[quote=“El Capitan”]Ugh. Skip the 5.2 and step up. I brewed a lot of weird-tasting batches, using 5.2. There was a large, immediate improvement in my beer when I stopped using it and started making water adjustments on my own. There’s a lot of great info out there. Braufessor’s link was useful, although I haven’t tried that method yet.
You’ll be glad you made the change, once you stop with the 5.2. :cheers: [/quote]
5.2 was my first stop along the water-treatment highway because I had a number of people telling me that I wasn’t paying enough attention to mash pH, etc. To be honest, I noticed nothing when I used it. But my wife started to tell me that my beers were tasting “soapy”. Every beer I made with 5.2 was described as soapy by my wife but I did not taste it. But I certainly can’t have my wife on the bad side of my brewing so I quickly stopped using it. I now have a 90% unused container of 5.2 in my beer bunker. I agree with El Capitan that getting the pH of your mash is not that complicated. You need to know what’s in your water and you need gypsum, calcium chloride, pH strips (ColorpHast seem to be the best ones) and lactic acid. Grab a version of Martin’s spreadsheet or EZ_Water. Honestly… if I can do it, anyone can.
Another good resource to get you in the ball park is John Palmer’s “How to Brew” - Chapter 15. If you don’t have a copy, I would recommend it. Here is online link to chapter 15 - has a lot of good basic info on water and it is really what got me on my way to having a better understanding of water. I would not say it is a stopping point of learning about water, but it is a good place to begin to understand the process better.
Wow, you guys are really beating me up for the 5.2 thing. I knew it was considered a sub optimal solution by those in the know, but the fact that so many feel so strongly that its actually a detriment is news to me. I always looked at it as a “better than nothing” approach.
I’ve read Palmer’s book, and I’m enough of a science nerd to understand the basic concepts of what was going on. In prior attempts to control and adjust ph, I was always frustrated by the difficulty of reading of the crappy pH strips I was using. I could never tell if I was actually changing something or if it was my imagination. So eventually I gave up decided to throw in some 5.2 and forget it. I’ve always meant to get a PH meter, but because of the cost and general pain in the ass factor of calibrating and maintaining them, I keep putting it off. I’ve never tried the colorphast strips before, are they really that much better?
As to water quality, I know I’ve seen a report for my local water before but can’t seem to find it online anymore. If I wanted to send a sample to a lab, should I collect it straight from the tap, or add some campden to remove the chlorine first (to more accurately reflect how I actually use it?)
[quote=“Nate42”]Wow, you guys are really beating me up for the 5.2 thing. I knew it was considered a sub optimal solution by those in the know, but the fact that so many feel so strongly that its actually a detriment is news to me. I always looked at it as a “better than nothing” approach.
I’ve read Palmer’s book, and I’m enough of a science nerd to understand the basic concepts of what was going on. In prior attempts to control and adjust ph, I was always frustrated by the difficulty of reading of the crappy pH strips I was using. I could never tell if I was actually changing something or if it was my imagination. So eventually I gave up decided to throw in some 5.2 and forget it. I’ve always meant to get a PH meter, but because of the cost and general pain in the ass factor of calibrating and maintaining them, I keep putting it off. I’ve never tried the colorphast strips before, are they really that much better?
As to water quality, I know I’ve seen a report for my local water before but can’t seem to find it online anymore. If I wanted to send a sample to a lab, should I collect it straight from the tap, or add some campden to remove the chlorine first (to more accurately reflect how I actually use it?)[/quote]
We’re not beating you up. We’re guiding you.
I used to use my tap water after it had gone through a carbon block filter (to remove chlorine) so I filtered some water and sent that to Ward Labs. It best represented the water I brew with. If you use a Campden tab in your water, you could use that first and then take some of that, put it into an empty water bottle and send it off.
Yes, the Colorphast strips are better. There are paper strips that suck. There are some other strips that are plastic and resemble Colorphast strips and I bought them once when I was out of ColorpHast strips. Look HERE
for the best price on ColorpHast strips. They’re very good. Many have said that they have some sort of built-in temp correction thing so that if you take the pH of the mash when it’s warm, the strip will read .3 lower than the actual pH. That said, I aim for a reading of 5.0 which gets me to 5.3, supposedly. If anyone knows that’s incorrect, please correct me and I will stand corrected.
Ken, are you saying that bicarbonate concentration in water has a direct effect on flavor? If that is what you are saying, are you saying it out of experience or does it come from other sources/documentation?
I ask because I wonder if bicarbonate has an effect on flavor, but I haven’t read anything to that effect. Based on everything I can see, it only affects mash pH.
Ken, are you saying that bicarbonate concentration in water has a direct effect on flavor? If that is what you are saying, are you saying it out of experience or does it come from other sources/documentation?
I ask because I wonder if bicarbonate has an effect on flavor, but I haven’t read anything to that effect. Based on everything I can see, it only affects mash pH.[/quote]
Guess it depends how you want to think about it but mash pH (when not correct) can have a massive effect on flavor. I learned the hard way since I’ve got high bicarbonate water and couldn’t get anything outside of stouts and porters to taste right until I learned about how water and mash pH interacted.
Ken, are you saying that bicarbonate concentration in water has a direct effect on flavor? If that is what you are saying, are you saying it out of experience or does it come from other sources/documentation?
I ask because I wonder if bicarbonate has an effect on flavor, but I haven’t read anything to that effect. Based on everything I can see, it only affects mash pH.[/quote]
I know this from experience but remember that I prefer pale and amber beers and not darker beers like porter or stouts. In the beers that I make between the SRM range of maybe 4 to 10, the presense of higher levels of bicarbonate (mine is 138ppm) seems to mask flavors and cloud the entire beer drinking experience. When I cut my water 50% with RO, I get a much smoother, cleaner and clearer flavor and the subtle flavors of various grains like vienna and munich and the hop flavors come through much better. Drinking beer with higher levels of bicarb is like driving around with a dirty windshield, if I had to equate it to something. Lowering that bicarb level (again, in lower SRM beers) is like cleaning your windshield. High levels of bicarb also inhibit clarity. I recently made a Red Lager of sorts that came out dynamite. It had an SRM of 13 so it was towards the dark end of the range I typically brew in. As the end of the keg was approaching and I was marveling at how good the beer was, I went back and checked my notes. Turns out that I cut the water 50/50 and then added back just enough CaCl and CaSO4 to get the levels back to where they originally were before the cut. That brought everything in line but lowered the bicarb by half which made a huge difference in this beer (which I had made before with 100% tap water). Had I gone 50/50 on the water but left those depleted chloride and sulfate levels alone, the beer may have come out bland and dull… especially on a beer that has some color to it. So there’s an example of how the lowering of bicarb even helped a “darker” beer.
If you don’t mind spending a little extra money, you can send a couple samples in to be tested. That is what I did - sent in faucet in my brew room, faucet from outside my brewroom and faucet outside brewroom with carbon filter - this allowed me to compare water/filtering etc. and decide which water/method I was going to use. Glad I did it this way, because I found out the faucet in my brewroom was hooked up to the softener - was not supposed to be that way, but the plumber forgot when building our house.
In regard to flavor issues/bicarbonate - I echo Ken. My bicarb. is 250-280 range. Great stouts and porters, but really effected my other beers. My hoppy IPA’s were especially problematic with lots of harsh flavors, astringency, etc. No smoothness, no hop crispness, Just real nasty harsh bitterness. I am not sure if that is purely from the ph/tannin extraction from grain in the mash, or if the bicarbonate impacts the hop flavor directly.
I just got a pH meter - but I second the colorphast strips above - I used them for a couple years and they work pretty well as shown by testing them against my new pH meter.
[quote=“kcbeersnob”]
Sure, kick a guy while he’s down. Yes, Martin explained this very articulately.[/quote]
Maybe I should read the other posts next time… :blah:
Yes, yes, yes. When you attempt to make a pale beer or a highly-hopped pale or amber beer, you run into nasty harshness with regard to bicarbonate. I recently wanted to make an all-Nelson Sauvin pale ale and someone suggested using just base malt so I could showcase the hops. So I used 100% Briess pale malt and 100% filtered water (with the 138ppm bicarb). Fail. Then I added gypsum to the mash to accentuate the hops a little bit. Fail. I should have used a 50/50 split on the water and I should have gone a little easier on the CaCl and gypsum additions. It would’ve been much better. High bicarb + sulfates + heavy handed hop usage = harsh, tangy, spiky & dry.
At the risk of being redundant, I will mention this: I have been attempting to adjust some of these beers post-fermentation if I feel that I futzed up the mash additions. For example, if I make a beer with chloride-heavy water and the beer lacks crispness, I can boil a pint of water and add a gram of CaSO4 and add that to the secondary or even the keg. If I make a beer where something went awry and the beer was too dry (low mash temp, sulfate-heavy water, etc) I can do the same thing but with CaCl which will add a rounded smoothness to the beer and possibly take that sharp edge off. I would much rather do it all at the point of mashing but if I can save a batch and learn something about how to make it the next time, I’m all for it. I’ve even heard of people taking a pinch of salt, gypsum or CaCl and dropping it into their glass of beer to see what difference it makes.
[quote=“kcbeersnob”]Are you an extract brewer or all-grain? If you’re an extract brewer, you can use whatever water source you want without thinking twice. The malt extract has all the minerals you need for yeast health. If you collect water from a natural, untreated source, you most definitely want to boil it before it enters your fermenter.
Note: with the exception of distilled water (and for the purpose of this discussion) water treated using reverse osmosis, all water will have minerals–even if you collect it from a mountain stream.[/quote]
Currently extract brewing. Heading towards the all-grain field of home brewing. Do I need to boil first, then start the brewing process? Or, will the boil I do during brewing suffice? Thanks.
[quote=“mabrungard”]Its more about the lack of minerals in your water that makes brewing easier. Its easier to add minerals than remove them from water. The hydrologic cycle removes most minerals and deposits that water as rain. Going up the mountain is probably going to get you less mineralized water. I could imagine running up Cruso Rd to that waterfall near BRP. Grabbing a few buckets of that water might be a good idea, but you still wouldn’t know whats in there. At my cabin in Blairsville, I can detect a slight metallic note in the groundwater supply. But I’m pretty sure its very soft and has low alkalinity. It would be great brewing water excepting for the metallic notes. Running up the mountain could present the same problem. If I’m not mistaken, Canton water is probably reservoir or river water and it probably doesn’t have a lot of mineralization since its local runoff. I’d find out what is in your local tap water first. It might not be that bad.
The brewing process is innately a sanitizing process, so as long as you aren’t drinking any of the mountain water that hasn’t been heated to boiling, you are OK.
The advice above regarding using any water for brewing an extract beer is absolutely wrong. While its correct that a brewer doesn’t typically need to worry about adding extra minerals to their water since the extract already has some. The problem is that there are plenty of tap water sources that have too much mineralization and adding that to the mineralization that is in the extract could easily be a disaster. In the case of Briess extracts, they already have excessive sodium content (100 ppm Na when reconstituted to 1.045 gravity). If the local water has additional sodium, that is going to be some salty beer! On top of this malady, high alkalinity tap water can leave the reconstituted wort with too high a pH. That will create rough flavor from the hops and the overall beer flavor will be dull and muddy. Extract brewers should typically use the lowest mineralized water they can get. Distilled or RO water is highly recommended for reconstituting extract.[/quote]
Thanks, Martin. Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking… heading up Little East Fork near Cruso and collecting water. You’re right about Canton water. I live across the river from the Filter Plant at the edge of Canton. It’s city water and that’s what I’ve been using for all my brew this year. But, I have been collecting it via tall glass by glass from my new fridge, which provides filtered water at the door dispenser. Wonder if I’m taking out too many minerals? I know the Pigeon River well. And, living at the bottom of the Pigeon Valley, I’m sure the 10 or 15 miles of farmland produces a certain amount of bad runoff before it gets to the filter plant. Exploring the quality of water I think is crucial to producing good beer. I just want to make sure I’m getting said good water. Thanks much.
[quote=“Braufessor”]+1 to what Denny mentioned above.
To keep things simple - If you are going with extract, just use RO water. you can get it for .39 cents a gallon, you know exactly what is in it (nothing basically), and the extract generally already has everything you need in it to start with. Perhaps . . . .perhaps . . . a gram or two of gypsum if you want to increase sulfate for a hoppy beer or something. But I would not worry about that until you are further down the road.
All grain - again - to keep it simple while you learn more about water and its effects on brewing, how to adjust, etc. I would maybe just follow the general guidelines in the link below. Start with RO water and add the additions based on beer style to get water that is in line with what you want to brew. Basically, there is a general guide in the first post that will get you in the ball park (and then hundreds of other posts discussing water if you want to learn more).
However, ultimately, there is no substitute to getting your water tested by someone like Ward Labs, and learning how to use that information in B’run Water. That will get you your best results for all grain.
Water has the potential to make a huge difference - especially if you are dealing with very hard water. It took me over a decade to brew an IPA that was any good. The key - learning about water and adjusting my very alkaline water. The second I did that, I made my first really, really good American pale ale.[/quote]
Yeah, Braufessor, I’ve fallen in love with IPA beer. Never had one until recently. And, decided to brew a batch. Turned out ok, but wasn’t like those I drank from local micro brewers. My Appalachian Pale Ale (as it was named) is the one I want to perfect. And, I’m guessing I need to start with water. Especially if I want to concoct/experiment with an all-grain APA. Thanks for the thread. I’ll check it out.
[quote=“mabrungard”]Its more about the lack of minerals in your water that makes brewing easier. Its easier to add minerals than remove them from water. The hydrologic cycle removes most minerals and deposits that water as rain. Going up the mountain is probably going to get you less mineralized water. I could imagine running up Cruso Rd to that waterfall near BRP. Grabbing a few buckets of that water might be a good idea, but you still wouldn’t know whats in there. At my cabin in Blairsville, I can detect a slight metallic note in the groundwater supply. But I’m pretty sure its very soft and has low alkalinity. It would be great brewing water excepting for the metallic notes. Running up the mountain could present the same problem. If I’m not mistaken, Canton water is probably reservoir or river water and it probably doesn’t have a lot of mineralization since its local runoff. I’d find out what is in your local tap water first. It might not be that bad.
The brewing process is innately a sanitizing process, so as long as you aren’t drinking any of the mountain water that hasn’t been heated to boiling, you are OK.
The advice above regarding using any water for brewing an extract beer is absolutely wrong. While its correct that a brewer doesn’t typically need to worry about adding extra minerals to their water since the extract already has some. The problem is that there are plenty of tap water sources that have too much mineralization and adding that to the mineralization that is in the extract could easily be a disaster. In the case of Briess extracts, they already have excessive sodium content (100 ppm Na when reconstituted to 1.045 gravity). If the local water has additional sodium, that is going to be some salty beer! On top of this malady, high alkalinity tap water can leave the reconstituted wort with too high a pH. That will create rough flavor from the hops and the overall beer flavor will be dull and muddy. Extract brewers should typically use the lowest mineralized water they can get. Distilled or RO water is highly recommended for reconstituting extract.[/quote]
I really appreciate your advice, Martin. It appears you know something about water (lol). I’ll look further at you website tonight. I really don’t like adding anything to my brew except the four main ingredients. I want to honor the German Purity Law of 1516 for all my non-spiced brews. I learned early on that water is one of the more important elements to brewing quality beer (or spirits). And, I learned the water for the Kentucky distillers (Jim or Jack, I can’t remember) flows over sandstone, making it quality (?) So, without getting too involved at the moment in trying to test water, I think I’ll give it a shot and head up to the Parkway area for a few buckets. Do you happen to know anything about my tap water I have here in Canton? Thanks much.
[quote=“kcbeersnob”][quote=“mabrungard”]
The advice above regarding using any water for brewing an extract beer is absolutely wrong. While its correct that a brewer doesn’t typically need to worry about adding extra minerals to their water since the extract already has some. The problem is that there are plenty of tap water sources that have too much mineralization and adding that to the mineralization that is in the extract could easily be a disaster. [/quote]
To the OP: Ignore what anyone else says about water and listen to Mark.
To Martin: Thanks for clarifying something that I know a lot of people have only partially right. Lesson learned.[/quote]
Agree. We are fortunate to have him on this board. This guy has the credentials all brewers should observe.
[quote=“Braufessor”]Another good resource to get you in the ball park is John Palmer’s “How to Brew” - Chapter 15. If you don’t have a copy, I would recommend it. Here is online link to chapter 15 - has a lot of good basic info on water and it is really what got me on my way to having a better understanding of water. I would not say it is a stopping point of learning about water, but it is a good place to begin to understand the process better.
Oh my! My head is spinning. As a kid who played front-yard football with all the neighbor kids, I would just head for the water hose when thirsty. I can’t believe how much can be done to/with water to make it prime for brewing! Uggggggh. Oh well, I didn’t get into this to watch others brew beer at home. Time to roll up my sleeves and get wet. Thanks everyone for your advice and info.