[BrewBama]

A new brewer has a lot of other things to deal with before that.  I made award winning beers for 10 years before I ever did anything more than add a tsp. pf gypsum for hoppy beers.

That's where I am:

Calcium carb = dark beer
Calcium Chloride = malty beer
Gypsum = hoppy beer

A local Brewer told me all they do is adjust for Ph with our water.

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[Laminarman]

Uh, guys, I think you lost me  : ( 

[hopfenundmalz]

Ah. It's that elevation that does it. Water doesn't flow up.

Not usually! 

Except in the desert Southwest, the saying is that water flows towards money.

Phoenix is higher than the Colorado river, but gets water from the Central Arizona Project. Las Vegas is higher than Lake Mead. And so on.

[hopfenundmalz]

Uh, guys, I think you lost me  : (

With extract use Reverse Osmosis or Distilled water for balanced beers. Add 1 tsp of gypsum for hoppy beers, or 1 tsp of Calcium Chloride for Malty beers. If it is too much decrease for the next batch.

[denny]

Uh, guys, I think you lost me  : (

Ues and I apologize.  Experienced brewers often forget what it was like when they were starting and try to unload everything they've learned on one massive dump.  The new nrewer has no context for all that and often ends up worse off then before.

[denny]

Uh, guys, I think you lost me  : (

With extract use Reverse Osmosis or Distilled water for balanced beers. Add 1 tsp of gypsum for hoppy beers, or 1 tsp of Calcium Chloride for Malty beers. If it is too much decrease for the next batch.

THIS^^^^^

[chumley]

Yep, that's pretty good advice if you don't have a water report.  If you have soft water, though, no need for distilled or RO water.

This summer, one of our local water treatment plants went down for repairs.  This is my source of water, surface water collected along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. My municipal water was replaced with treated Missouri River water.  Wretched stuff, one of its sources is geothermal water from Yellowstone that has all sorts of nasty crap dissolved in it. I had to make trips to get spring water in order to brew this summer.

[hopfenundmalz]

Yep, that's pretty good advice if you don't have a water report.  If you have soft water, though, no need for distilled or RO water.

This summer, one of our local water treatment plants went down for repairs.  This is my source of water, surface water collected along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. My municipal water was replaced with treated Missouri River water.  Wretched stuff, one of its sources is geothermal water from Yellowstone that has all sorts of nasty crap dissolved in it. I had to make trips to get spring water in order to brew this summer.

If the Op lives in the PNW, Western NC, parts of the Eastern seaboard, and so on, then "soft" water would work. Soft water means low Ca and Mg. Bicarbonate is usually low if the water is soft.

The water from my ion exchange softener has low Ca and Mg, but high Na and bicarbonate.

[JJeffers09]

I think you're better weighing your salt additions than using a tsp.  I am not saying you will ruin a batch starting with 1 tsp. Best of luck to ya. 

[Laminarman]

Uh, guys, I think you lost me  : (

Ues and I apologize.  Experienced brewers often forget what it was like when they were starting and try to unload everything they've learned on one massive dump.  The new nrewer has no context for all that and often ends up worse off then before.

No apologies necessary.  I would rather be inundated and learn than just be told to ignore the water like the LBS told me.  I'll do my first extract batch with RO or distilled, while waiting to get a report from the lab, then compare how they taste.  I guess  I have to go through the pain of tasting a lot of beer.  Oh well. 

[ynotbrusum]

Simply put, when I learned to brew a neighbor told me that our aquifer was way too high in iron; he said you have to use bottled water.  I used gallon bottles from Menards for extract beers until I discovered how much minerals were already added to a base RO to make their product.  I then went to all grain and used store made RO, unknowing of the TDS, but the flavor was better than the bottled that was sold in gallon containers at Menards.  Then I jumped to an RO system at home with a TDS meter - 350 to 500 TDS in and 10-19 TDS out. 

I weigh my CaCl2, gypsum, Brewtan B, and SMB using a small hop scale (reads to .001 gram, but likely only accurate to a tenth) and use a small syringe for my Phosphoric acid additions.  All I can say is that starting with RO that low, I can pretend it is distilled for the most part.  but I am still learning and consider myself a water neophyte.

My son is starting to brew (has yet to make his first batch) and my only advise was that he needed to buy RO or distilled water to use in his brews and he can adjust from there.  He will likely make good extract beers with that starting point and with time, he will likely seek to adjust it for styles.  But starting out, I didn't want to overwhelm him (he is 24 and has been my "bottler" since he was 12).  I hope he enjoys the hobby as much as I do.  I tell him frequently that my greatest regret in life was that I waited until so late in life  to start homebrewing! (I was 46).