What water to use?

[GillettBreweryCnslt]

Hey,

A bit of history, then a question.

I started to brew about 15 years ago when i was a student at Dal living on Vernon street for the sheer sake of saving money. I do not believe that FestaBrew had been invented at that time and I made shitty beer that we drank simply because. However, the one thing I knew back then was that chlorine was bad so I always bought water from the grocery store for my brews. Following 2 bad batches in a row (i didn't really care about sterile technique or actually measured the sugar I was putting into the kits) I hung up the carboy and moved on.

Fast-forward to today. I restarted brewing about 2 years ago, and I have now been taking brewing seriously (well, seriously enough to want to make delicious beer) for the last year. I live in Hammonds Plains and I'm on a well with a water softener. I have an RO/DI filter in the house only because my other hobby is marine aquariums / reef tanks and it is a requirement. So, I've been using ro/di water for my beer out of habit.

Question: I haven't had my water profiled aside from the standard coliform/uramium/arsenic test (which came out clean), and I wonder if I should/could be using my well water instead of tediously waiting for 2-3 hours to filter 6 gallons of RO/DI?

[KMcK]

I can't answer this definitively without knowing exactly where you live in Hammonds Plains. I'm assuming you have a drilled well that goes down to bedrock. Depending on where you are exactly, the bedrock could be granite (South Mountain Batholith), slate (Halifax Formation), or metawacke (Goldenville Formation). If it's Halifax, you're s.o.l. (I wouldn't even shower in that). If it's SMB and you passed the radon test you should be okay. If it's Goldenville without arsenic and not too close to the Halifax contact, then you should be okay too. Of course the overburden plays a role too. In any case the water is likely to be a bit too acidic, but maybe your softener takes care of that.

[akr71]

I'd recommend getting a water test done so that you know the Calcium, Magnesium, Sulphate, Chloride, Sodium, Bicarbonate and Alkalinity. After that you'll probably mostly use your well water, but occasionally cut with RO depending on the style you want to make.

Thanks to the water treatment plant here in Amherst, the Sulphate:Chloride is heavy on the Sulphate side making it better suited for bitter beers. The bicarbonate is high relative to the amount of calcium, skewing it towards dark beers. When I want a pale, maltier beer, I have to cut with RO water and add salts back as needed. I find this guy's spreadsheet really useful - he's a water chemistry engineer and a homebrewer.

[ratchet]

alternately,
you could just get a couple jerry cans and fill them up at someone's place in the city.

[sleepyjamie]

i've brewed many batches of home brew at my buddies place and he lives in hammonds plains

[derek]

alternately,
you could just get a couple jerry cans and fill them up at someone's place in the city.

Well not if you want to make a nice bitter - Halifax city water is OK if you actually like drinking water, but way too soft for any beer I'd like to make. For that, I'd take most NS well water any day (the arsenic adds a little je ne sais quois, and I really can't get worked up about radon in a beer [and I'm not even going to ask Kyle why I should!])

[moxie]

Hmm, so what would you guys recommend for treating city water before use? Is there anything I should be concerned about that might last through the 60+ min boil? Are water impurities dropping out of wort like they would out of regular tap water during the boil?

[KMcK]

I'd take most NS well water any day (the arsenic adds a little je ne sais quois, and I really can't get worked up about radon in a beer [and I'm not even going to ask Kyle why I should!])

Ah, now I know what they mean by 'Nova Scotia style' beer.