I’m getting back into brewing after a six year “vacation” and I’m in the process of trying to improve my beer through better water. I get Mpls water and they not publish it’s analysis monthly which is a big help compared to last time I brewed. In any case, can someone tell me whether if I were to dilute my tap water 1:1 with distilled water, would that reduce the alkalinity by half? The water dept reports alkalinity to be 57ppm and, from what I understand, that’s a “moderate” level. I plan to brew mostly English/Irish and Belgian beers, all which would benefit from a lower level of alkalinity. So, to reduce my water’s alkalinity, I plan to dilute it with distilled water and to add gypsum, calcium chloride, etc to build a water profile beneficial to whatever beer I’m brewing. Does this approach seem workable or does anyone have suggestions for a better method?
Your on the right track… BUT… if you are able to manipulate a water program online, you’ll be able to target brews from a specific brewery…
You still need to know what minerals/salts are in your water… Without being in the know, you may just switch to RO and also monitor your TDS… that tells you if your filter is in need of replacing…
Your additions will NEED to be weighed for accuracy.
Sneezles61
Hard to tell you what to do without a complete water report. Depending on the style you want to brew you might be just fine with an acid addition. Others it might be too much acid and require dilution.
I would encourage you to download Bru’n Water. It’s a water composition program that helps you with targeted profiles as well as mash pH. It seems daunting at first, but it’s really very simple.
Its not simple… doing it long hand… 
Water has stuff in it that can or can’t help yer brews… You’ve gotta be figuring out why…
Sneezles61
Yeah, I didn’t give a very good sense of what I’ve got for info plus I should have typed “now”, not “not” referring to the water reports. In any case, I do have a full report and I have Beersmith 3 with its water treatment software and, together, I’ve got a pretty good handle on water treatment theoretically, but now for the real test – using it in a batch of beer. I figured out how the software would calculate a diluted version of Mpls water and so I can easily get the water below 50ppm alkalinity. I’m having a blast re-doing past recipes and controlling for the water by using suggested ion values for the various styles of beer from the book “Water”. Next up, getting a pH meter to see how the software-calculated water treatment and temps compare to the results. I’m anxious to get going as soon as I check out all my equipment and get some supplies. Whitbread Ale clone recipe looks to be my first batch in about 6 years!
Alkalinity of 57 is pretty low. Without knowing much else about your water I don’t think I’d bother trying to reduce the alkalinity.
I brew all styles with water that has alkalinity of 114. I treat it with lactic acid or use acidulated malt to adjust pH for the mash and I use gypsum as needed for raising sulfates in IPAs. Other than that I don’t need much even per brunwater.
I’ve used straight distilled and I’ve used 50/50 distilled/well water and honestly seen no difference even in very light finished lagers.
Your beer, your process but I’d keep it simple.
EDIT: I use BS3 and love it but I’m not a fan of Brad’s water calculation methods. They always come up differently from Brunwater and especially on acid requirements. I follow Brunwater’s advice on water treatment. Just a heads up…YMMV
Just to clarify, if there are differences between BS3 and Brunwater regarding amount of acid to be added, how do you know that BS3 is off? Is it because you get the target mash pH using Brunwater and not with BS3?
That’s correct. I confirmed it with my pH meter. Brunwater recommendations hit the target pH within± .1 accuracy 99% of the time. The few brew sessions I tried using BS3 for water adjustment shooting for a 5.4 mash pH it put me as low as 4.7 .
Having said that, I went to the beersmith forum to find the thread regarding this issue and found a post that sounded like Brad had made changes in the latest release. Sure enough, there’s a selection there now for which model to use. So it appears you can select the Brunwater acid model by selecting BW rather than the MPH 3 model that he originally put into BS3! Very happy to see that but I obviously haven’t tested it yet. I will do so on my next brew day which is hopefully 2 days from now, and update this thread with my findings.
That’s great that we now have a BW option on BS3! I’m going to try it out against the BW calculator and see if they match up. If they do, I think I’ll just use the BW option on BS3. Thanks for the update!
I had hoped to have tested it out by now but got pulled in all different directions this week. Going to create a starter tonight in hopes of brewing tomorrow AM.
