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Author Topic: Mash Water Volumes  (Read 2702 times)

Offline Wort-H.O.G.

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Re: Mash Water Volumes
« Reply #15 on: January 17, 2015, 01:37:17 pm »

Denny, thanks for that. For whatever reason I thought the water was WAY more important. I ended up paying over a dollar a gallon for distilled. Trust me, I'll be switching to tap water ASAP.

Get an analysis of your tap water from ward Labs.  But in general, if it tastes good it's close enough for a start.  If you make a hoppy beer (APA, AIPA) toss a tsp. or so of gypsum in the kettle.  You may find eventually that very light or very dark beers are better with some additions, but for now just worry about your brewing techniques.  Of course, if your water has chlorine or chloramine you should remove it, but that's easy.

I do have great tasting tap water, unfortunately it's running through a filter/ water softener unit. So I thought it may be better to use distilled w. the additions over that. What do you think?

If it were me, I'd go with the RO or distilled until I knew what my water was.
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Offline 69franx

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Re: Mash Water Volumes
« Reply #16 on: January 17, 2015, 02:07:13 pm »
And generally, bulk RO is cheaper than and more readily available than bulk distilled. Just picked up 10g for tomorrow's brew day for $3.90 and I will have to add maybe $0.20 worth of additions.
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Offline denny

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Re: Mash Water Volumes
« Reply #17 on: January 17, 2015, 02:20:16 pm »
Denny, thanks for that. For whatever reason I thought the water was WAY more important. I ended up paying over a dollar a gallon for distilled. Trust me, I'll be switching to tap water ASAP.

Get an analysis of your tap water from ward Labs.  But in general, if it tastes good it's close enough for a start.  If you make a hoppy beer (APA, AIPA) toss a tsp. or so of gypsum in the kettle.  You may find eventually that very light or very dark beers are better with some additions, but for now just worry about your brewing techniques.  Of course, if your water has chlorine or chloramine you should remove it, but that's easy.

I do have great tasting tap water, unfortunately it's running through a filter/ water softener unit. So I thought it may be better to use distilled w. the additions over that. What do you think?

In general you want to avoid water from a softener becasue ot may have a high level of sodium.  Filter may be OK.  I'd send a pre softener sample to Ward and see what they say.
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