Vancouver, BC HBTers! Water treatment?

Having been on HBT for a year now, I know that there are a lot of Vancouver HBTers out there. I am going local for a local brewing element.

What do you do to treat your water; if anything, that is?

Leave it and use it straight up? Let it sit overnight? Campden tablets? What type of mineral additions do you do, if any? Why or why not?

For context, I am wanting to brew British bitters. WorryWart has been kind enough to chime in on my post in Recipes/Ingredients. He, and others, recommended adjusting Vancouver's high-ish pH and low mineral content water. I'm looking for technique and thoughts on the subject of treating our water.

Please let me know what you do for the treatment for Vangroovy's water as it relates to your philosophy/technique for brewing the styles of beer that you enjoy.

Thanks as always. Maybe see you at Dan's.

Help a brother out?

Vancouver has one of the cleanest water supplies around. I've never had any problem with taste or other issues.
I say use it straight up.

Our water is ridiculously soft (few minerals). I've been using RO water because I have free access to it. But am planning on brewing tomorrow with tap water left out overnight...because they do use chlorine.

I would recommend adding some gypsum because it is so soft.

I would check your pH too. My aquarium water (untreated) always comes out on the acidic side (5.8)... Never checked straight out of the tap...

So Ive been looking into water a lot recently, and looking at the water report there is virtually nothing in our water...and yes the pH is a bit low (but you know all that). FWIW I briefly asked Dan about water treatments today and he said he only worries about pH (He suggested that even chlorine should dissipate before the mash is finished) . I'm just moving into all grain and I am also concerned about the mineral profile and low pH as I prefer darker beers.

Nuggent, have you been doing anything for mineral treatments?

Actually I haven't done much lately, blue.

I occasionally use 5.2 buffer, but can't recall the effect, if any, that it has had on my beers. I haven't really experimented enough with it. Theoretically, this would solve the pH problem. Dan has a pH meter and said that half of the recommended amount will buffer the mash water to 5.2 - which is good, as the stuff is fairly pricey.

I have added a tsp. of gypsum to 5 gal. batches where I want the hops to really shine, like an IPA. I was reading another HBT post on Portland water (which is quite close to Vancouver - in terms of chloride/sulfate ratio) and they were talking about adding calcium in some form to deal with the lack of dissolved solids. I'm going to buy another tub of 5.2 and try it out again.

Realistically, I regard water treatment as a step beyond my ability to harness well unless I have really looked into it more. Palmer's look at water treatment in How to Brew makes sense, but I still don't feel confident enough. I just bought Fix's Principles of Brewing Science from Chapters, so I'll see what it says. I have been focusing/fixating on pitching rates and fermentation temperature lately.

Let's keep this thread going to keep each other up-to-date on our progress.

Cheers and Happy New Year.

this is an old thread but I've been wondering about water lately. I did a pale ale about a month back that was 90% Gambrinus ESB pale malt, 6% Crystal 60 and checked the pH and it was 4.9. A couple weeks ago I did an IRA and mashed only the 11lbs of base malt as I was a bit worried about the acidity (I steeped the specialty grains separately) but I had a similar pH. I added about 8g of chalk to the mash but the effect was minimal and I didn't want to go too much more on a 5gal batch. Has the water changed recently? Are my pH strips defective? According to the last water report, its practically RO water coming out of the taps. According to How To Brew and the various water adjustment spreadsheets, 2g each of Gypsum, CaCl and Epsom should put the water to acceptable brewing levels but will not help a low pH problem. What are people in vancouver doing about the water these days?

Hey gbx (and fellow Vancouverite) - I've recently started brewing all grain, and have done some reading on appropriate water parameters for mashing and different flavour profiles. After talking with a few folks at Dan's, they didn't seem to have much useful information on whether it would be necessary to adjust sulfate/Mg/Ca levels in the mash and sparge water. However, reading through John Palmer's book (link), and using the ezwatercalculator, our water is deficient in many mineral nutrients required for maintaining healthy yeast. It's also low in sulfate, making it impossible to make a properly bitter IPA (i.e. they tend to be sweet and fruitier than expected). If you haven't read the Vancouver water report, the 2011 summaries for our water sheds are here (pdf). You can use these tables for calculating gypsum, epsom, and calcium chloride additions with the help of ezcalculator (along with predicted mash pH).

I've come to the decision that Palmer's book has about as much useful information on how to treat your brewing water as you will get from the folks at Dan's. ...actually the book as worse as it will get you worried and cause you to mess up Vancouver's water - dan is pretty much right when he says "vancouver has perfect water, just brew". If you are doing all grain (not partial mash), your mashes will be in range without doing anything to vancouver tap water and that is the single most important consideration when messing with your water. Residual Alkalinity and other over complicated things like that don't apply to our super low ion water. My problem was from using pH strips, despite what you may have heard on a 4 hour podcast, pH strips do not work on beer (they essentially become SRM strips). I bought a cheap meter and realized I didn't actually have a mash pH problem. I also learned that EZ water calculator is terrible at predicting mash pH with our water. It will have you adding chalk to increase the alkalinity when a pH meter is telling you to add acid to get it in range. With the mash pH dealt with, all that's needed is to just bump up the Ca, Cl and SO4 to taste. Lately I've just been adding CaCl (get it from bosa or gourmet warehouse) and Gypsum depending on beer style but never more than a tsp of each per 19L batch. Add more gypsum if you want but never never never add carbonate based on the advice of a spreadsheet - if you aren't measuring pH with a meter, don't mess with chalk or baking soda. (If you aren't doing a partial mash that is 50% crystal, your pH will be fine anyways) For all other nutrients, I just add yeast energizer.

This is the single greatest source for water info you'll find on the internet - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/brewing-water-chemistry-primer-198460/ ...and it deals with brewing with RO water which is essentially what we do in vancouver.

Lately, I've been adding 5g of gypsum and 5g of calcium chloride to my mash water. My reckoning is that it ups the Ca for the yeast health and is fairly balanced in the SO4:Cl ratio. I used the calculator on Beersmith and it didn't change the chemistry drastically.

gbx said:

... For all other nutrients, I just add yeast energizer.

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How much yeast energizer and when? I add a miniscule amount of yeast energizer to my starter culture (I think 1/8 tsp). Is that sufficient?

I just got a pH meter and will be monitoring my next brew session. Where in Vancouver do we buy pH buffer solutions (pH 4 and 7) for calibrating the electrode?

FYI: I'm planning on adding 7 g CaSO4 and 3 g CaCl2 for an APA (pre-boil volume around 7.2 gal).

I think that they have them at Bosa in Burnaby.

brewzombie said:

How much yeast energizer and when? I add a miniscule amount of yeast energizer to my starter culture (I think 1/8 tsp). Is that sufficient?

I just got a pH meter and will be monitoring my next brew session. Where in Vancouver do we buy pH buffer solutions (pH 4 and 7) for calibrating the electrode?

FYI: I'm planning on adding 7 g CaSO4 and 3 g CaCl2 for an APA (pre-boil volume around 7.2 gal).

Click to expand...

Yeah that is probably enough yeast energizer. Some people don't think its necessary for an all grain batch anyways. Apparently the recommended ion levels you see quoted in books is from lab tests with sugar dissolved in water, not beer. I asked dan once about calibrating solutions and he said you can get them at any of the pot stores My meter came with the 4 and 7 and I got bored of testing before I ran out of solution. Post your results, I'd love to see them. ...and here is AJ's guide to using a pH meter https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/ph-meter-calibration-302256/ ...really helpful as the instructions i got with the meter were useless

Thanks Nugent and gbx. I'll pick some up and report back with my numbers next batch. Cheers!

Any recent comments on this topic? I was reading Palmer's section on water, and remember someone saying Vancouvers water is as close as it gets to RO water... are people still adding things to the water?

Here is a report from last year. Note 1 mg/L = 1 ppm

http://www.metrovancouver.org/servi...ns/2015Chemical-PhysicalAnalysisSummaries.pdf

Yeah, I still do basic Gordon Strong RO treatment (1tsp CaCl for Malty, 1tsp CaSO4 for Hoppy, etc) but I forgot about it the last batch and there was no noticeable difference. Don't worry about it too much unless its something that really interests you. There are so many aspects of homebrewing you can obsess about. There are places with crazy high bicarb water and nerding out on water can drastically improve your beer but Vancouver isn't that place. Our water is perfect and everything you could reasonably do in terms of recipes will be in mash pH range, its just a matter of salting to taste and those effects are very subtle and will be overwhelmed by any other flaws in your beer.

Good info thanks. I like experimenting so I will probably pick up a pH meter in the future and play around

Its good to know that it is fine as-is though

Is anyone on Vancouver water using Campden/pre-boil/just letting their water sit out in order to drive off any chlorine flavours? Anyone noticed a difference with/without?

I notice a tiny bit of a chlorine-y tang in the aftertaste of my beers. Nothing bad enough to make me NOT drink it, but it's not something I detect in commercial beers brewed here.

I generally don't do anything to the water but if it is smelling extra chlorine-y I will let the water sit overnight to degas. Chlorine in boiling water has a pretty short half life and it should all be gone by the end of boil. There has been some talk about chlorine in the mash causing problems but the undeniably bad chlorine effects occur during fermentation. If I was topping up or partial mash/boil I definitely would be a little more concerned than I am.

I just started working in chems to my beer. Still haven't tasted it, but while I'm in Surrey/Langley, and our water may be a tad different, I ended up putting 5grams of Gypsum and 2grams of Epsom Salt in my most recent batch. It isn't easy to find ever bit of info on the amounts, and I had to use averages, or best guesses from other water reports as near as I could find, but after getting what I needed I have started using EZ Calculator for now.

http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

You pop in your grains, and water details, and then based on the numbers you toy with the amount of chems you put in until the ranges are green, or where you like. I don't know a lot about water theory, but i figured it couldn't hurt to start using it. Supposedly it should help with astringency in dark beers *shrug*

Its just very simple to use first off. there is a slightly more sophisticated one you can find on the Brewer's Friend website, but I was a bit confused by it on my first go around, and got the hang of this one almost immediately.

Bauzer said:

http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

You pop in your grains, and water details, and then based on the numbers you toy with the amount of chems you put in until the ranges are green, or where you like. I don't know a lot about water theory, but i figured it couldn't hurt to start using it. Supposedly it should help with astringency in dark beers *shrug*

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..alright, I'll tell you how I really feel ...and rant starting....NOW:

No, it can hurt by using it. Our water is perfect, you can easily make it worse. Those spreadsheets (like 5-star's 5.2 stabilizer) work great until you stick a pH meter in the wort. Anything about water that cites How to Brew as reference should be ignored. Its all based on the extremely false premise of classic brewing city water profiles. They are all either fake or irrelevant. Residual Alkalinity is nonsense. It is not science. Its closer to astrology than astronomy. You don't need a ton of Bicarb for dark beers. Ignore anything that tells you its necessary because of Dublin's water profile - Guinness is the only reason anyone ever associated Dublin and Stout and Guinness never brewed with Dublin water. You don't need any base minerals in your water. NONE. (notice that the famed waters of Pilsen have less than the recommended ion levels). The worse things you can do is add bicarbonate and sodium, if anyone ever suggests adding baking soda, walk away. Your malt will convert fine in distilled water. Everything yeast need to ferment is in the malt and it will also work fine with distilled water (once you mash with it, it is no longer distilled water)

That is an interesting rant and while I agree with some points I noticed a marked difference in the quality of my stout by adding small measured amounts of baking soda to bring the mash pH up from estimated 4.9 to 5.4 measured. Also increased the calcium / chloride / sulfates modestly which may have contributed to the improved flavour. Prior to adding the baking soda the taste was good, but a little flat and 'one dimensional' which is exactly what the texts suggest as a symptom of mashing too low.
I will agree that you can wreck a beer by adding too much but disagree that soft water is perfect for all styles as-is.
Additionally, I see no problem with trying things out and taking good notes so that you can actually learn something. I am by no means an expert but I take note of every flavour I can taste and will tweak minor variables with every batch.

Sadu said:

That is an interesting rant and while I agree with some points I noticed a marked difference in the quality of my stout by adding small measured amounts of baking soda to bring the mash pH up from estimated 4.9 to 5.4 measured.

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I think the key here is "estimated". I guarantee that if you had measured the mash pH it would be no where close to 4.9. ...maybe if it was a very thick partial mash russian stout with more than 75% specialty malts you could get a pH sub 5.0 but not with a reasonable all grain recipe.

Also increased the calcium / chloride / sulfates modestly which may have contributed to the improved flavour. Prior to adding the baking soda the taste was good, but a little flat and 'one dimensional' which is exactly what the texts suggest as a symptom of mashing too low.

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All of the those ions have undeniable flavour contributions - especially when you are mixing Calcium Chloride and baking soda because you are creating NaCl (good old fashioned table salt). A major part of my "water rant" which I omitted by mistake is "salt to taste". The improved flavour had little to do with the pH of you mash, you just like a saltier beer.

I will agree that you can wreck a beer by adding too much but disagree that soft water is perfect for all styles as-is.

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Low bicarbonate water is perfect because it CAN make all styles of beer. I do believe low levels of Cl, SO4 and HCO3 can improve some styles but its for the same reason I like to add salt to food, not for any of the BS "sciencey" reasons.

Additionally, I see no problem with trying things out and taking good notes so that you can actually learn something. I am by no means an expert but I take note of every flavour I can taste and will tweak minor variables with every batch.

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By all means, go for it. I went down the exact same path after reading How To Brew and listening to Brew Strong episodes and Dan told me I was wasting my time. I didn't believe him and had to find it out for myself. I don't mean to discourage or belittle anyone for experimenting. Another great thing about our water is you can go pretty far with the salt additions and still make a drinkable beer. ...but definitely move past Palmer (especially the free online version of How to Brew). The stickied posts here are a good place to start https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=128

gbx said:

..alright, I'll tell you how I really feel ...and rant starting....NOW:

No, it can hurt by using it. Our water is perfect, you can easily make it worse. Those spreadsheets (like 5-star's 5.2 stabilizer) work great until you stick a pH meter in the wort. Anything about water that cites How to Brew as reference should be ignored. Its all based on the extremely false premise of classic brewing city water profiles. They are all either fake or irrelevant. Residual Alkalinity is nonsense. It is not science. Its closer to astrology than astronomy. You don't need a ton of Bicarb for dark beers. Ignore anything that tells you its necessary because of Dublin's water profile - Guinness is the only reason anyone ever associated Dublin and Stout and Guinness never brewed with Dublin water. You don't need any base minerals in your water. NONE. (notice that the famed waters of Pilsen have less than the recommended ion levels). The worse things you can do is add bicarbonate and sodium, if anyone ever suggests adding baking soda, walk away. Your malt will convert fine in distilled water. Everything yeast need to ferment is in the malt and it will also work fine with distilled water (once you mash with it, it is no longer distilled water)

Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't think it would illicit a 'trigger warning' for you.

I fully agree that the water in the lower mainland is great. wouldn't say perfect, but probably the best in the world, or damn near close to it, and it does not need toying with, as I have made a number of very good beers doing nothing with my water.

I didn't really read too much on the water aspect in How to Brew, and wasn't basing my water treatment on what that book said. I have a fellow homebrewer in my area who makes really delicious beers consistently and on a group brew day he used a little bit of chems in his beer and told me about that specific calculator. Granted he is on a well, and so his water may need a bit of treating compared to most of us. I figured it couldn't hurt to at least try it out. Sure there is always a chance I could ruin the beer, but I'm hoping it turns out a bit better. Only time will tell.
I didn't use any classic city water profiles, and wouldn't recommend anyone do so either. I spent 2.5 days looking up the water reports in Surrey and Delta, and even Vancouver where I couldn't get some of the info I needed for the calculator, for one or two points I settled on averages that I was seeing on a few reports and figured its probably the same throughout.

Why'd you bring up that sad stout? Poor poor Guinness.. I remember when I.. no actually I don't think I have ever enjoyed it.. I got in to stouts by enjoying much better stouts that it.

Just like what I've said, I would take what you said with a grain of salt as well.. pardon the pun. I've witnessed many a thread where one question is asked, and you will get every conceivable answer imaginable. Perhaps on a homebrew level you can use RO and not treat your water and beer will be fine. I mean you are pretty much preaching it now, and I'm sure you have made some fine beers. Many of the homebrewers I know that make better beers treat their water, and a number of the Local Craft Pro's do too. It is trying to go from 'fine' to 'better', but its a low low priorty, and there are more important things as homebrewers we should nail down than worrying about our water.

Maybe everything you said is correct, and it will lead to worse.. but one batch test won't break the bank here.

Ha ha, yeah its just one of those topics that has bugged me And you may not have read How to Brew, but the creator of EZ water based it on John Palmer's beliefs. And like it or not, Guinness is the reason for the incorrect assumption that stouts need bicarbonate and the inspiration behind most stouts you've had if you go back far enough (they kept the tradition of dark beer alive throughout the 50+ year long piss lager era) I talked to a few local brewers back when I was nerding out on this a few years ago and nobody did anything to the water. Its a new thing. P49 was the first I know of who did (I had talked to Graham pre-p49 when he was at Dead Frog and he told me they didn't). I myself add CaCl and Gypsum to my beers...because I like the taste - it has nothing to do with the mash "chemistry"

Fair enough! Didn't know the EZ calc used the Palmer beliefs. I tried to find the evidence for it before my reply, but couldn't see it.. though maybe it would have been more clear within the calculations and such.

Tony at Trading Post (previously Old Abbey and Dead Frog) uses chems, but I don't think its a water treatment thing either, more of what you use them for, to just add to your taste profile. I should ask him about it more next time I see him there.

I do enjoy quite a bit of the P49, and Graham being like.. a chemist.. I suppose that is good supportive evidence.