Been reading this forum for a bit and I see a lot of talk about treating water. That's great and everyone seems to be helpful here. But, does anyone have a good success story related to brewing water? Maybe having success brewing a certain style after paying attention to the brewing water? Improved a brew by treating water differently? I want to hear stories and experiences-- even failures if you think it would help other homebrewers.
Brewing Water - Success Stories
- Thread starter Kaewan
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
I don't have a success story (yet), but I'm going to adjust my water next time I make a dry stout. The local water here is moderately soft, and so far I've been pleased as punch with my pale ales, pilsners, and Belgians. My dry stouts, however, have lacked a certain bite that I think may be chalked up (ha!) to the low mineral content. Just bought some brewing salts, and I'll post my results in a few weeks after I next brew up my dry stout.
I'm interested in hearing other people's experiences as well.
I'm interested in hearing other people's experiences as well.
Success, of course, depends on one's criterion for it. For me success is a beer which I and my guests really like. Using water (RO) with very low (no) alkalinity and with calcium supplemented to about 35 mg/L and chloride to 60 made a dramatic improvement in my lagers as long as the mash pH was strictly controlled with sauermalz and that is as much a part of the story as getting the water chemistry right. It's really the chloride and the sauermalz which get the credit IMO.
I carry the same principles (low overall mineral content, 0 alkalinity, enough acid to set mash pH) over to the occasional ale (Kölsch, weizen, bitter, barley wine) I do and the results are great there too. I've been at this for a long time to the point that when I do screw up it's not the water. In that sense every brew is a success WRT water treatment which, as you can see from the foregoing, is minimal)
I carry the same principles (low overall mineral content, 0 alkalinity, enough acid to set mash pH) over to the occasional ale (Kölsch, weizen, bitter, barley wine) I do and the results are great there too. I've been at this for a long time to the point that when I do screw up it's not the water. In that sense every brew is a success WRT water treatment which, as you can see from the foregoing, is minimal)
djt17
Well-Known Member
I have very hard, highly alkaline well water. My first few AG batches were nasty harsh. After following aj's recommendations in the water primer; I have brewed several outstanding batches.
There are far too many brewers and recipes that say something simple like: "add a tsp of gypsum to your brewing water". That might have been OK for the original recipe creators water, but might be a disaster for another brewer's water. Knowing and understanding what your raw water is can be a very important component of good brewing practice. The beauty of the Water Primer is that a brewer is instructed to start with a relatively known starting point that includes a significant percentage of RO or distilled water. That way, the simple mineral additions do not overwhelm the beer. Creating an alka seltzer beer should not be the goal of any brewer. Unfortunately, there are brewers that do just that because they don't know that their water already has a lot of X ion in the water.
Keeping mineral additions and the resulting ion content in the brewing water well within limits is strongly recommended. Unfortunately there are resources on the web and in print that inappropriately guide brewers with ion limits that are too high. In addition, there are antagonistic effects when some ion concentrations are elevated along with other ions. I've included guidance on more modest ion limits in Bru'n Water.
My strong advice is to keep ion concentrations relatively low until you find that you actually like certain ions at elevated concentrations. When in doubt, leave it out.
Enjoy!
Keeping mineral additions and the resulting ion content in the brewing water well within limits is strongly recommended. Unfortunately there are resources on the web and in print that inappropriately guide brewers with ion limits that are too high. In addition, there are antagonistic effects when some ion concentrations are elevated along with other ions. I've included guidance on more modest ion limits in Bru'n Water.
My strong advice is to keep ion concentrations relatively low until you find that you actually like certain ions at elevated concentrations. When in doubt, leave it out.
Enjoy!
spearko520
Well-Known Member
Anything AJ says about water, i would take to heart! I noticed an improvement in my lagers once i started paying attention to my ph and hardness- and AJ is right on about the sauermalz- that stuff is genius. Plus my daughter thinks it's a snackfood... i'm going to start rolling suet in it and hanging little blocks around the house, so i don't have to be bothered
Yes, I'll do it if pressed. By thus I mean, for example, my club brewed its 30th anniversary barley wine over here. I made it clear that they were brewing their beer on my equipment but, of course, I supplied the water and I wouldn't even try to convince these guys not to add some sulfate. So some gypsum went in and the acid was CRS - like (contains sulfate).
On my own, I don't. One of best kept secrets of brewing is, IMO, that ales are better with low sulfate water than with high. Let me re-emphasize --> IMO <--. There are those who have followed the Primer and said it ruined the beer because the hops were trashed. These people obviously like the way sulfate works with hops. I don't and I'm not alone but while I will encourage people to try an ale or 2 with low sulfate water I don't press them to do it and, of course, if they don't like the result, to put the sulfate back in.
On my own, I don't. One of best kept secrets of brewing is, IMO, that ales are better with low sulfate water than with high. Let me re-emphasize --> IMO <--. There are those who have followed the Primer and said it ruined the beer because the hops were trashed. These people obviously like the way sulfate works with hops. I don't and I'm not alone but while I will encourage people to try an ale or 2 with low sulfate water I don't press them to do it and, of course, if they don't like the result, to put the sulfate back in.
josephus23
Member
AJ, can you describe how you perceive how sulfate affects the flavors You get out of your beers.
I have soft water and use some sulfate for my IPAs. My pale ale's and IPAs aren't getting the bright hop flavor I want. The hop flavor is a tiny bit harsh. I've read that sulfate will accentuate the hops, but I'm not sure what it's accentuating. Is it bitterness or flavor or both?
I have soft water and use some sulfate for my IPAs. My pale ale's and IPAs aren't getting the bright hop flavor I want. The hop flavor is a tiny bit harsh. I've read that sulfate will accentuate the hops, but I'm not sure what it's accentuating. Is it bitterness or flavor or both?
You are asking me to comment on an area which is pretty much terra incognita to me because I don't use sulfate. Perhaps some others who do will share their experiences with you.
To me the sulfate just makes the hops bitterness harsh - any variety. It is particularly offensive with the noble hops - it just ruins that fine bitterness that you paid extra to get.
If you are experiencing harshness I'd pull back on the sulfate - that will for sure reduce the harshness but another way to do that is to use low alpha hops. So how to get the hops flavor? You want the oils for that. Late hop additions, dry hopping, use of oil extracts. Those are the ways to get the hop aroma and flavor without the harsh bitterness.
To me the sulfate just makes the hops bitterness harsh - any variety. It is particularly offensive with the noble hops - it just ruins that fine bitterness that you paid extra to get.
If you are experiencing harshness I'd pull back on the sulfate - that will for sure reduce the harshness but another way to do that is to use low alpha hops. So how to get the hops flavor? You want the oils for that. Late hop additions, dry hopping, use of oil extracts. Those are the ways to get the hop aroma and flavor without the harsh bitterness.
I have a success story to share. My Octoberfests kept comming out too bitter. I used beersmith to design the recipe so the bitterness would be in the same range as my favorite comercial examples of that style. Every time I brewed it the hops over powered the maltiness. It was the only style I was experiencing that problem with so I suspected a water chemistry issue. I sent out a water sample to Ward Labs. When I got the results back and compared them to the Munich water profile listed in the beersmith software I saw my brew water was way too low in carbonates. Next time I brewed that recipe I used the software to calculate how much calcium carbonate I neede to add.
Wow what a difference. Perfect maltiness/hops balance for an octoberfest. Even the tostiness from the Vienna and Munich malts come thtough nicely
Wow what a difference. Perfect maltiness/hops balance for an octoberfest. Even the tostiness from the Vienna and Munich malts come thtough nicely
Interesting. Munich water is pretty low in minerals except for calcium bicarbonate. Bicarbonate is usually a problem and so the brewers decrease the bicarbonate for most of the Munich style beers with the obvious exception of Dunkles which uses the acid in dark malt to combat the bicarbonate. In most cases, therefore, people do exactly the opposite of what you did (combat with acid or remove bicarbonate) in order to lower pH into the range where full, rich flavor is developed. IOW your experience is exactly the opposite of what one would expect and I wonder why. Do you have mash pH data, water data etc.?
Here's the report from Ward Labs. It appears to be very neutral water. Low in everything. Every other style I've tried comes out great. Just not enough carbonates to mellow out the hops for the ofest
pH 6.9
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 200
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.33
Cations / Anions, me/L 2.9 / 2.8
ppm
Sodium, Na 34
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 21
Magnesium, Mg 4
Total Hardness, CaCO3 69
Nitrate, NO3-N 1.4 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 4
Chloride, Cl 59
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 50
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 41
Next up I'm gonna try one of my German Pilsners and adjust sulfates to around 200 ppm. I'll post the results.
After adding the chalk to the mash for the octoberfest I did have to add 3 ml of lactic acid to get the mash ph to 5.3
pH 6.9
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 200
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.33
Cations / Anions, me/L 2.9 / 2.8
ppm
Sodium, Na 34
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 21
Magnesium, Mg 4
Total Hardness, CaCO3 69
Nitrate, NO3-N 1.4 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 4
Chloride, Cl 59
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 50
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 41
Next up I'm gonna try one of my German Pilsners and adjust sulfates to around 200 ppm. I'll post the results.
After adding the chalk to the mash for the octoberfest I did have to add 3 ml of lactic acid to get the mash ph to 5.3
Adding the chalk and the acid cancel each other. If you add 100 mg of chalk to mash or water you are adding 60 mg of carbonate. If you get that to dissolve and reduce the pH of the solution to 5.3 most (55 mg) will convert to CO2 gas and leave the warm mash. If you skip the bicarbonate and only use enough lactic acid to get pH to 5.4 - 5.5 then you should have a good beer. Will it be better than the one you just brewed? Can't say as I can't taste it but it probably will be.
I started with the fact that carbonates was needed to reduce rhe bitterness of my octoberfest to make it more like the ones I've tasted. Adding so much carbonates raised the mash ph so high it was off the chart for the test strips. Would this have produced a good beer? I added enough lactic acid to bring the ph down to an acceptable range for proper mashing.
Did the acid and carbonates cancel each other out so the chalk would not have any effect? On paper they may. In the actual process of mashing they did not because the hops were drastically mellowed and the maltiness was much more pronounced jush as an octoberfest should be. The only changes I made to the recipe was the additation of the chalk and the lactic acid. I did not add any lactic acid in my previous attempts at this recipe because without the chalk the mash ph was acceptable.
would adding lactic acid alone to the mash reduce the bitterness and allow the maltiness to stand out more which was what was needed for this recipe? All of the research I have done indicates that the carbonates is needed for that
Did the acid and carbonates cancel each other out so the chalk would not have any effect? On paper they may. In the actual process of mashing they did not because the hops were drastically mellowed and the maltiness was much more pronounced jush as an octoberfest should be. The only changes I made to the recipe was the additation of the chalk and the lactic acid. I did not add any lactic acid in my previous attempts at this recipe because without the chalk the mash ph was acceptable.
would adding lactic acid alone to the mash reduce the bitterness and allow the maltiness to stand out more which was what was needed for this recipe? All of the research I have done indicates that the carbonates is needed for that
I don't think I've ever seen it suggested that adding carbonate reduces bitterness. Sulfate, yes, but not carbonate. As noted in the previous post at proper mash pH carbonate is converted to gas and driven off. At mash pH carbonate is not a problem because it is gone. The problem with it is that it prevents the mash from reaching proper pH.
No, quite the contrary. High mash pH is detrimental. That's why no reliable spreadsheet, calculator or brewing software package will advise adding chalk unless the need for it has been verified with a pH meter reading.
And in so doing saved your beer.
Now if you measured 5.3 with test strips the actual pH was probably 5.6. This is marginal. There is a fair chance that the beer would be better still with pH a bit lower say 5.5 but 5.6 is OK. But you cannot rely on strips for pH measurement and you cannot fix their lack of accuracy just by adding 0.3 to their readings. Accurate pH readings can only be had with a good meter.
I cannot say exactly what happened here but I can advance a hypothesis based on my and other brewers experiences. When beer is mashed at high pH the result is drinkable enough and perhaps even good. If the same recipe is mashed in the pH 5.4 - 5.6 range all the flavors become brighter and the beer is noticeably better. This fits your description of what happened. I hypothesize that as you didn't use lactic acid for the early batch(es) the mash pH was higher than the optimum range. A reading deemed acceptable with pH strips confirms that. You got the idea that adding chalk would help (I'd like to know where that advice came from) and the pH rise was so dramatic that it frightened you into adding enough acid not only to remove the carbonate but to get the pH down to 5.3 on strips which is a probably 5.6 in actuality which I'm guessing is actually lower than you had before.
As a general statement reducing the pH to the proper range will noticeably improve the beer and it definitely does that in part by amplifying the malt and yeast flavors. As far as reducing bitterness goes, getting the residual bicarb down may be of some help and hops isomerization is lessened at lower pH so a combination of those two effects may be in play here. Also your sulfate is getting up to the point where it may be damaging to fine hop bitterness. So you might want to cut 1:1 with RO to get that sulfate down to half its current value.
As I noted earlier I am curious as to where you found that. As a general rule carbonate/bicarbonate is bad and brewers go to great lengths to get it out of their brewing liquor. Dark beers came about because the acids in malt remove bicarbonate. Light beers are brewed with waters which don't have enough bicarbonate to do serious damage.
I've been using the spreadsheets alot. I have two homes, one with city water; one with a well with great tasting low pH, low hardness water.
With the well water(tested at WARD labs), it's pretty easy to get the water balanced to anything I want. Much like using distilled water - a blank slate to start with. Light beers require almost nothing to be added.
With the city water, I checked the county specs on the water. It seems they mix water from three different sources where I lived, so the critical water components could vary by 4x, depending upon the time of the year. So there I used to start with distilled or RO water. Since doing this our beers are always great; so much so, we are loath to drink anything else. Of course we worked on many other brewing problems before we turned our attention to water.
Once I decided to use the city water "as is", as an experiment. Worst beer I've made in 3 years! It was a darker beer than I normally make, so I thought it would be "somewhat close" to the expected profile of the water for that time of year. Not!
I highly recommend that those in hard water areas start with RO water and build, unless they have very specific, repeatable profiles for their tap water and it can be made to come close for the style of beer desired, without adding a boatload of chemicals.....
(He says, back from a pleasant interruption - fresh hops just arrived!) Anyway, that's my story. Reaffirms in my mind the importance of water.
With the well water(tested at WARD labs), it's pretty easy to get the water balanced to anything I want. Much like using distilled water - a blank slate to start with. Light beers require almost nothing to be added.
With the city water, I checked the county specs on the water. It seems they mix water from three different sources where I lived, so the critical water components could vary by 4x, depending upon the time of the year. So there I used to start with distilled or RO water. Since doing this our beers are always great; so much so, we are loath to drink anything else. Of course we worked on many other brewing problems before we turned our attention to water.
Once I decided to use the city water "as is", as an experiment. Worst beer I've made in 3 years! It was a darker beer than I normally make, so I thought it would be "somewhat close" to the expected profile of the water for that time of year. Not!
I highly recommend that those in hard water areas start with RO water and build, unless they have very specific, repeatable profiles for their tap water and it can be made to come close for the style of beer desired, without adding a boatload of chemicals.....
(He says, back from a pleasant interruption - fresh hops just arrived!) Anyway, that's my story. Reaffirms in my mind the importance of water.
Similar threads
