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I think there is a lot of merit to A.J’s statement. We home brewers might be taking it more serious than we have to. But part of that is simply the fact that it is a hobby and we have the time to tinker with water. This is sentiment is similar to what I expressed in this post...

I know that many German breweries decarbonate their water using slaked lime. But that's about it. There are also reports of adding gypsum (Braugips in German) to the water but my suspicion is that it is not all that common. Maybe to get Ca to 50 ppm, but not more. Kai

Now I know why d_striker posted in the science forum. I neglected this thread. So here is my answer to d_striker’s question: The lower yeast growth per sugar is something I observed in my experiments while I don't have an exact justification for the actual numbers yet I have a theory of...

The lower yeast growth per sugar is something I observed in my experiments while I don't have an exact justification for the actual numbers yet I have a theory of what's going on. Let's assume two things: (1) - 1 gram of extract gows X Billion new cells (2) - yeast only bud once they consumed...

That's very interesting. I hadn't thought of that and this would definitely be an issue for brewers who have changing ambient temperatures. Kai

You'll leave the chalk behind. It settles in the kettle and you draw off the clear water on top of it. Kai

I have been taking refractometer and hydrometer readings for the OG of many batches now and the above formula is the average. I never saw an outlier that was large enough that I couldn't trust my refractometer. That's why I use it a lot during the hot side of brewing, especially to asses mash...

When it comes to starters, this is a useful rule. But the formula that d_striker has is more correct. As for Brix and sg or Plato you need to keep in mind that wort and sugar solution have different refractive indices at the same strength. For my refractometer I have to use a factor of...

I was also wondering how water analysis done back then. One way is to evaporate all water and analyse the residue. But how did they identify all the salts in that residue? I wanted to end up with a balanced profile using only the 6 major ions that we care about. I also threw out the potassium...

I reconstructed Burton well water based on the analysis that is given in that book and this is what I found: Ca 287 mg/l Mg 41 mg/l Na 113 mg/l K 7 mg/l Cl 85 mg/l SO4 764 mg/l Alkalinity 229 ppm as CaCO3 That's pretty close to what Martin found. I attached the spreadsheet I used. One thing...

Nice one. Maybe tomorrow I have time to look at this. Kai

Thanks Hermit. But the problem with the "brewing" water profiles on the web is that they may simply perpetuate an incorrect profile. A.J, how much difference can one expect from wells that are in the same region? Maybe Burton suffers from seasonally varying water supplies. When I checked the...

I'm scrubbing the water profiles in Brewer's Friend and am noticing that many of them are out of whack with respect to ion balance. But that doesn't seem to be BF's fault, it only copied what was out there. I'm particularly puzzled by the Burton upon Trent profile. It seems that almost every...

I'm not an expert on that. But I would think that it is. It should be as kosher as chalk since one can make it by heating chalk and then adding water. But don't do that. Just get pickling lime from the store. Kai

you'll have to adjust the percentage in the calculator and then lower the amount. w/o any water treatment the BF calculator gets to 5.9 with that grist. This is likely due to its more realistic modeling of the water's carbonate system and it's effect on mash pH do you mean that you have...

The current link based/save restore model is largely intended to share water information between brewers. I wanted Brewer's Friend to implement this so I can use it in forum discussions just like this one. In the past I made updated versions of my spreadsheet available for download. As we...

I think it makes sense to preboil your water for that APA. How much can you boil? It also helps to have phosphoric or lactic acid. With 10 % phosphoric acid I would add about 40 ml to all water. I played with your water and recipe here...

Thanks for pointing this out. I updated the records behind the links. I still think some added calcium helps when boiling this water. Kai

Martin, I remember when we first started this discussion about using slaked lime over on the Homebrewer's association board. It was after I found that chalk behaved oddly. But I'm not ready to embrace this adversity against using chalk that is simply based on experiments regarding mash pH and...