Water chemistry variability

Consistency is important for me, personally. While I do enjoy brewing, it's still a lot of work. If I'm going to dedicate half a day to brewing, I'd like to know, with some reliability, what my finished beer will taste like (read that as enjoy).

 

Corky, do you concentrate on certain beer styles? I have read numerous posts where somebody will state something like: your water is good for making Porters and Stouts, etc. Do you tailor your brewing to styles consistent with your water?

Cheers

 

I brew pretty much everything from pale to porters, smoked to sour. I do have to use more hops when I brew hoppy styles, but since I've been brewing with this water so long it's pretty much automatic to add 1/3 more hops than Promash suggests.

 

So are you saying screw adding salts etc to water, and just add a boatload more hops? I think Im just gonna try doing that

 

That's pretty much it. After I get a water analysis, I can drive to town and spend 5 dollars on water, add salts, etc, or I can add a couple dollars worth of extra hops. I need homebrewing to be enjoyable, it is my stress release from my job. Fretting over every minute detail makes it too much like work.

 

But I do know pretty much what it will taste like after 20+ years of brewing. I know that with the water I have I need more hops than most recipes will call for so I add more. I still am pretty confident about the resulting beer because I've probably brewed it before and know what tweaks it needed.
There's so much we have no control over-each batch of hops will be different, malts may be slightly different, without a full lab analyzing every component of the beer there's no real way to exactly reproduce any given beer.

 

The co-op will notify us that our wells are getting briny and it's time for a change. Since the brine comes in slowly over time the water chemistry is always changing-abruptly when we get a new well but gradually all the time.