Where to Begin With Water Treatment?

[Abbas]

I've been brewing for just a few months now and I like to improve something with each brew, whether it's adding equipment or tweaking my process. Water treatment/quality control has been something I've always thought about, but never explored.
Currently I'm using filtered water from my refrigerator filter for brewing.
https://www.hillsboroughcounty.org/library/47b12ebb959a4a84928e4bfd0954ca40.ashx
The link is the report of water quality for my area, but I'm not sure if it is helpful.
Can someone point me in the direction of what I need in order to get my water in check because I'm not even sure where to begin.

 

[IslandLizard]

The only thing useful from that report, aside from various "poisons" being below Federal requirements, is your water contains Chloramines. Used for keeping your drinking water sanitary.

The carbon filter in your fridge may or may not filter that out for 100%.
The best remedy and only way to make sure it is removed is adding 1/4 crushed Campden tablet, or a "pinch" (1/16 of a tsp actually) of "meta" per 5 gallons of brewing water and stir. It will react within a minute. Done!

First look at the Brewing Water Chemistry Primer Sticky in the Brew Science Forum. It deals with basic water chemistry.

In short, you need a (recent) water report to tell what (brewing specific) minerals and how much of them are in your water. Someone in your area may have one or has posted it somewhere...

Instead of paying for a snapshot analysis from Ward Labs (~$25) I called my water department. I talked to someone regarding water quality and got the skinny on brewing specific minerals and how much they vary by season and from year to year. Luckily my water is rather soft, and very consistent in content. YMMV.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

The report you linked is the water quality report. It doesn't list info for the various minerals important to brewing. My water company gives out a water quality report such as that one, but I was able to dig around online and also found this :

https://www.fairfaxwater.org/imar_fairfax-water-service-area

Maybe your water company publishes something like that as well, or you can call them and see if they have it offline they can send you. The first thing you should do is start using campden tablets to eliminate chlorine. I started using them on my 3rd brew and I believe it eliminated some off tastes I was getting. You don't need to know anything about your water to use them, just use 1/4-1/2 tablet for a 5-10 gallon batch.

I've since plugged my water profile numbers into some of the water software(Brunwater, EZWater) and played around with additions like gypsum, CaCl, lactic acid to control mash ph. Jury is out on how much these will impact the quality of my beer because I haven't tasted the batches yet. There are tons of threads on here about water manipulation.

 

[GPP33]

1) Buy a book called “water”

2) Find a water report that lists disolved minerals or Just use RO water.

2) Download bru’n water

Skipping #2 makes anything else worthless.

 

[Hopalong]

To be consistent use RO water, yeast and enzymes are OK with it. Certain chemicals are added to make up for inconsistencies and deficiencies in malt and to find out about glitches in malt a spec sheet comes with each bag of malt. Before doing anything it would be better to obtain the spec sheet for the malt to determine if the malt will make ale and lager to begin with and go from there. Fully modified malt needs a little more than water treatment to make ale and lager, enzymes need to be added and the temperature that activates the enzyme is used during mashing. The Beta (conversion) rest is omitted in recipes because the malt recommended to use doesn't contain Beta amylase. Without Beta amylase the types of complex sugar needed in ale and lager do not form. When conversion occurs secondary fermentation is required which became a no-no, must not do.
Regardless of water treatment, when a recipe recommends fully modified malt, single temperature infusion, only primary fermentation and adding priming sugar or CO2 for carbonation the beer produced is similar in quality to Prohibition style beer.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

RO water is the easiest. Wal-Mart in my area does refills for $.37/gal. As mentioned, download Brunwater. Go to the Brew Science forum and ask questions. AJ and Martin (who wrote Brunwater) are extremely helpful.

 

[IslandLizard]

Go to the Brew Science forum and ask questions. AJ and Martin (who wrote Brunwater) are extremely helpful.

Yes, they're very helpful. But please, read that sticky first to get the basics down.

 

[wallyLOZ]

@Abbas, I'm pretty new to water treatment as well. As stated above, this link will point you in the right direction, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/a-brewing-water-chemistry-primer.198460/.

Also poke around the website, Brewers Friend. lots of useful info and tools/calculators. https://www.brewersfriend.com/#a_aid=596d85b5a5115

A third source is, Water, A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers, by Palmer, Kaminski.

Have not explored, Brunwater yet.

Good luck and keep us posted of your progress.

 

[dmtaylor]

Get the chloramine out. 1/2 Campden tablet per 5 gallons. Don't sweat anything else.

 

[IslandLizard]

The carbon filter in your fridge may or may not filter that out for 100%.

Besides, those fridge filter cartridges are usually proprietary, small ("half size" or less) and ridiculously expensive. Some fridges come with a "bypass cartridge" so you can avoid the perpetual $35 outlay. I just left the original one in mine (no bypass was supplied or available). Been in there 8 years, I'm fine with it.

I was not so fine with the pinhole that suddenly developed out of nowhere in the plastic supply line to the fridge. I was lucky to be home when I heard what sounded like water dripping in one of my lower level closets. It was right below the fridge. That pinhole sprayed over a gallon in 15 minutes!

 

[Abbas]

It looks like Campden, a more comprehensive water report, and some additional research is the best place to start. Thank you!