron trap before it is de-chlorinated by a activated charcoal. This is highly effective and relatively inexpensive. A simple two stage home water filtration system could easily achieve the same result. Cheers!

So perhaps not clear in my original question was the adjustment part.

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Do you mind following up and asking them if they do anything to adjust Mash pH and/or mineral levels? I think I am going to send an email off to chad kennedy at laurelwood, and maybe Tom at Portland Brewing.

Picobrew said:

Hmm, maybe an experiment is in order. What would be the beer style that would theoretically benefit most from water adjustment? I could brew that style once or twice with and without treatment and see how it compares.

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Picobrew:
I brew with Seattle water which is not quite as light in profile as Portland, but not too far off. I found a fairly significant change in even moderate strength/body IPA's, say SRM 10-ish, IBU 60-ish The mineral additions, particularly the sulphates can really make the hops pop, and helped remove the harshness from the bitterness.

On the other end of the scale anything heading fairly dark will benefit from bumping up the calcium and chlorides such as Bocks, Browns, Porters, and Stouts.

I think trying any of these styles with and without adjustments should illustrate the point nicely.

great thread.....

I am curious what Bridgeport is doing ?? you have to assume that they are treating their water with a mineral cocktail as Widmer does.

From my personal experience I found that some of my first all grain IPA's were lacking a hop kick despite plenty of hops in the recipe. I took the time to understand how to adjust given the style and my IPA started to get better and better. I add about 2tsp Burton salts per 5 gallon batch.

I also like a Guinness stout on tap.... CaCo3 and Epsom additons have definatley improved the beer.
Conversely our water is perfectly suited to brew Helles, christmas beers or Belgian Dubbles ---salts aren't really necessary and we are lucky in that our PH is ~7.5 .
Always a good idea to filter and drive off the chlorine. I use a fliter and then treat all water with campden tablets.

Curious what others are doing in regards to salt additons and outcomes.

Regards

Awesome thread! I've been brewing with straight tap water for the past few months, and haven't noticed much of a difference than my brews with salts added.

I've heard PDX water is very soft, but not quite as soft as Pilsen water. I'm about to pull my first decoction on a straight-up Pilsner lager, and I'm planning on keeping this brew with just plain tap water. Any comments/suggestions before it's too late?

Now that I think about it, I did brew an IPA last year with brewing salts, and have re-created that beer twice w/o salts and have noticed a drop in the hop profile despite having used the same or ever greater amounts of hops. Could a blanket statement be made about our water that bigger, hoppier beers benefit from the addition of salts, while maltier and less hop-assertive brews prefer no salts?

Sorry if this is all common knowledge amongst PDX brewers, but I haven't really taken the time to understand our water or the effects of treating it. Cheers!

portlandbeergeek said:

Could a blanket statement be made about our water that bigger, hoppier beers benefit from the addition of salts, while maltier and less hop-assertive brews prefer no salts?

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This has been my personal experience...but I don't get PDX water, I get Milwaukie well water.

Sorry for the noob question but what kinds of salts should I consider adding to PDX tap water for hoppy beers then? Is there a standard "mineral cocktail" you can get at the LHBS that does the trick or does it need to be more specific than that?

Conventional wisdom among English and American brewers is that higher sulfate levels or higher sulfate/chloride ratio enhances the flavor of hoppy beers.

Gypsum is the most common source of sulfate (CaSo4)

Well this is my first truly decent thread!

I am going to start off with the basics - removing chloramine. That said, I see myself looking at some smal additions for the IPA's and lighter ales.

I have a hard time believing that the small yet super tasty breweries (HUB and Amnesia come to mind) don't adjust with salts, as they really seem to have their taste profiles spot on.

I sent a follow up email to Christian at HUB asking more specifically about water additions.

Alright - here was my follow-up question:

Hi Christian - one last question. Do you generally use anything to adjust mash pH or change the water chemistry beyond filtration? Our water is so very soft, there is not much of anything in it - a blank canvas if you will. Seems ideal for pilsners, but when it comes to lighter ales I'm scratching my head on how places like HUB and Amnesia consistently produce stellar beers (really dig the ESB) without some water mods.

and the follow up answer:

We use lactic acid for the Pilsner and gypsum for the IPA.

Thanks for this thread...... I think... well maybe not, my head is now dwelling on water profile and making my beer better.... ARRRRG!!!!

I love HUB!! So if they use .... something to treat their water... Oh man now I'm going to have to work on mine....

I don't know much about mine, I filter it 5mic, and then through a standard sink faucet filter (charcole)...

I do add Borax to my wash water for washing clothes as the water is "Hard" (well water) and leaves white deposits on the shower door. By adding Borax to my wash water it softens the water (you can feel it get slippery)... or it this changing it from Mildly accidic to slightly basic???

See now you got me all thinking about this and I'm going to end up dreaming about it and wake up in a pool of sweat and a nightmare!!!

See what you have done!!!! he he he Thanks!

I'm doing my first "adjusted" brew today. A scottish 70/-. I'm going to remove chloramine with campden, use 5.2 buffer , and I'm working on minerals spreadsheet now ...

Just curious...if you're adjusting water, why use the 5.2?