Distilled vs municipal water profile for same recipe

[samandbekah]

I recently brewed a fantastic New England ipa with a buddy (at his place, away from my comfort zone of my house) and since I had no water report for his place, we used distilled and I built a water profile to use for beer.

Question is if anyone has done any similar experiment using their house water with their same exact recipe - are there any major items to consider?

Long story short the beer came out kick-ass using distilled water and then adding the appropriate minerals for a NE IPA... Obviously the goal being consistency, but I want to use my house water and adjust the profile etc. So as not to have to go buy 20 gallons of distilled water every time I brew this beer.

My thoughts are that if I build the water profile to be identical (or at a minimum, match the sulfate to chloride ratio) to what was used with the distilled water, assuming same processes followed etc. I should be able to get pretty darn close to repeating the first batch.

 

[JimRausch]

Agreed. If you match as close as possible, to what you used at your buddy's house, you should be good.

 

[chickypad]

The sulfate and chloride levels aren't the only thing that is important. NEIPA grainbills are usually pretty light so you'll likely need some acid to bring the pH down. Also I would treat for any chloramines.

 

[samandbekah]

The sulfate and chloride levels aren't the only thing that is important. NEIPA grainbills are usually pretty light so you'll likely need some acid to bring the pH down. Also I would treat for any chloramines.

Okay, my plan was to try to hit the same pH with other mineral additions as well - it was 5.3 with the distilled water so my goal was to hit that while maintaining the same sulfate to chloride ratio.

I use ez brew spreadsheets to calculate my mineral additions.

 

[chickypad]

If targeting a certain flavor profile I'd also aim for similar levels, not just ratio. For example if your original water had 100 chloride and 60 sulfate, you'd get the same ratio with 10 chloride and 6 sulfate, or 200 chloride and 120 sulfate, but those might be quite different effects on flavor.

 

[samandbekah]

If targeting a certain flavor profile I'd also aim for similar levels, not just ratio. For example if your original water had 100 chloride and 60 sulfate, you'd get the same ratio with 10 chloride and 6 sulfate, or 200 chloride and 120 sulfate, but those might be quite different effects on flavor.

Yeah that makes sense which was why I was curious if anyone had any direct experience or had experimented with this on a small scale.

I think I'll fill the advice given above and give it a shot and see where I land. Who knows, it might taste even better with my house water but it could be worse! That's homebrewing for ya lol.

 

[jalc6927]

I think you’ll be surprised that most times you can’t tell the difference with any real confidence

I would always add campden tablet to remove chlorine and chloramine though

 

[MT2sum]

Just thought I'd interject an old memory here - I used to do Aquaponics, (Fish and veggie plants) and according to the City of San Diego back then, you could use ascorbic acid powder (Vitamin C) in the aquarium to remove chlorine and chloramines.
Most Chlorine removers wouldn't get rid of the Chloramines, boiling the water won't get rid of Chloramines, so they got a lot of grousing from aquarists when they switched from Chlorine to Chloramines.
We used just a pinch of the ascorbic acid powder for every 10 gallons of water, and we never lost a fish! (The fish and the veggies were great, BTW, but it's not viable financially in Montana, especially in the winter!). Chloramines and Chlorine will kill even the hardiest of fish in no time at all. You can buy ascorbic acid in bulk at most health-food stores that have bulk bins, and it's really cheap!
San Diego eventually took down the link to that study, I guess they found out that the aquarium/aquaponics communities were advising others to follow that link instead of buying expensive Chlorine Killers at the pet supply stores. (No corporate pressure, of course!) ...... It's the same kind of thing that photographers used to use in their water years ago to get rid of the chlorine.
I'm not saying this to diminish the value of Campden tablets - I've never used them, nor chlorinated water for my brewing - I was just mentioning that there are other options if you want them! When Lewistown chlorinates their water once a year, I don't brew unless I can buy bottled water from Big Spring. I've never used distilled water because I don't want to have to figure out how to add the different salts, etc. to the water, I'm retired and I'm lazy that way.!
Jus' sayin' ......