Portland brewing and water treatment

[BierreNoix]

great thread.....

I am curious what Bridgeport is doing ?? you have to assume that they are treating their water with a mineral cocktail as Widmer does.

From my personal experience I found that some of my first all grain IPA's were lacking a hop kick despite plenty of hops in the recipe. I took the time to understand how to adjust given the style and my IPA started to get better and better. I add about 2tsp Burton salts per 5 gallon batch.

I also like a Guinness stout on tap.... CaCo3 and Epsom additons have definatley improved the beer.
Conversely our water is perfectly suited to brew Helles, christmas beers or Belgian Dubbles ---salts aren't really necessary and we are lucky in that our PH is ~7.5 .
Always a good idea to filter and drive off the chlorine. I use a fliter and then treat all water with campden tablets.

Curious what others are doing in regards to salt additons and outcomes.

Regards

 

[portlandbeergeek]

Awesome thread! I've been brewing with straight tap water for the past few months, and haven't noticed much of a difference than my brews with salts added.

I've heard PDX water is very soft, but not quite as soft as Pilsen water. I'm about to pull my first decoction on a straight-up Pilsner lager, and I'm planning on keeping this brew with just plain tap water. Any comments/suggestions before it's too late?

Now that I think about it, I did brew an IPA last year with brewing salts, and have re-created that beer twice w/o salts and have noticed a drop in the hop profile despite having used the same or ever greater amounts of hops. Could a blanket statement be made about our water that bigger, hoppier beers benefit from the addition of salts, while maltier and less hop-assertive brews prefer no salts?

Sorry if this is all common knowledge amongst PDX brewers, but I haven't really taken the time to understand our water or the effects of treating it. Cheers!

 

[ShortSnoutBrewing]

Could a blanket statement be made about our water that bigger, hoppier beers benefit from the addition of salts, while maltier and less hop-assertive brews prefer no salts?

This has been my personal experience...but I don't get PDX water, I get Milwaukie well water.

 

[damdaman]

Sorry for the noob question but what kinds of salts should I consider adding to PDX tap water for hoppy beers then? Is there a standard "mineral cocktail" you can get at the LHBS that does the trick or does it need to be more specific than that?

 

[remilard]

Conventional wisdom among English and American brewers is that higher sulfate levels or higher sulfate/chloride ratio enhances the flavor of hoppy beers.

Gypsum is the most common source of sulfate (CaSo4)

 

[kcinpdx]

Well this is my first truly decent thread!

I am going to start off with the basics - removing chloramine. That said, I see myself looking at some smal additions for the IPA's and lighter ales.

I have a hard time believing that the small yet super tasty breweries (HUB and Amnesia come to mind) don't adjust with salts, as they really seem to have their taste profiles spot on.

I sent a follow up email to Christian at HUB asking more specifically about water additions.

 

[kcinpdx]

Alright - here was my follow-up question:

Hi Christian - one last question. Do you generally use anything to adjust mash pH or change the water chemistry beyond filtration? Our water is so very soft, there is not much of anything in it - a blank canvas if you will. Seems ideal for pilsners, but when it comes to lighter ales I'm scratching my head on how places like HUB and Amnesia consistently produce stellar beers (really dig the ESB) without some water mods.

and the follow up answer:

We use lactic acid for the Pilsner and gypsum for the IPA.

 

[FxdGrMind]

Thanks for this thread...... I think... well maybe not, my head is now dwelling on water profile and making my beer better.... ARRRRG!!!!

I love HUB!! So if they use .... something to treat their water... Oh man now I'm going to have to work on mine....

I don't know much about mine, I filter it 5mic, and then through a standard sink faucet filter (charcole)...

I do add Borax to my wash water for washing clothes as the water is "Hard" (well water) and leaves white deposits on the shower door. By adding Borax to my wash water it softens the water (you can feel it get slippery)... or it this changing it from Mildly accidic to slightly basic???

See now you got me all thinking about this and I'm going to end up dreaming about it and wake up in a pool of sweat and a nightmare!!!

See what you have done!!!! he he he Thanks!

 

[Picobrew]

I'm doing my first "adjusted" brew today. A scottish 70/-. I'm going to remove chloramine with campden, use 5.2 buffer , and I'm working on minerals spreadsheet now ...

 

[ShortSnoutBrewing]

Just curious...if you're adjusting water, why use the 5.2?

 

[BierreNoix]

For what it is worth..... When i first started adjusting the salts in my water to make a better IPA I used gypsum and the Buffer 5.2. THe 5.2 was to address effiency issues ... I corrected this through better fly sparge and grain crush. I found that the beer had a salty after taste. I mentioned this to a brew wizard at Stienbarts (LHBS) and he said that the salty tast was coming from the 5.2. He called the folks that make it and disovered that the directions given where for regions of the country that have a much higher ph level than we do here in the NW. They advised that given our water profile you add much less than the directions indicated.

Given that our water resides in the 7.5 - 7.8 bandwidth ..
Campden will drop the PH level by ~0.5 and by the time that you add the grist and salts you are going to be right in the range necessary for conversion.

 

[kcinpdx]

I had a long conversation with the Steinbart's guy (assume it is the same guy) about water additions in Portland. Among the great advice he gave me, he told me that right off the bat ad 1 to 1.5 TBSP gypsum to nearly every batch. He gave me a mini mashing class for about 30 mins during a super busy day in the store. Talk about good service!

 

[gannawdm]

dude. get to the coast and pick up some spring water on hwy 26. that water is delicious. haven't test it, but i will soon. heading to the coast in a couple days and plan on sending in for a report.

 

[Picobrew]

For what it is worth..... When i first started adjusting the salts in my water to make a better IPA I used gypsum and the Buffer 5.2. THe 5.2 was to address effiency issues ... I corrected this through better fly sparge and grain crush. I found that the beer had a salty after taste. I mentioned this to a brew wizard at Stienbarts (LHBS) and he said that the salty tast was coming from the 5.2. He called the folks that make it and disovered that the directions given where for regions of the country that have a much higher ph level than we do here in the NW. They advised that given our water profile you add much less than the directions indicated.

Given that our water resides in the 7.5 - 7.8 bandwidth ..
Campden will drop the PH level by ~0.5 and by the time that you add the grist and salts you are going to be right in the range necessary for conversion.

Thanks for the headsup. I ended up not using 5.2 in my recent batch, just the minerals (for the first time). We'll see how it turns out. Next up is a porter that I have done before, this time with minerals. For this one, I will have a baseline to compare to.

 

[Picobrew]

Doing another batch today - a Robust Porter. The SRM is 36... This is what I worked out with the EZ Spreadsheet after watching Bobby's videos. 10 grams of Baking Soda sure seems like a lot!

Starting Water (ppm):
Ca: 1.1
Mg: 0.6
Na: 2.6
Cl: 1.9
SO4: 3.7
CaCO3: 8.5

Mash / Sparge Vol (gal): 6.375 / 4
Dilution Rate: 0%

Adjustments (grams) Mash / Boil Kettle:
CaCO3: 4 / 2.509803922
CaSO4: 0 / 0
CaCl2: 2.5 / 1.568627451
MgSO4: 3 / 1.882352941
NaHCO3: 10 / 0
NaCl: 0 / 0
HCL Acid: 0 / 0
Lactic Acid: 0 / 0

Mash Water / Total water (ppm):
Ca: 96 / 96
Mg: 12 / 12
Na: 116 / 72
Cl: 52 / 52
SO4: 52 / 52
CaCO3: 409 / 293

RA (mash only): 333 (33 to 37 SRM)
Cl to SO4 (total water): 0.99 (Balanced)

 

[Picobrew]

By the way, one thing I am lacking is a good resource that provides water profiles for beer styles. The only resource I have is for cities, and that seems more historical than "best case".

 

[samc]

By the way, one thing I am lacking is a good resource that provides water profiles for beer styles. The only resource I have is for cities, and that seems more historical than "best case".

http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/ Brewater 3.0 has some nice built in profiles.

 

[kcinpdx]

I did an English Best Bitter today and added 2 tbsp gypsum for 10 gallon batch. I also tried the campden tablet thing as well. Also did my first recirculating mash..... That is changing a few variables.

 

[Picobrew]

Bottling my first water modded beer today, a scottish 70/. The hydro sample tasted great, no need for chilling and carb! Unfortunately, I don't have a baseline for this beer without water mods, so I can't really compare. The porter will be getting bottled or kegged in a week and soon after I'll be able to compare it to the non-modded version.

 

[kcinpdx]

I've got an English Pale Ale and a Racer 5 clone that will be done in 1 and 2 wks respectively - both I added gypsum. I'm curious to see if I can tell any difference.

 

[kcinpdx]

I took the English Pale out for a "test ride." Eitehr I'm getting better at this beer making thing or the gypsum REALLY helped.

 

[Picobrew]

Ended up bottling both the porter and the scottish on saturday. They tasted pretty good, but I need to do a proper side by side with the porter to know the truth! Will be doing that soon here, maybe the weekend.

 

[homebrewers_haven]

Thanks everyone for posting such great information about water modification, filtering, etc. I found this thread to be one of the most important I've read on this site. I also live in PDX and considering I love IPAs like everyone else in the PacNW, I think I need to step up my game with water additions. Thanks for the information. BeerSmith 2 also has a cool water profile tool but I read somewhere that customizing the preset numbers is required for good results. I haven't tried it or compared the numbers from the software to a water report(changes over time..). Does anyone know where to get the PDX water report online? My friend Google isn't helping me this time.

Thanks to everybody who has contributed to this great thread. I learned a lot.