brew water

[skips192 Member Find all posts View Profile Close skips192]

What water are you chaps using for your all grain brewing?


Having read John Palmers "how to brew", water plays a vital role in the outcome of your beer. In the book he gives ranges of minerals in ppm that lend themselves well to effective brewing. Having a look at the mineral content of some bottled water as well as water reports it would appear that the ranges are way out to what he recommends. It seems that most of them are out by a factor of 10. Maybe a calculation error?


To illustrate:

Mineral	Recommended brewing range (PPM)	Bottled water
Calcium	50 - 150	2.76
Magnesium	10 - 30	1.84
Bicarbonate	0 - 50 (for light beer)	25
	50 - 150 (for amber beers)
	150 - 250 (for dark beers)
Sulphate	50 - 150 (normally bitter beers)	0.16
	150 - 350 (for very bitter beers)
Sodium	0 - 150	3.38
Chloride	0 - 250	1.35

What is your take on the above?

[pretorjn Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close pretorjn]

I use normal tap water from Randwater, but filtered to remove the chlorine. I also let it stand for about two day before brewing.
AFAIK most RO bottled water does not nearly have enough minerals to enhance the required characters for a beer

[StevenD (Slainthe) Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close StevenD (Slainthe)]

I use water that I get from a stream flowing down Ou Kaapse Weg just up the road from me.

I have no idea what the chemical make-up of the water is, but it measures a perfect 4.3pH every time. I don't add any gypsum or other chemicals to change the pH and have yet to have a bad brew from this.

[kingcur Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close kingcur]

If the numbers at the end are the mineral contents of the water you are looking at, then it looks like RO water. RO is fine(but still lacks some minerals) for Pilsners.

RO water is fine if you know what salts to add for the style you want.

I usually just work from the municipal water(also Randwater). Its low on Ca, but other than that it is fine.