I'm about to try brewing beer from a kit. Our tapwater is fairly hard, but the house has a water softener (*) for one of the kitchen taps.
Is it better to use hard water, as it is supplied, or to use water from the softener? I can't detect any difference in taste of water from the normal or softened tap.
(*) One of those inline cylindrical ones that is fitted with compression fittings into a branch of copper piping off the rising main.
Depends on the brew. I know for a fact that Greene King purify their local water, then add back in all the minerals present in the brewing water of the brewerys they bought out in the past, to recreate the proper flavour of the corresponding beers/ales.
If you live in Burton on Trent I guess you use it neat and untouched!
Given that "Burtonizing" brewing water raises the hardness levels, I'd say the former
NY snipped-for-privacy@privacy.invalid posted
I'd say it is far more important to make sure the tap water isn't excessively chlorinated. I had to give up home brew years ago when my water board (Thames) started putting far too much chlorine in the water, contaminating just about every batch with fermentation by-products that had a filthy chemical taste.
As with most things to do with food and drink, there's a lot of personal preference involved. Hardness in and of itself won't affect the process much so it's really a question of what taste *you* (and any significant others :) ) prefer.
The beauty of homebrewing (as with all home cooking) is you get to experiment and can arrive at what you like. Which may or may not be commercially available.
Just make sure you sanitise everything, and above all have patience.
Are you bottling for a secondary ferment, or just serving from the keg ?
Good luck.
Also you might want to look for a more specialist forum.
Heating water knocks most of the hardness out (as limescale)anyway.
But you boiled your wort didn't you? No chlorine should survive that.
On 07/05/2020 14:30, Andy Bennet wrote: .
But, IMO, Greene King beers are some that I dislike (taste wise) most. To me they have an astringent, almost artificial, beer taste.
While taste is down to personal preferences I do enjoy a range of different beer styles with a preference to hoppy tasting beers rather than malty tasting beers.
Water for beer
The chlorine should boil of if just left for 24 hours or if you boil the water.
I boiled the malt extract and sugar. Not the 40 pints of tap water I put in afterwards.
I would try it with normal tap water first... however:
"Water Softener" can be a bit of a loose term.
A true water softener works on an ion exchange principle and swaps the calcium ions in the water with sodium ones. These require topping up with salt from time to time so that they can flush their ion exchange matrix with saline to "regenerate" it. Systems like these have a cost of operation, but do give actual softened water. The treated water will not deposit scale either when heated or on evaporation.
The next step down are phosphate dosing systems (combimate et al). These add a tiny amount of food grade phosphate to the water, by passing it through a pile of phosphate balls/crystals. They don't actually soften the water, but the treatment does make the water less likely to deposit scale when heated. Hence they protect boilers and heat exchangers, but water will still leave scale when it evaporates from a surface.
At the bottom of the chain are the magnetic and electronic devices. Its questionable if these actually achieve anything at all.
So from a beer brewing point of view, the first option may give a different flavour to the beer - so try it both ways and see what you prefer. The other options are unlikely to make any difference, unless doing it on an industrial scale, when the phosphate dosing system may keep boiling vessels easier to keep clean and scale free.
Just leaving the water to stand for a day before starting the process, should allow most of the chlorine a chance to escape.
Unless you are using a kit.
If you are concerned about chlorine, just leaving water to stand for 24 hours is usually recommended
The softened water will have more sodium in it. If your water is very very hard then a mix of the two might have less calcium scum.
The right amount of hardness is probably the key to good beer. We never did anything special on moderately hard water when I was a student.
It is certainly the key to good coffee. I went to a chemistry lecture on coffee with a barrista tasting session afterwards with the same very high end coffee made up with three different grades of water.
#1 was very thin and lacklustre. #3 was oily with free bases and caught the back of your throat
#2 was the just right Goldilocks version.
As well as their own beers - GK IPA, Abbot etc, which I too also have a distaste for, they also brew Olde Trip, Speckled Hen and variants, Ruddles County and Best, Ridleys Old Bob and a few others - all at the Bury St. Edmunds brewery. They all have their own special brewing waters formulated on site as I mentioned.
Ah yes, it is a long time since I made it from a kit.
It's certainly always reckoned the hard water at Burton on Trent is an important part of the flavour. When the wort is boiled the temporary hardness will be removed, i.e. Ca and Mg ions with the bicarbonate / carbonate. The permanent hardness (sulphate) is left, with calcium, magnesium, and some sodium ions.
I've got a keg. Depending on results I may try bottling at a later date.
It's the first time I've tried brewing. I'll be intrigued to taste the results. Yes, I'll try to keep everything scrupulously clean - and make sure I wash away the steriliser solution afterwards.
As a matter of interest, is the steriliser solution disodium metasilicate, sodium carbonate, troclosene sodium (what's that?) likely to be OK in a septic tank? We're not on mains drainage so we always need to check with things that go down the drain (eg washing up liquid / dishwasher tablets, toilet cleaner - no bleach!).
The tap water is from underground aquifers as opposed to reservoirs (I'm in East Yorkshire, near Bridlington). I've not smelled any strong chlorine smell when I've run water into the sink or the bath (presumably it would already have boiled off hot water but would still be present in cold water), but I'll remember the trick of leaving it to stand for a while, if I can find a clean vessel to put it into, in addition to the brewing vessel. I suppose I could put it into the keg to stand before pouring it into the brewing cylinder.
I'm sure when my dad tried home brewing he kept it in the airing cupboard, but that would kill the yeast because the temperature could go above 25 deg C. I remember he put one batch on top of the deep freeze and wondered why he couldn't get it to clear. Then it dawned on us: the vibration of the freezer compressor motor was enough to keep the yeast in suspension instead of allowing it to precipitate out. ;-)
I'm aware of what beers they brew all at the same site and pretending that they come from different breweries.
Do you really believe that they follow the original recipes for the brands/breweries they have taken over and that the accountants have not enforced standardisation?
There was a campaign to try and save Morland brewery and Old Speckled Hen appeared in many free houses at the time. I personally thought that the beer wasn't worth saving and I've had the GK version since and have not changed my opinion.
Yes, I'm inclined to agree. I like most beers (as opposed to lagers) but Old Speckled Hen is one that I never really liked. I suppose if I was Jilly Goolden (or someone of her ilk - I know she's a wine, not beer, connoisseur) I'd come out with some pretentious adjectives to describe its taste, but "washing up water" probably comes close enough. ;-) Perhaps I just had a bad pint...
Mind you, I haven't tasted (or even brewed) my efforts yet... What adjectives will I use to describe its flavour?
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