Soft water for a NEIPA?

[pursuit0fhoppiness]

Hey all, there's no water forum on here so figured I'd post here. I live in Toronto, with pretty good water for brewing, albeit medium hard. I was wondering for a NEIPA I'm brewing soon if I should try using 2/3 distilled water to bring the hardness down. Targeting 70ppm Ca, 100 ppm Cl and 25 ppm SO4 gives me a total hardness of 170 with Bru'n Water, compared to 270 the last time I brewed it with all city water.

Has anyone used softer water and liked the results more?

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, "water questions" have traditionally found the most informed responses in the Brew Sciences forum. Over the years some notable folks that have contributed to the cause have helped us mere mortals from that forum

My well water is pretty tough for brewing anything other than maybe stouts (seriously, 300+ tds with 200+ residual alkalinity) so I installed a 100gpd RO system and use it for 100% of my recipe needs. For neipas I aim for 125 ppm calcium, 100 ppm sulfate, and 150 chloride...

Cheers!

 

[marc1]

Hey all, there's no water forum on here so figured I'd post here. I live in Toronto, with pretty good water for brewing, albeit medium hard. I was wondering for a NEIPA I'm brewing soon if I should try using 2/3 distilled water to bring the hardness down. Targeting 70ppm Ca, 100 ppm Cl and 25 ppm SO4 gives me a total hardness of 170 with Bru'n Water, compared to 270 the last time I brewed it with all city water.

Has anyone used softer water and liked the results more?

It's a beer using light malts so your alkalinity is getting neutralized in the mash with extra added acid anyway if you are using a mash pH spreadsheet.

You could use all distilled or RO water and be fine, just figure out your salt additions.

I also have well water that isn't good for brewing so I have an RO system that I use to generate all of my brewing water.

 

[mashpaddled]

For NEIPA you generally want a softer water profile