Water Question

[BARBQ]

ok so i keep making these batches and the last two I did were good but they all leave a taste thats hard to explain.

The water in the house I move to has really really hard water. The hardest I have ever seen. So I bought a whirlpool water softner. It then goes through a Dupre two stage filter. Ok you think by now it would be fine, but I am having my doubts.

I got two questions:

1. What is a cheap way to test my water for brewing, ie giving me a profile with the mag, chl etc.

2. If I get to paranoid to use my home water on the next batch is there a brand or type I should go with? I already figured I would use a big bag of ice to cool it down so that would be a potable water source. Any big differences in distilled vs spring water or drinking water etc?

 

[Scut_Monkey]

I would not be using softened water. It is high in salts and is generally not recommended for brewing. I would start there.

Are you doing extract or all-grain? If you are doing extract and you are unhappy with tap water that is not softened then I would simply use store bought RO (reverse osmosis) water or distilled water. Extract will have the proper mineral content that these waters are fine.

If you are doing all-grain it becomes more complicated and we will need more details.

 

[BARBQ]

I tried two all grains and failed so i went back to extract. I will be going back to All grain as soon as I get all the bugs worked out so I would liek to figure out what to do about the water. I used some online beer thing to compare my water profile, but i wasnt able to understand its analysis. Here is the water profile pre-soften

Bicarbonate 172 NA ppm
Calcium 49 NA ppm
Chloride 36 ppm
Iron 0.012 ppm
Magnesium 3.6 NA ppm
Sodium 27 NA ppm
Sulfate 5 ppm
Total Alkalinity as CaCO3 141 NA ppm
Total Dissolved Solids 246 ppm
Total Hardness as CaCO3 137 NA ppm
Zinc 0.01 ppm

 

[Scut_Monkey]

Do you have the ability to brew with water from your tap before it is softened. I don't know if you have a faucet that is accesible. If you don't and using pre-softened water is not feasible than the water analysis is useless.

I'm not trying to be a pain just need some clarity on this and then I can help you. Also, a great tool for water chemistry is beersmith and a great resource is Palmer's How to Brew.

 

[mabrungard]

The unsoftened water should be very good for brewing. I also note that most of the hardness is Temporary Hardness that could make it easier to treat your water either by boiling or lime softening. Since the magnesium content is low, you can get by with the lime softening procedure that Kai Troester has on his Braukaiser website. That would be a great solution for this water.

I don't think I would recommend Beersmith for water information. That is far from their forte'. How to Brew would be a better choice, but there is some mis-information in there too. Bru'n Water is the only comprehensive water knowledge that you're going to find on the web or in print until Palmer's Water book comes out. Hopefully it will advance the state of the art.

 

[Pivovar_Koucky]

For a light beer you can use Poland Spring spring water, it is really low in dissolved solids but there are enough to mash a Pilsner or Kolsch.

 

[BARBQ]

The unsoftened water should be very good for brewing. I also note that most of the hardness is Temporary Hardness that could make it easier to treat your water either by boiling or lime softening. Since the magnesium content is low, you can get by with the lime softening procedure that Kai Troester has on his Braukaiser website. That would be a great solution for this water.

I don't think I would recommend Beersmith for water information. That is far from their forte'. How to Brew would be a better choice, but there is some mis-information in there too. Bru'n Water is the only comprehensive water knowledge that you're going to find on the web or in print until Palmer's Water book comes out. Hopefully it will advance the state of the art.

thanks, i will check out the lime softening. I gotta do something, it just has an off taste at the end. I might try to used some store water to.

So either one spring water or distilled. I know spring will be where it was from, but I gotta try something different.

 

[Pivovar_Koucky]

You can't use pure distilled water, it doesn't have enough ions to buffer the reactions. If you want you can use the pre-softened tap water and cut it with distilled.