As a gift for Christmas I got a Brooklyn Brew Shop homebrew kit. What is the best water to use. My tap water is not the best. Should I use a supermarket spring water?
Assuming this is an extract kit, I recommend distilled water or RO water. The extract already has all the minerals that were in the water used to mash the grains that became your extract.
What does not the best mean? Taste of chlorine? If you are on a municiple system, contact them and get a report of the mineral content, or look on line. What makes spring water better? It can be very low in brewing ions or fairly high depending on the spring. If the kit is extract follow @VikeMan's advice.
Most of your beer is going to be water, so make sure it tastes good to YOU! Water chemistry is something that people have written tomes about, so don't expect a simple answer in an internet post. I filter my water and use it and am extremely happy with it. Other friends of mine, start with RO water and add in mineral content based on the style of beer they are brewing...it can get quite complex! Suggested reading is the Brewing Element Series on water....
Brooklyn kit is whole grain and 1 gallon. My town water is chlorinated fairly well. I don't have exact #'s and probably won't request a report. They send one out yearly. Pretty sure I filed it in our circular file. I just wanted to buy 5 gallons and the additional 3 materials needed to brew. Did not want to put in too much think time. Pretty much a keep it simple approach and see how the beer come out. The kit was $40 and other material can be found for under $15. Plus I have bottles and caps.
If chlorine is the only objectionable thing, you can get rid of that with a portion of a campden tablet. If you tell us what the grains types/amounts in your kit are, someone can recommend a good water profile, which you can make yourself with distilled water and (probably) some combination of gypsum and calcium chloride. If you don't want to deal with water chemistry/treatment at all, you could use spring water (with unknown content) for this batch and see how it goes.
I would use RO water if in your situation unless you feel up to starting with distilled water and building your own water profile; but honestly if this is a new hobby for you; just use RO and pay close attention to other details like pitching the correct amount of healthy yeast into well oxygenated wort, good sanitization practices, making sure you conduct your mash properly and stable/proper fermentation temperature. Good luck and enjoy your home brew Journey! Slainte!
Not sure I understand this recommendation... RO water is distilled water for practical purposes, unless it's poorly processed RO water. Good RO water (i.e. close to 0 ppm of everything) wouldn't be great for most mashes without salt and/or acid additions. Though it would certainly make beer.
The RO water I buy from my local store has just enough minerals for a decent mash without additions- Ive tested it. It's also slightly acidic. I make additions to get exactly where I want, but have brewed without them and the beer was just fine, no noticeable difference really. RO water is mineral deficient, but I was unaware RO could be devoid of minerals from my testing it. I will concede that I do not know as much about water chemistry as the rest of the brewing process; I've messed around with it, but not to a great extent. I am aware of more than a few home Brewers who use RO water without additions for all of their beers and I e never had a beer that was lacking anything from the other than brews that were not to my liking due to personal preference. Is MOST RO water devoid of minerals and alkaline, because I was under the impression. It was typically acidic and dificient- not devoid of minerals. If I am wrong please educate me. Thanks!
Good RO water (presumably most RO water...though I really don't know...maybe unknowable) has ion PPMs in the low single digits. It can be acidic (due to carbonic acid as a product of the RO process). But the acidity is weak, i.e. it won't significantly contribute to mash pH, where other factors (Grain acidity contribution, Water Alkalinity, Residual Alkalinity (due to interaction of calcium with phosphates from the grains) have a much greater impact.
Thanks for info. I think I am just going to get plain old store bought spring water and see how it goes
The biggest problem with brewing water is contamination with di-hydrogen-monoxide. DHMO contamination is a major problem that's mostly swept under the rug by gubmint agencies, the CDC, EPA, FWS, and the WHO. It's imperative that we, as a community dependent on water, spread the word about DHMO contamination, and do our part to protect our national water heritage. [this public service message was brought to you by al] a half a campden tablet for 5 gallons water gets rid of band-aid tastes resulting from chloramine treatment. It doesn't HURT if there's no chloramine, but if there is chloramine and you don't use it, you'll soon find out. I can't taste enough chloramine in water to cause bandaid flavors, so taste alone probably won't tell you whether it's there. Most municipalities will use at least some chloramine at least part of the year, and campden tablets are cheep, so you decide. Spring water varies greatly in content. In fact, bottled water in general is mostly a scam, a manufactured demand created by sewing doubt about public water supplies, then hijacking those same supplies and selling it back at "slightly marked up" prices. So don't assume it's "better" just because you paid 10,000 times more for it by volume than tap water and it comes in a bottle. Bottled water comes in containers made from petroleum [aka plastic] and was likely transported to the store via exhaust belching trucks. It's not green, it's not local, it's not friendly, and frequently it's no better or even worse than tapwater. Do I have an axe to grind with bottled water - damn straight I do. But regardless of that, let the facts do the talking, not some guy's rant on the internet. You should have a very specific reason for using bottled water that cannot be reasonably overcome while using tapwater. And even then, assuming your tapwater is too far beyond usable to be usable (probably not true), have you tested or collected any data on the bottled water you intend to replace it with? Is the problem with your water fixed by switching to something that comes in a bottle? Is the same problem still present, along with the additional problem of greatly increased cost? I know most brewers (including me) don't really want to delve too deeply into water chemistry. Basically I'm just lazy. Despite having now over 200 credits and being one semester away from my second BS degree, I brew for relaxation more than science, and don't want my beer to become too academic. YMMV. But - I had to do a little checking when I moved here in order to do the beer right. My water has way too much CaCO3, and probably won't be making any award winning Czech pilsners or DIPAs anytime soon. But otherwise, it's good clean water, some of the best in the country (I still use campden tho). Distilled water is another story, it (should) by design have impurities and electrolytes removed (to whatever the standards are for distilled water; I don't know them off hand but they should be easy to find). Brewing isn't the easiest thing you can do, it requires thinking, learning, skill, knowledge, and adaptation. Figure out the water thing and then just brew it!
I have bought RO water that had 3 ppm TDS (total dissolved solids). That is just about distilled. Distilled water will be acidic, as CO2 will dissolve into the water and create carbonic acid, so the pH is <7. You do want some Ca to help conversion, or acid to drop the mash pH into the 5.2 - 5.6 range. Maybe the water you have is acidic enough to do that. Some brewers in the world can make light beers with very low ion water using an acid rest, Pilsner Urquell does this. Beyond mash pH, you can consider the flavor ions such as SO4 and Cl, those will alter the bitterness and maltyness of the beer, respecitvely.
