Water alkalinity

[auralabuse]

I have brewed numerous stouts,  porters,  dark ales etc which have all turned out great.  However anytime I try a lighter style such as IPA,  pilsner,  etc they turn out terrible.  Everything seems to point to high alkaline content in the water.  I'm wondering if any of you suffer the same and what you do to rectify this?

[cronan]

I boiled my water the night before, decant the liquid of what drops out. this helped a lot for pale beer. Some acid malt helps also.

[auralabuse]

Not sure I understand what you mean when you say "decant the liquid of what drops out"

[cronan]

The calcium carbonate will drop out of the water and sink to the bottle of your boil kettle, the bottom of your kettle will be all white. you want to remove the water from this as this. This method reduced my hardness from about 250ppm to about 90ppm.

[Frequent Sequence]

Boiling will reduce residual alkalinity precipitating CaCO3 (bicarbonate). But your total alkalinity is what you need to concentrate on.
Where do you get your water from?
If your total alkalinity is still high after boiling then acid additions are the way to go.

Seán

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

You have various options depending on the level of complexity. You could try a Dortmund Pils recipe as Dortmund has very hard water, you can soften your water by diluting with distilled water, (try 50:50 to start) or you can go for brewing with distilled water and add the minerals as required to imitate the water from a particular region to brew a particular style.

[Will_D]

Distilled is very expensive and hard to get!

Most of us use RO water from a pet shop/aquarium shop. It typically costs €5 for 5 gallons!

Make sure its pure RO as one shop asked me if it was for fresh or salt water fish as they sold tank water complete with all the minerals and salt added!

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Sorry was going to write RO but got bopped lately for using. Acronyms :-) so I used "distilled" instead mistakingly :-(

[auralabuse]

Interesting,  never knew of the availability of ro water from Pet shops.  That's defo an option.  The water here has changed recently after the installation of a water tower and some well pumps so all water is local (Dunshaughlin),  it's incredibly hard.  Out of interest will_D  what does the 5 gallons come in?

[Will_D]

The empty 5 gallon container YOU bring to the shop!

Some shops will sell you a container (for €10) and fill it for free i9f you don't have one

[auralabuse]

Haha,  yes,  I guessed that JUST after I hit send

[Hop Bomb]

You have various options depending on the level of complexity. You could try a Dortmund Pils recipe as Dortmund has very hard water, you can soften your water by diluting with distilled water, (try 50:50 to start) or you can go for brewing with distilled water and add the minerals as required to imitate the water from a particular region to brew a particular style.

Im actually re-brewing a Dortmunder next week (first batch had insufficient yeast growth & was a TCP bomb). Dortmunder fits the Galway water profile nicely. Tasty Mcdole has a great piece on the fermentation schedule for this. He talks about it on the Philly Beer week podcast on the Sunday Session. I converted all the info to ˚c below:

Ferment profile for 1.050 pils / yeast WLP830:

start ferment & hold at 12.7˚c until 50% of the wort has attenuated (50% @ 1.030)

Raise ferment to 14.4˚c until 75% of the wort has attenuated. (75% @ 1.020)

Raise ferment to 16.6˚c until 90% of the wort has attenuated.  (90% @ 1.014)

Once 90% of the way to terminal gravity rasie temp to 18.8˚c & hold until ferment is complete.


With the method of fermentation 75% of the ferment takes place at 14.4˚c or below & 90% at 16.6˚c or below.

[auralabuse]

Just got hold of an EPA report on the water quality in my area and low and behold the water is very hard and very high alkalinity.  So it's a reverse osmosis filter for me after Christmas and pet shop water before that