Hard water

[mlp2147]

I'm looking to get my first kit and was thinking about the water here at my house.
How will hard water affect my brew? I'm guessing it is less than desirable, but will it kill the fermentation process?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[RM-MN]

It depends on your water and what makes it hard. I have hard water that makes really good tasting beer (for my taste anyway) but I wouldn't brew with the water from my neighbor's place. Heck, their water won't even make drinkable coffee. There are ways to find out what is in your water and ways to change that but the easiest way I know of is to brew a batch, let it age and try drinking it. If it's good, don't change the water. If it has off flavors, try buying some spring water and brew with that.

 

[ajf]

If it's your first brew, I'm guessing it is based on extract. If this is the case, hard or soft doesn't make any difference. If you are doing All Grain, then some hardness is good for most ales. Look at the water from Burton on Trent. That is probably the hardest water you will find anywhere, and the hardness was responsible for making great pale ales.
If your water tastes good, you can use it. If it doesn't taste good, then I wouldn't.

-a.

 

[iron_city_ap]

I'm in the same boat. In 2 days I'm moving from a place with city water drawn from Lake Michigan to a place in the country with a water softener.

Typically, Hard water is preferable to soft water, but it depends too on how hard or soft the water is, what style of beer you are brewing, extract or AG, and most importantly, your personal taste . It seems like the more I try to read up on it, the more conflicting opinions you come up on. Some have no problem with hard water, others like softened water, yet others use softened water and add minerals to fit the style they are brewing. It goes from 0-60 on the 'confusion scale' pretty quickly.

I switched over to AG a few months back, so I really need to start paying attention to my Ph and things like that. For the first couple batches, I'm just going to brew a wheat and an IPA and see how they taste and go from there. Also, I'm hoping the seller of my house has some kind of water report laying around. If not, I'll just have to get one done.

Bottom line, brew first with tap water, see how you like what you end up with, and go from there.

 

[mlp2147]

Thanks for all the replies. I'll just give the tap water a go. I'll be using extract kits to start.
Mike

 

[Gtrman13]

I have hard water in my apartment where I brew. It does just fine for full-boils, but if its a recipe where I have to top the wort off with water at the end, it can produce some slightly off flavors. After the first couple like that I just started filtering water in my brita pitcher several times and collecting all of it in a large container. I figure anything that turns my toilet orange doesnt need to be in my brew!

 

[Fletch78]

On the other hand, if you start with bottled water and you have off-flavors in the final product, you can eliminate water from being an issue, and save yourself a headache. That's with extract, by the way, not all-grain where there is mash ph to consider.