treating mash ph vs testing brewing water

[teej_810]

Ok like many newbies getting into brewing chemistry, I'm getting more confused the more I read posts and articles about it. I have beersmith so I plan on using that to calculate my additions. I just need a couple things cleared up to help me be more confident in this before I start my next brew.

1. I was going to use my local tap water that I even got a water profile for from the city that is for homebrewers.but after reading the primer I think it might just be easier to buy ro water and build from that. I only wanted to use tap water for the costs of having to buy water all the time. So am I right when I say it's easier to build my own water from ro even thought it might cost a few bucks more?

2. Say I need 8 gal for my brew day, when I treat water am I treating all 8 gal I am using or am I treating the water that's in the kettle before boiling? And the second part of this question; is treating the mash for ph totally different? Or is it the same thing? Will treating my 8 gal determine my mash ph and I adjust the mash with additions when the ph is off? Then I'm all set for water treatment for the rest of the brew?

I'm just confused between treating the mash ph and treating the water. It's probably the same but I'm just over thinking it. Hopefully someone can clear this up for me.

 

[ajdelange]

1. I was going to use my local tap water that I even got a water profile for from the city that is for homebrewers.but after reading the primer I think it might just be easier to buy ro water and build from that. I only wanted to use tap water for the costs of having to buy water all the time. So am I right when I say it's easier to build my own water from ro even thought it might cost a few bucks more?

That depends on how you get your RO water. In my brewery if I want RO I open the valve labeled RO and if I want well water the valve labeled Well. It can't get much easier than that. If I had to drive 45 minutes and pay $1.00 a gallon then no, RO wouldn't be easier. Given that you have an acceptable supply of RO water then treating it is easier, usually but depending on your tap water, than treating the tap water. One of the major advantages of RO is that if your tap water changes seasonally or otherwise your supply of RO is, for all practical purposes, immune.

A big disadvantage of RO is that by using it you escape having to learn about water chemistry to the extent that you would using tap water.

2. Say I need 8 gal for my brew day, when I treat water am I treating all 8 gal I am using or am I treating the water that's in the kettle before boiling?

I think it is easier to do it that way but there are various reasons why you might want to handle the sparge water differently from the mash water and most spreadsheets and calculators are set up to let you do that.

And the second part of this question; is treating the mash for ph totally different? Or is it the same thing? Will treating my 8 gal determine my mash ph and I adjust the mash with additions when the ph is off? Then I'm all set for water treatment for the rest of the brew?

However you do things must set the water so the mash reaches proper pH. If, for example, this required some alkali in the water you might want to withold that from the sparge water. If you want to lower kettle pH you could add acid to the kettle or to the sparge water.

I'm just confused between treating the mash ph and treating the water. It's probably the same but I'm just over thinking it. Hopefully someone can clear this up for me.

You treat mash water to control mash pH. In many, if not most, cases treating sparge and make up water the same way is fine. In other cases you may want to treat them differently.

 

[brylemartin12]

Thanks for that useful information. Water is essential for life, without water human can only survive for days. However, are you testing your water? When you have doubts about whether your water is clean, you most likely should. It's only your health, right?

 

[ajdelange]

As far as the health aspects of their water sources are concerned I think most home brewers rely on their municipal supplier's testing and reporting or, in the case of wells, their community's testing requirements for an occupancy permit. It is well known that brewing renders otherwise questionable water suitable for drinking because the boiling kills microbes and the hops acids are bacteriostatic. As more and more move to RO we tend to feel protected from the heavy metals, pesticides etc by the carbon prefiltration and the RO process itself.

For brewing information most go to Ward Labs which provides a fairly complete (from the brewing perspective) test at reasonable cost. Others do some testing on their own. To answer your question, yes, I am testing my water. Not before every brew (though I have a new alkalinity test that just drops a vial in a machine and the number is displayed on the screen so it's much faster and easier to obtain that parameter).

 

[Hermit]

If you have the water report simply plug it into the Brewer's Friend calculator and see where you are at with your tap water.