Hard Water?

[jkreuze]

Even with good sanitation practices and fermentation temps I am getting a strange off-flavor in my hoppier beers. Ray Daniels wrote something about high levels of carbonate giving hop bitterness an unpleasant "soapy" bitter taste, which I think is what I'm tasting (we have fairly hard water, I think it comes from wells), or maybe there's some other badness in the tap water around here.

Anyone had this issue before?

I'm going with bottled water for now, we'll see if that fixes things.

 

[djt17]

Even with good sanitation practices and fermentation temps I am getting a strange off-flavor in my hoppier beers. Ray Daniels wrote something about high levels of carbonate giving hop bitterness an unpleasant "soapy" bitter taste, which I think is what I'm tasting (we have fairly hard water, I think it comes from wells), or maybe there's some other badness in the tap water around here.

Anyone had this issue before?

I'm going with bottled water for now, we'll see if that fixes things.

I have very hard, highly alkaline well water; it makes terrible beer. After followning ajdelange's instuctions; my beer is very good. I dilute with 30 - 50% RO https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/brewing-water-chemistry-primer-198460/

 

[KYB]

Same. Light colored beers I use mainly RO water. My IPA I just boil the water to remove temp hardness (got lazy and cheap and hoped it worked, it did) and both batches have been amazing. Dark beers get all tap water and turn out awesome, even my Black "IIPA", however I may try 50/50 next time and see if it's even better, or just boil the water. I like to avoid buying water since it's just more cost to my beer, and I don't have much money.

 

[jkreuze]

Hmm looks like we have 31.2 PPM sulfate in the water around here, which is high. Looks like I have my culprit!