Soft water quality and recommendations

[Nubiwan]

My water is rated softness 20 mg/L and hardness 22 mg/L. All fluoride, chloride, sulfates and sodium come in under 15 mg/L.

It is lake watershed water, so pretty lifeless in terms of mineral content. I am wondering if I should buck it up for my first BIAB attempt, or leave as it is to get a baseline? Perhaps do 2 of the same batch, and use some water additives in the second. My question is what should/could I add?

I am doing my first BIAB as indicated. I have largely brewed (very good in my opinion) extract style IPA, Lager, Red and and Ambers. Don't do stouts or wheats.

I understand the low Alkaline might be OK, but the softness could be an issue for getting my pH under control. Looking for some options.

Anyone brewing with soft water want to offer some advice?

 

[BigEd]

Soft water is good in that because it is very low in mineral and anion content it's fairly simple to add what you need. The main implication for "soft" water is that it is very low in Calcium and Magnesium. Does that generalized 20-22ppm refer to Ca++? Low alkalinity is desired for light beers but dark beers are typically matched with higher alkaline water to balance the more acidic roasted grains.

I would strongly suggest you look at the pinned topics on brewing water in the Brewing Science section of HBT. Most of your anticipated questions will probably be easily answered there. In brief it depends on what style/type of beer you are brewing to decide on water ion adjustments. Again, because you have very low ion content water to start with it is much easier to add a bit of brewing salts (Calcium sulphate and Calcium chloride are the most used) than to have to reduce water's ion content before adjusting. Reducing ion content of very hard or alkaline water can be a PITA.

 

[ncbrewer]

Calculators like Bru'n Water (Download Bru'n Water) can help a lot with this. But I think I've read that some of these don't work well with BIAB because of the extra dilution - you might have to check further into that.