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Well, no you're not wrong. But that's why so many people recoil at the thought of drinking a "spruce" beer. They've only had the bad ones.

A spruce beer should NEVER taste like pinesol or medicinal. Spruce tips used in brewing are actually citrusy and have no pine, spruce, or other pinesol aroma or flavor. A proper spruce tip has just emerged from its bud and is completely, willowy soft. If the tips are stiffening or getting...

You have diacetyl with 34/70?? I've not experienced that with that yeast. With regard to the Diamond Lager yeast, I find that its actually too clean for my tastes. I like the German character and maltiness of 34/70. But I can understand if you don't want that in the beer you're brewing.

I remove and replace the pressure release valve on my kegs to inject things like acid or flavorings into the finished beer. Yes, I know that some oxygen gets into the keg, but its brief and the beer was otherwise handled with LODO methods. It works fine for beers that are consumed in a month or...

No, not all the Ca and Mg would make it from the tun to the kettle since they're involved in reactions in the mash and are precipitated there. That's not a big deal since the compounds in wort provide ALL the calcium and magnesium needed for good yeast growth. Pure distilled water can be used...

There are at least two reasons why you should be adding calcium salts to your mashing water: pH reduction and oxylate precipitation. Adding all salts to the kettle isn't helping.

Always check RO water with a TDS meter. That's the easiest way to know if there's a problem and that the water isn't RO quality. https://www.brunwater.com/articles/tds-meter-do-you-need-one

Water hardness is NOT an impediment to brewing. We generally want 'medium' hardness for many brews, but that is largely style specific. The main concern in brewing water is its alkalinity and that it doesn't have any strong taste or excessive minerality. The rest of it can generally be brewed...

I've experienced the same phenomena. Took a gravity sample from the wort surface in the kettle that had been sitting for several minutes after whirlpooling and the gravity was much lower than expected. Then stirred the kettle again and immediately took and sample and the result was higher and...

Rehydration wouldn't typically result in the yeast 'bubbling' or 'activity'. It's best done with water that has low dissolved solids (distilled or RO) that has magnesium added. Using just Epsom Salt at a rate of 1 gm/quart or liter of distilled or RO water produces the highest yeast viability...

DON'T Those little filters are useless at removing disinfectant from water unless you throttle the flow to a trickle. In addition, their limited disinfectant capacity is used up pretty quickly. It's far better to use the bigger 10" or 20" filters to remove disinfectants from water, but even...

Are you sure it's 'body' that you're perceiving or is it 'fullness'? With that low FG, I'm leaning toward it being fullness. Chloride lends to fullness perception. For light lagers, I typically keep the ionic content fairly low. To keep enough calcium in the mash to enable oxalate...

The water supplier probably adds a caustic to the water supply to help the soft water avoid corroding the pipes. That minor increase in pH is not really a big change, but you should recognize and treat the water since it now includes a bit more alkalinity. It's still soft, but with brewing, its...

Formulating the recipe with more than 50% wheat is not really worth it. It turns out that barley has more ferulic acid content than wheat and if you're looking for that clovey note in your Hefe, then going overboard with wheat is counterproductive. I recommend using a 50/50 barley/wheat...

I'm not sure that wheat hulls make it through the harvesting process, but apparently rice hulls do. One thing that could influence why rice hulls are commercially available is that they are used as a source for silica and are therefore a part of the harvest. I'm guessing that rice hulls are...

As mentioned above, a TDS meter is far less complex than a pH meter. A $10 TDS meter could be reliable, but I'd go with a little more reputable and reliable instrument. That's why I suggest a meter in the $20 to $30 range is probably the way to go. Read more here...

At 155ppm sodium, that water is not going to taste salty nor would the beer taste salty. The taste threshold for 'saltiness' in water is around 250ppm for most tasters. That tap water is likely softened by the water utility if your home softener bypass and flushing exercise was effective and...

I think my tap water tastes pretty good too! But I know that I have to adjust it to make great beer across many styles. Your tap water is a pretty good starting point and you shouldn't need to include RO in your brewing. But you still need to understand and adjust your water to fit your...

A hundreth of a gram is overkill. However, for the typical small homebrew batch sizes, measuring to the nearest tenth is wise. The smaller the batch size, the more you need to make sure you aren't overdosing. But with that said, I still wouldn't worry about reproducing water ion concentrations...

There are a lot of myths about Irish Water and Irish Dry Stout brewing. I recently gave a presentation to Foam Blowers of Indiana that provides facts about water conditions in Ireland and how Guinness brews their stout and how you can too. Enjoy the video on Youtube. Irish Water and Stout