Best Water for Homebrewing

Yeah, that will fix one potential problem, but there are many variables in tap water that entice homebrewers to seek complicated fixes that would easily be solved by the use of RO as a base. Homebrewers just love to fuck with their beer sometimes...I guess

 

I'm not trying to bust nuts here but I am sticking around for the good old BA debate we don't really get too much of anymore.

I didn't write that. I wrote "any amount of chlorine, chloramine, iron or magnesium is always too much but not always so much to not be tolerated."

and followed it with "9 times out of 10 tap water with chlorine removal will do perfectly well."
And it remains true. According to me anyway.

You are advocating total removal, which is both impractical (because we as homebrewers don't have the tools to measure chlorine concentration reliably) and a fundamental misunderstanding of how we measure chemicals in water (we can only measure to a certain vanishing point, and if1 ppb is too much, as you state, we are doomed!)

And, I was replying to a brewer made a very simple request. So it doesn't need to be technical.
Cheers.

 

While I am also sticking around for the debate, and I appreciate that you bring a knowledge to this that I admittedly do not have, I feel cheap insurance is a good thing.
@telejunkie got us both though, ro water would be best for the op as he is extract brewing. Oops.

 

I've brewed professionally at two breweries. One used carbon filtration system, the other used RO system.

Don't think it needs to be such an intense discussion.

Just make sure the water tastes good before brewing with it. If you are concerned about mineral levels off the tap then get your water tested. Then you can either use filtration at home to dial in what suits you or do as others do and build your water from scratch.

I'm in FL. Brewers using municipal water untouched for brewing is unheard of because our water is shit, absolute horrendous garbage shit water. Cheers.

 

The stouts of Ireland require a very different kind of water than the IPA’s of California. There are a variety of minerals (also called “brewing salts”) and other water treatment aids that help brewers find that perfect match and maintain consistency in their water, which means consistency in beer. I found a place that seems to specialize in Beer Brewing Water Filter Systems

 

I don’t know if everybody will take the time to click on the link to US Water Systems but I found the video there to be very interesting.

Two Deep Brewing uses a blend of RO water and Carbon Filtered municipal water for their brewing water. They measure/monitor the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) of the filtered municipal water to decide the proportions of each water source for the finished water blend.

Cheers!

@honkey

 

I'm in the same boat, having worked at two breweries, one with a carbon filter, and at my current brewery we use RO. I really like the control I have over the product starting with RO water. That said, for most homebrewing, the "tastes good" test is going to be enough. It might be ideal to use RO water an build it up for lighter styles. Personally, I wouldn't go through the trouble for most styles other than Pilseners, Cream Ales, Kolsch, etc.

A large part of the reason we mess with water profiles at commercial breweries is to ensure that beer stone is minimized, that yeast has the necessary calcium to flocculate, etc.

Edit to add: I would say that chlorine is very off putting to me. I would recommend always using a carbon filter for people where chlorine is high in their tap water.

 

We use RO water and it is a hell of a system. The most TDS I've seen has been 2 ppm. It is necessary for us to do so in Tombstone because our water when tested showed small amounts of lead and arsenic. I just use calcium, sulfate, chloride, and magnesium. I do have calcium carbonate on hand, but I have only use it once.

 

So, I take it is fair to say that you think that some magnesium in the brewing water is beneficial (vs. just relying on the malt to provide magnesium)? What amount of Magnesium to you add in ppm?

What was the brewing water for Blue Pants Brewing?

Cheers!

 

Always less than 10 ppm Magnesium (normally it's more like 5 ppm). What I pay most attention to is the calcium level. For most balanced beers, I like to start with 100-120 ppm calcium and then use try to target a chloride to sulfate ratio that I determine based on style. I use magnesium sulfate to correct the ratio.

The brewing water there was fairly hard, but it could change fairly regularly since we had 4 different reservoirs and treatment plants that our water came from. I tested it every couple weeks with a lamotte water testing kit. We had a lot of chlorine so we got a really nice active carbon filter there and that solved that problem.

 

I take that the mineral levels were acceptable for the beers you brewed there? Was there ever a need to dilute the municipal water (e.g., with some RO water)?

Cheers!

 

For the most part, the water was acceptable. The first year we brewed our Pilsener I didn't notice any mineral flavor in that beer, the second year, I did taste it and it bothered me a lot. That prompted me to start testing the water instead of relying on water reports and I found a lot of discrepancies.

Our core beers were an IPA, Amber Ale, and Pale Ale and then we brewed a stout regularly, seasonal porter, seasonal Pils, seasonal sour wheat, and seasonal Oktoberfest. The pils was the only beer I ever tasted a flaw that I attributed to water. We never did any blending because without an RO system, it wouldn't be viable to blend that much water down. We were a 15 BBL brewhouse doing quadruple batch brewdays to fill 60 BBL fermenters. Blending with RO would have been a great solution.

 

Speaking with a handful of German brewers, most have advised me that much lower Ca levels are preferred there. From what I understand, many/most Munich brewers, for example, are said to pre-boil their brewing water, which causes Ca to precipitate out and leave fairly low levels (20 ppm or so). Did y'all cover much of that in your studies over there?

 

For many German styles, now that I have control, I am targeting much lower calcium levels. I don't brew a whole lot of lagers though, so when I say "most" styles, I'm really meaning "most ales." That said, for our Dunkel and Schwarz here, I did go with higher calcium levels to encourage better flocculation and I do not notice any undesirable mineral flavors. For our Pils (brewed a few days ago), I went with 22 ppm Calcium.

FWIW, with the Dunkel: http://www.tastings.com/Beer-Review/Tombstone-Brewing-Company-Munich-Dunkel-USA-03-02-2017.aspx

 

I will say that Ayinger has a 603 meter deep well that pulls in very soft water that comes down under an impermeable rock layer. Tastes wet, they have a fountain dispensing that water on the tour. They also have a 40 meter well that has more alkalinity that they blend in for Dunkel and other dark beers. Traunstein had a deep well too. Augustiner is said to have a deep well. 20-30 ppm Ca for lagers would be ballpark from what I am seeing on the net.

My local brewery has a nano filtration unit, that gets down to 20 ppm TDS with 600+ feedwater. The brewer blends some carbon filtered tap water in for some beers, minerals addded for others.

 

Home Brewing is like fishing. Both require water and can be as simple or as difficult as one wants to make make them.

The key is to have fun.

 

My Cleveland tap water gets used for nearly all my beer, with mineral/acid additions as needed, except for specific lagers I'll brew that I cut with distilled to soften it up.

 

Lucky, I've recently relocated and the main thing I miss about my old residence is the brewing water. Had to change to buying water and I don't have that treatment dialed in yet.

 

Nice. I agree on two counts.

One, as a Beer Advocate who wants to help any eager soul into the world of home brewing, to a beginner, close enough is close enough. You don’t have to be a scientist to get going with the hobby.

Second, that said, I am a scientist. And an environmental scientist (well, an undergrad environmental science teacher anyway) at that. I agree with the argument that we tolerate all sorts of contaminants. Just google the Safe Drinking Water act and look at “acceptable” “maximum contaminant levels” for all sorts of crazy molecules.

While it’s great for everyone to have a platform to show case their own knowledge and stoke their own egos, that’s not always what’s best for the OP who is asking the question.

 

Took an hour to read this thread, very interesting and informative.

I'm new to home brewing, and trying to brew all grain first time in my life. It seems like there are tons of stuffs that I have to be careful about. Someone here mentioned "campden tablet" and it seems like I can get it from my local homebrew market. Would tap water + 1 campden tablet be enough for me as I'm just starting off and want to focus on something more basic? Or should I get some brewing salts to get it right from the first place? The tap water from my country seems a lot different from what you guys are getting.

Thanks!