Improving blondes by adjusting water?

[mattdee1]

The tap water at my house tastes great on its own, but I’ve not had it analyzed for its composition. I’m 10 batches in, and overall it’s been successful.

Insofar as it’s even possible to compare a dark ale and a blonde in terms of the “quality” of the result, I can say that my darker beers have unfailingly been much better than my blondes, from the standpoint of how they measure up against expectations. Since my process has basically been the same for all 10 brews, and since I have not ever done anything with water chemistry, I’m starting to strongly suspect that my water is better-suited to dark beers due to its alkalinity or whatever (admittedly I have a lot of learning to do on this subject).

My lighter beers still turn out well and everybody seems to like them (BMC folks included), but I’m starting to get more picky with my homebrew, and I’m starting to detect “background” flavor flaws in my lighter beers that I think (I hope?) are fixable with attention to water. I know there are other things that can cause off-flavors, so it’s worth mentioning that I’ve got good sanitation practices (no infections yet), temperature controlled fermentation, and I let my beer sit for a few weeks in bottles before I dive in.

So I have a rather specific question: does anybody have any stories to share about a similar situation, where you started out not looking at your water, and over time noticed your darker beers were better, you started noticing flaws in lighter beers, and were able to make marked improvements on your lighter beers by dabbling with water chemistry? If so, I’d be interested to know how you would describe the before/after on the lighter beers.

PS - I’m purposely not mentioning what “flaws” I’m detecting because I want to see what others have to say first.

 

[McKnuckle]

There's a joke in that subject heading, somewhere. I just can't put my finger on it.

Anyway: Yes! I had a very similar experience. About 10 brews in maybe, a few years ago, brewing with my well water. Dark beers like stout were pretty decent. Lighter ones, not so much... My wife was the first to comment on what she called a "soapy" flavor. It was also an astringent, slightly bitter, just generally "off" taste. It varied per style but none of the pale beers were really slam dunks. I looked up "soapy" and found some clues...

So I got my water tested by Ward Labs and yikes, now I know why it was so awful. Super high bicarbonate content with major alkalinity, not to mention gobs of sodium and chloride, and hardness over 300. I'm sure my mash pH was well over the optimal range on the pale beers. As you've obviously taken note of, this is not an uncommon phenomenon for people to discover.

I switched to distilled water and learned how to adjust with a few salts, and never looked back - everything turns out really well now. I shoot for moderate mineral levels and a pH between 5.4-5.5, and can now focus on bringing out the best in my ingredients and process.

 

[Jimbodaman]

The most basic of basic water rules of thumb is Hard water is "good" for dark/maltier beers while soft water works well with pale lagers/ ales. There's much more to it than that. From experience I know I have soft water and lighter color beers come out more to style than my maltier dark beers.

 

[mattdee1]

Thanks, guys.

It was also an astringent, slightly bitter, just generally "off" taste.

This is pretty much exactly how I would describe my problem with the lighter beers in question. It's not nearly bad enough to "ruin" the beer, but it is there.

The most basic of basic water rules of thumb is Hard water is "good" for dark/maltier beers while soft water works well with pale lagers/ ales.

This would also be consistent with what I've seen. I have mild sleep apnea and need to use a CPAP machine, and when I get lazy on cleaning out the air moistener there is always this white scale on the bottom of the tray left behind by the evaporated water, which I presume is evidence of rather high hardness. As I said, my darker beers are always better.

 

[mabrungard]

Sounds like the typical 'excessive alkalinity' result for your Blondes. More than likely, additions of an acid to both your mashing and sparging water will make significant improvement to the resulting beers. I recently published an article in Zymurgy in which I was trying to illustrate basic faults that anyone can assess (like your results where the dark beers are always better than the pale beers) and provided the readers with a simple acid addition rate for that condition that they could try and see if that improves their beer. In essence, simple baby steps for introducing brewers to the effects of water treatment.

Acid, it's your friend!

 

[chlehb]

Please excuse the thread hijacking. My water is about as hard as OPs. Is it worth it to try adjusting it with acid (it's not like I'm getting the minerals out)? Or would it make more sense to just use distilled water? What might the difference be flavour-wise (correcting my hard tap water vs. adding salts to RO water)?

Also, it seems RO water is not very common where I live. Is distilled water pretty much the same thing? Can I follow the "water primer" thread using distilled water?

 

[GQT]

There's a joke in that subject heading, somewhere

My first thought when I saw the heading was, Is he talking about shower?

 

[fnbrew]

I had the same issue w/ my hard well water. I now use 1/2 RO water with 1/2 well water on lighter styles and it fixed the problem. It's easy and you don't need a chemistry set.

 

[mabrungard]

Hardness is not typically a huge problem for brewing water. For ales, we want something like 50 ppm or more calcium in the water to aid in the beer's clearing and clarity. That Ca level is typically referred to as moderately hard. While most lager yeast perform better with softer water, its not a requirement.

The main problem that typically accompanies hard water...is high alkalinity. Its the alkalinity that is truly the detriment to most brewing.

 

[Natdavis777]

My first few brews were pale beers and were ok at best. My first Brown Ale though, was fantastic. Same thing with stouts. Once I started getting into water, it was a no brainer that my local water sucked from the standard water profile listed on the Indy Water website. Hence, my move to RO water and Bru'n Water, which has drastically improved all my beer.

 

[dsaavedra]

My tap water had about 120ppm alkalinity and made really terrible pale colored beers. I switched to RO water with mineral and acid additions and started making really good pale beers! It is hard to pin the improvement solely on water quality because I also added an insulated mash tun and temperature controlled fermentation fridge to my system at the same time I started using adjusted RO, but I am inclined to say the water made the biggest difference (I had been using swamp coolers prior to getting the temp controlled fridge so I wasn't getting any fermentation related off flavors before).

 

[mattdee1]

OP here again.

Thanks for the comments, everybody.

What really sucks at this point for me is that I waited too long to ask this question about pale beers and water. I recently brewed my palest beer yet by far (a 2-row/Magnum SMaSH) as an easy-drinker to welcome the warmer weather. Unfortunately, I just used untreated tap water as I always have. I tried a sample of it last night after 2 weeks in the bottle and good Lord… it was fackin’ terrible. Last night marks the first time EVER since joining this hobby that I’ve dumped a homebrew down the drain after 2-3 sips because it was that damn bad. To add insult to injury, I have a bunch of family coming over in 2 weeks and was planning to serve this beer at that time. There is no way I’m doing that now. So yeah, now I’m sitting on about 100 bottles of beer that tastes like complete crap.

I think I’ll give it another week to improve (which I don’t expect to happen) then just dump it and try again using the RO + Bru’N Water route. I poked around in Bru’N Water last night and it took me a while to get a feel for how it works, but it’s slowly sinking in. Looks like I don’t need to add much of anything to the RO water for this 2-row SMaSH; mainly just a little something to get the Ca levels up to snuff. Like a bit of gypsum? Does that sound right? I noticed that if I use only gypsum then the S04/Cl ratio goes a bit out of whack. So maybe do a combination of Gypsum and CaCL2? Should I expect these items to be available at my LHBS?

 

[crusader1612]

OP here again.

Thanks for the comments, everybody.

What really sucks at this point for me is that I waited too long to ask this question about pale beers and water. I recently brewed my palest beer yet by far (a 2-row/Magnum SMaSH) as an easy-drinker to welcome the warmer weather. Unfortunately, I just used untreated tap water as I always have. I tried a sample of it last night after 2 weeks in the bottle and good Lord… it was fackin’ terrible. Last night marks the first time EVER since joining this hobby that I’ve dumped a homebrew down the drain after 2-3 sips because it was that damn bad. To add insult to injury, I have a bunch of family coming over in 2 weeks and was planning to serve this beer at that time. There is no way I’m doing that now. So yeah, now I’m sitting on about 100 bottles of beer that tastes like complete crap.

I think I’ll give it another week to improve (which I don’t expect to happen) then just dump it and try again using the RO + Bru’N Water route. I poked around in Bru’N Water last night and it took me a while to get a feel for how it works, but it’s slowly sinking in. Looks like I don’t need to add much of anything to the RO water for this 2-row SMaSH; mainly just a little something to get the Ca levels up to snuff. Like a bit of gypsum? Does that sound right? I noticed that if I use only gypsum then the S04/Cl ratio goes a bit out of whack. So maybe do a combination of Gypsum and CaCL2? Should I expect these items to be available at my LHBS?

While i cannot verify the quality of your water, it sounds similar to the water I have locally here.
good rinking water, etc.
Generally good drinking water makes good beer.
good rinking water with the correct salts etc. makes great beer.

I would suggest your bad taste is not water related.

however I digress.

My suggestion is this. I suspect your ph in the tap water is high, so I would add Acidulated Malt to your mash on paler beers, this helps bring the ph of your mash more into line, with where it should be.
This explains why your darker beers are more successful. darker malts also bring ph down, as they are more acidic...
the most important thing you can do here is find out your local water profile.

I use 3-4% of Acid malt in every pale beer from blondes to pale ales. as my beers get darker, i decrease the acid malt. stouts get none.

 

[Jimbodaman]

A simple possible fix might be just add 2% acid malt to your grain bill when brewing pale beer. If that doesn't work bump it up to 3% ...4%.

 

[McKnuckle]

Matt, also try the Brewer's Friend water calculator. I find it very easy to use. Like everything in brewing, you can ask 10 people and get 11 ways of doing things. But here's what I do:

I shoot for either a balanced, hoppy, or malty mineral profile using my own estimation of what those terms mean. In all cases, I want Calcium at 40 ppm minimum, 100 maximum. Balanced has the SO4 and Cl at roughly equal amounts in the 50-70 range. Hoppy/crisp has SO4 around 150 and Cl at 50. Malty/soft is Cl around 90 and SO4 at 50.

These are not absolute numbers; they are a general range. I don't sweat 10-20 ppm deviations. My ppm values are all pretty moderate, by intention.

Once I've determined the amounts of gypsum and CaCl needed to hit my chosen profile, I look at the predicted mash pH. For a pale beer I want it close to 5.4. For a dark beer, 5.5. I will add baking soda to move the pH higher. To drop it lower, either lactic acid or a bit more gypsum - depending on where I am already with the SO4. I will never let SO4 get higher than 200 ppm.

So that's it. For me, it's a practical approach to water adjustment that I can reproduce every time. I brew with distilled water that I make at home using an electric distiller. I treat all of my water at once, and usually BIAB with no sparge.

 

[mattdee1]

While i cannot verify the quality of your water, it sounds similar to the water I have locally here.
good rinking water, etc.
Generally good drinking water makes good beer.
good rinking water with the correct salts etc. makes great beer.

I would suggest your bad taste is not water related.

however I digress.

My suggestion is this. I suspect your ph in the tap water is high, so I would add Acidulated Malt to your mash on paler beers, this helps bring the ph of your mash more into line, with where it should be.
This explains why your darker beers are more successful. darker malts also bring ph down, as they are more acidic...
the most important thing you can do here is find out your local water profile.

I use 3-4% of Acid malt in every pale beer from blondes to pale ales. as my beers get darker, i decrease the acid malt. stouts get none.

Yeah, I think I might have overstated how bad the beer is. I had another one last night that had been in the fridge for a few days and it wasn't the best but I don't think I'm going to dump the batch after all. I actually fermented the batch with 2 different yeasts (Bry-97 and Windsor) and the Windsor version isn't too bad. I've got all 100 or so bottles chilling down to about 2C; I'll leave them alone for a few weeks, then start generously giving away 6-packs.

I've seen acid malt at the LHBS; I think I'll start out by trying that method. If it works then that is great, because frankly, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about practical chemistry.

Thanks all

 

[Yooper]

Yeah, I think I might have overstated how bad the beer is. I had another one last night that had been in the fridge for a few days and it wasn't the best but I don't think I'm going to dump the batch after all. I actually fermented the batch with 2 different yeasts (Bry-97 and Windsor) and the Windsor version isn't too bad. I've got all 100 or so bottles chilling down to about 2C; I'll leave them alone for a few weeks, then start generously giving away 6-packs.

I've seen acid malt at the LHBS; I think I'll start out by trying that method. If it works then that is great, because frankly, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about practical chemistry.

Thanks all

I probably would choose to buy RO water at the store from those big "water machines" for pale beers, and use tap water for the dark ones since they are coming out well. To that, you may need a little bit of acid malt (but I'd chose some lactic acid over it, since it's easier) and some calcium chloride for blondes and gypsum for pale ales and IPAs. That's about it!

acid malt does work well- but since you don't have a water profile adding it to your tap water without knowing what you're adding it to probably wouldn't give you much improvement. You can easily add too much and have a tart/sour flavor, or too little and have the beer you have now.

You could get a profile from Ward Lab. (That's what I did). The cost is around $26 now for a "household minerals test", which is the one you need. Then you'd know exactly how much acid malt or how much lactic acid to use to get to a mash pH of 5.3-5.5.

 

[mattdee1]

I’d like to do the water analysis but I’m probably only going to be able to squeeze in 2 – maybe 3 -- more batches at my current residence before I relocate, so it doesn’t really seem worth the pricetag.

I did a little exercise in Bru N Water. I entered in the data for my latest stout, which turned out incredibly well with no funny flavors, and took note of the “total mash acidity” associated with that recipe. I then reverted back to the 2-row SMaSH bill and supplemented it with acid malt until the total mash acidity was in line with that of the stout. This corresponded to an acid malt addition of about 3%, so maybe I’ll start there next time.

How flawed is this logic?

 

[robcj]

I don't think the water calculators or spreadsheets are useful without the right starting data. Some municipalities and utility companies post water reports on their websites or will supply you with a report if you ask. I am able to get detailed monthly reports from our utility company's website.

 

[mabrungard]

I’d like to do the water analysis but I’m probably only going to be able to squeeze in 2 – maybe 3 -- more batches at my current residence before I relocate, so it doesn’t really seem worth the pricetag.

I did a little exercise in Bru N Water. I entered in the data for my latest stout, which turned out incredibly well with no funny flavors, and took note of the “total mash acidity” associated with that recipe. I then reverted back to the 2-row SMaSH bill and supplemented it with acid malt until the total mash acidity was in line with that of the stout. This corresponded to an acid malt addition of about 3%, so maybe I’ll start there next time.

How flawed is this logic?

That empirical approach should work reasonably well to get you into the right ballpark. Its not as good as having an accurate and valid water test result, but it should be better than nothing.

 

[Moose_MI]

I also had a by similar experience as OP. I have wonderful city water....taste great but I never got it tested. I found city water reports with useful information that I accepted as being close enough for my purposes. Then I spent a ton of time reading the water primer thread in this forum. I learned a lot and then started plugging my water into Brewers Friend for a Kolsch recipe i had done 3 times with mediocre results...holy crap mash ph of like 8.5 combined with a habit of tending to sparge a bit on the high side.....bingo!
Now I dilute anywhere from 50-100% and use a little acid malt....astringency totally gone.

 

[mabrungard]

Now I dilute anywhere from 50-100% and use a little acid malt....astringency totally gone.

That is the problem with acid malt use...you still have alkaline sparging water that destroys your brew. You can only use acid malt if your water source (or diluted water) has low alkalinity. Diluting with RO or distilled water gets the alkalinity reduced as pointed out here.

But if you learn to use an appropriate acid, there is a good chance that the tap water could be used. That avoids the need and expense for dilution. Acid malt is a nice tool, but acid is a more versatile tool.

Acid is your friend!

 

[Moose_MI]

That is the problem with acid malt use...you still have alkaline sparging water that destroys your brew. You can only use acid malt if your water source (or diluted water) has low alkalinity. Diluting with RO or distilled water gets the alkalinity reduced as pointed out here.

But if you learn to use an appropriate acid, there is a good chance that the tap water could be used. That avoids the need and expense for dilution. Acid malt is a nice tool, but acid is a more versatile tool.

Acid is your friend!

So I'm assuming my alkalinity is 142 and ph 7.3 based on what my city water report lists as "tap". I just ran it through Brewers friend with no acid malt and 100% tap for a 5 gal cream ale I like to do. Looks like 15ml or about 3 tsp of lactic to 8gal of mash/sparge tap water with a pinch of calcium....I think I'll give this a try instead of the acid malt

Thank you!