How's my tap water again?

[cetwlaa]

Hi guys, just read a similar tread in this group, wanna seek your views for my case.

i am a new brewer in Hong Kong and started my homebrewing for less than 6 months. The beers i brewed all turn out drinkable, but i wouldn't say they are delicious.

I undertsand that the quality of craft beer is mainly a matter of the brewer's technique,of which i am trying to improve by learning from this forum and try-n-error, neverthelss i also wonder if the water quality in my city is suitable for making good beer. Here is the water quality report of my city, could you guys share your thought with me?

http://www.wsd.gov.hk/filemanager/en/content_135/drinking_b-e.pdf

http://www.wsd.gov.hk/filemanager/en/content_135/drinking_d-e.pdf

http://www.wsd.gov.hk/filemanager/en/content_135/drinking_a-e.pdf


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[MrHadack]

Hi there,

Well the first thing is taste. Does it taste okay to you when you drink it? If so, that's good and you can start looking into the chemistry of it.

From what I can see you water is pretty soft, meaning you don't have a lot of minerals in it. It's quite similar to the tap water I have in my area.

You don't seem to have a lot of chlorine in your water (0.7 on average) but just to be sure, you can neutralize that with a very small amount of something like Potassium Metabisulfite. Chlorine can cause off-flavors.

Your Calcium is an average of 12, and for optimal yeast health you should get it up to 40 or 50 at least. As you've probably seen in other posts you can increase with Gypsum (which will also increase Sulfate levels) or Calcium Chloride which will naturally increase Chloride levels as well. But both of those (Sulfate and Chloride) are low enough in your water that it shouldn't affect things too much, though you can raise or lower those levels intentionally to highlight different characteristics of your beer.

But in general, you seem to have good base water to build from, provided it tastes good-- which is something I can't tell from a water report.

 

[cetwlaa]

Mr. Hadack,

Thanks a lot for your advice.

Yeah, my beer is not difficult to drink but some of them (especially American pale ale) do have some plastic smell, I have learnt from this group that it probably due to the chlorine.

I think I will apply the campden to fix the water in my next batch, and also add some gypsum to increase the calcium level a little bit.




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