Tap water chemistry

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donking
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Tap water chemistry

Post by donking » Tue Jul 07, 2015 4:14 pm

From what I heard, Shediac has pretty good quality tap water. I was wondering if it was also good water to use for mashing or it would need pH stabilizer etc.. I happened to have old aquarium water test kits from one of my previous hobbies. I had a pH, GH and KH test kits.

Results:

pH 7.4
KH(Carbonate hardness) 100 mg/L
GH(General Hardness) 100 mg/L

I know this is not a complete water analysis, but I'm wondering if any of you would know if this would be likely to be a good tap water for mashing. I will be starting to do all grain brewing very soon that is why I'm asking.

Thanks!

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evanisnor
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Re: Tap water chemistry

Post by evanisnor » Sat Jul 11, 2015 10:28 pm

It'll do fine! My water has a pH of 6.84 right now and any where around 7 is perfectly normal for drinking water.

If you're mashing for a pale beer you'll probably need something else to help you lower the pH more. A pH stabilizer could work out okay but you could also use Acid Malt, Phosphoric Acid, or Lactic Acid. Adding minerals such as gypsum and calcium chloride can affect your pH as well, but you probably wouldn't want to add too much of those (and usually in conjunction with some kind of acid) unless you know the mineral content of your water and follow a suggested target profile for the style of beer you're brewing.

When you're making darker beers you could use a little acidification but it's not as important because darker malts lower the pH on their own more than lighter malts do. All this being said, many people mash without any attention to water chemistry and their beer turns out just fine even though a mash pH between 5.1 and 5.4 is generally accepted to benefit most styles of beer.

If you want to get into manipulating your mash chemistry I recommend using a water calculator like Bru'n Water or the Brewer's Friend calculator to determine how much salts and acid to add. I also recommend trying to determine what your water's mineral content is as that can affect the flavour and bitterness of your beer. It's a complicated topic so if you're interested in having a bit more control and accuracy than using pH stabilizer can provide you might want to do some reading! I manipulate my water and the results are worth the effort IMO.

Here are some resources:

http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.ph ... ts_brewing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/20 ... -made.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Full disclosure: I've never used pH stabilizer and I have no idea what's in it :drunk:

Cheers!

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evanisnor
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Re: Tap water chemistry

Post by evanisnor » Sat Jul 11, 2015 10:41 pm

Also I bought a cheap pH meter from deal extreme which would be more accurate than test strips. It's pretty awesome once you figure out how to use the damn thing :lol:

http://www.dx.com/p/ph-2011-0-8-4-digit ... aHFaVxViko" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

donking
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Re: Tap water chemistry

Post by donking » Sun Jul 12, 2015 8:52 am

Thanks for the info!

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evanisnor
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Re: Tap water chemistry

Post by evanisnor » Sun Jul 12, 2015 10:08 am

You're welcome!
evanisnor wrote:When you're making darker beers you could use a little acidification but it's not as important because darker malts lower the pH on their own more than lighter malts do.
I should also clarify that sometimes your target water profile might call for bumping up the carbonates by adding chalk (like a Dublin or London water profile for stouts and porters) which actually raises the pH and you you'll end up using a lot of acid to get it back down to an acceptable range.

So much information :barf2:

donking
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Re: Tap water chemistry

Post by donking » Sun Jul 12, 2015 11:45 am

haha, thanks I have a good source of very hard well water I will try to use some of that water when I`ll make stouts. where do you get Phosphoric Acid?

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