Virginia stafford, spotsylvania, king george or fredericksburg

[elmetal]

Anyone from the area? I live mins from maltese brewing for reference. Just moved to the area.

 

[Mekchu]

Anyone from the area? I live mins from maltese brewing for reference. Just moved to the area.

Wow, pretty quiet in this region. I'm a little north of you in Fairfax county. To use your point of reference method, I'm between the two Caboose breweries in Vienna and Merrifield. I was hoping to talk water chemistry with someone using local municipal water. My water comes from the Potomac river and Occoquan reservoir, depending on the time of year. Anyway, welcome to the area.

 

[elmetal]

Wow, pretty quiet in this region. I'm a little north of you in Fairfax county. To use your point of reference method, I'm between the two Caboose breweries in Vienna and Merrifield. I was hoping to talk water chemistry with someone using local municipal water. My water comes from the Potomac river and Occoquan reservoir, depending on the time of year. Anyway, welcome to the area.

thank you sir!

I believe m ywater comes from a lake/reservoir west of here and is single source year round. I called them a while back to ask and he confirmed that, I just don't remember which lake/reservoir it was! He did say that chlorine leves and pH levels vary through the year to combat algae and whatever other microbes they deal with in the lake/reservoir but that mineral content should be fairly stable. Sure enough I test my tap water and it's well over 8.5 and he said yep that's normal and sometimes it'll be as low as 7 also. Interesting.

 

[Mekchu]

Our waters are probably similar, but hey, a thimble can hold my complete knowledge of water chemistry. I have only recently started all grain brewing. I think my water is ok, but I need to control for alkalinity. I bottled an American Cream Ale two weeks ago that tasted a little astringent at bottling. I'm attributing that to failure to control sparge water alkalinity with lactic acid. I'll let it bottle condition for 1-2 more weeks, and hope against hope that time will help it mellow. Any chance at that?

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

I'm in PWC. I get water from the public utility, whom gets the water from Fairfax County. Unfortunately, the water quality varies too much during the year/months to determine a base from where to start. Therefore, I just use regular tap water, check pH with meter and adjust pH as necessary.

I do use 0.5g potassium metabisulphite in 20 gallons of the HLT when getting started brewing. The 0.5g is used to remove chlorine/chloramine.

So far, brews have all turned out great

 

[Mekchu]

The cream ale has had plenty of time to condition and astringency has faded. It still is not a great beer, not a lot of flavor. Put it this way, if all beer tasted like this I probably would not be a beer drinker and certainly not a home brewer. But then again, if it were 95F and I just finished mowing the law, it might hit the spot.

I wonder how much all this snow and ice will cause an up tic in salt in our water and if it will come thru our beer. I'm brewing a pale ale this week and am thinking it will be more resistant to salt and alkalinity than the cream ale.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

"I wonder how much all this snow and ice will cause an up tic in salt in our water and if it will come thru our beer."

When I asked PWC Water Authority about the fluctuating numbers I was given basically the above quote as 1 of the reasons.

 

[Jnick]

Anyone from the area? I live mins from maltese brewing for reference. Just moved to the area.

Hey just seeing this post. I live in Fredericksburg about half way between Highmark and Red dragon. There is a stafford homebrew club here but I don't think it's very active.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Seems many homebrew clubs are inactive in the area and this was pre-Covid.