Recreating an old recipe - need help with water!

[Barley_Bob]

Hey folks, I have a problem I'm not sure how to handle.

My 5th bath ever was an IPA, which turned out amazingly well. My brother-in-law (and homebrew co-conspirator) and I look back on that batch with a lot of love. Maybe that's because we were still new to homebrew, but it was a great beer.

Really, the whole thing was a stroke of luck. The recipe was pretty complex, and it took me many subsequent brews to understand each component on its own. I tried making it one other time after that, but a variety of newbie mistakes prevented it attaining its former glory.

I finally want to return to it, and we're really looking forward to tasting this beer again. But I have a problem - when I brewed it the first time, I used my tap water! That came back to haunt me later, but it worked in batch 5.

My tap water at the time was crazy hard, and I have since switched to RO. I have a profile I like and use for IPAs regularly, but it's definitely not close to what my tap water was at the time!

What should I do? I have no idea what the composition of that water was, other than that it was hard. The sulfate could have been anything. I want the same beer... Should I go with what I know works? Should I guess and try to recreate something close to the tap profile? Should I use the profile for an NE IPA?

I am stumped.

 

[didinho]

You could add gypsium to have a harder water. Here are some info. But I think you have to try some times to get the right quantity...
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3...h-ph/using-salts-for-brewing-water-adjustment

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

You should have a Ward Lab test done on your tap water. Then you will know what you are trying to duplicate. Either that, or brew it again with your tap water.

 

[Barley_Bob]

You should have a Ward Lab test done on your tap water. Then you will know what you are trying to duplicate. Either that, or brew it again with your tap water.

I don't live in that town anymore, so this is challenging. Also, the untreated water sometimes made good beer and sometimes didn't. Talking with the head of the water department while I lived there, I learned that shallow aquifers change shape and mineral concentrations seasonally. So, there's just no way to know what the mineral content is in that water. Even if I could get a sample, it probably wouldn't be the same as the water I used.

I'm leaning toward either using lower sulfate or using a NE IPA profile.

So maybe:
150 SO4, 50Cl

or (NE IPA)
60 SO4, 120Cl

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm about to brew an ~5.6 gallon to the fermenter (~7.1 gallon boil) IPA (targeting ~7.5% ABV, and ~75 IBU's) this weekend, and my water will be (for each 5 gallons):

RO water with:
4g. Gypsum
2g. Calcium Chloride
2g. Epsom Salt

Water chemistry should be roughly:

Ca = 77.2 ppm
Mg = 10.4 ppm
Cl = 50.8 ppm
SO4 = 158.8 ppm

Sulfate to chloride ratio = 3.13 to 1

Not saying that you need to follow this as a guideline, as the choice is yours as to how to proceed. I mineralize both my strike and sparge water as above. This (my water profile) is considered by many to be lower in SO4 than what they would consider to be ideal for an IPA. A lot of IPA water profiles seem to be targeting 250 to 300 ppm SO4. I'll admit that I don't know much at all with regard to NE IPA.

 

[Barley_Bob]

Not saying that you need to follow this as a guideline, as the choice is yours as to how to proceed. I mineralize both my strike and sparge water as above. This (my water profile) is considered by many to be lower in SO4 than what they would consider to be ideal for an IPA. A lot of IPA water profiles seem to be targeting 250 to 300 ppm SO4. I'll admit that I don't know much at all with regard to NE IPA.

My tried and true water profile is:

200ppm SO4
50-60ppm Cl

I've tried 250 and 300 SO4, but that's too dry for my general preference. They were great IPAs; they just weren't quite what I wanted.

Thanks for your input! Any thoughts and ideas are appreciated.