cregan13
Active Member
Any insights on which brand of water is best for brewing? Poland Spring? Deer Park? etc. etc.
I use my tap water, direct from the city. It tastes good and I run it through a softener. No complaints and it saves money on buying bottled water.
My tap water tastes like it came from a pool... I finally switched from bottled water to filtering the tap water. Any basic additions I should consider after running tap water through a 2 micron filter?
As long as the water tastes better, I'm happy. How will chloramine affect a beer? My normal britta filter does a great job making my tap water drinkable. I'd use that if it was feasable to get 10 gallons through that little guy ;-)
Chloramine reacts with the phenols produced by the yeast resulting in chlorophenols, which have a very harsh chemical or medicinal taste to them. If your water supply is treated with chlorine the filter should remove it. If it's treated with chloramine, it can easily be broken down by treating the water with campden tablets at a 1/4 tablet per 5 gal ratio.
Absolutely pure water has a ph of 7, and is completely neutral. Distilled water and RO water, because of it's exposure to earths atmosphere, absorbs CO2 and becomes slightly acidic. Distilled and RO water has a PH of around 4-5. Softened water is exposed to salts and so becomes more of an alkaline with a higher ph. Softened water can have anywhere (in my experience) of a ph from 6-8. Softened water is technically too high for brewing and distilled and RO are either perfect or slightly to low for brewing. Aquafina is RO water, as is most cheap 5 gallon water bottles.
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