Lighter colored beers with your water will land you in a high enough mash pH to extract some level of tannins. It's possible that the effect on your tongue reads as thin. In other words, if that beer didn't have tannic astringency, it might be perceived as more rich and malty. This high pH can be dealt with simply with lactic or phosphoric acid added to your strike water.Since October, I’ve brewed 11 beers with this water. Of these, I’ve noticed a clear pattern: the lighter/lower-gravity beers are “lacking something”.
My brew club is telling me to start with distilled or get RO but as of now I do not see enough of a problem with this water to justify the extra expenses.
RO is $100 up front and about 25 cents of operating costs per batch. If that's not in the cards for you, for the lightest beers like Helles, Pils, Hefe, Wit, Blonde, etc. I would probably still dilute your tap water with about 20% bottled distilled and still use a little acid. Tweaking chloride and sulfate is about the last thing I'd worry about as it has the least impact as far as water mods go. The mash pH thing is not trivial at all. Fix that first.
Last edited: