For the last decade I have been brewing with arrowhead Springwater without adding any minerals etc. Not really checking PH except with little strips making sure I’m somewhere between five and six and doing no adjustments.
With this process I’ve been pretty happy with my brews without any noticeable problems. But I finally decided to embark on water chemistry and got Martin’s program and started playing around. I decided to start with distilled water and build up from there. I brewed my IPA that I have brewed many times trying the following:
Water adjustment: Set to distilled water at dilution 100%. I used yellow dry profile and got close with overall finished profile of:
calcium=52, magnesium=9, sodium=5, Sulfate=102, chloride=50, bicarbonate=NA, PH was supposed to be 5.41 but ended up being 5.73.
The beer turned out fine/good, but there’s something missing. Can’t put my finger on it. Kind of blah compared to the many times I’ve brewed it before. My wife and good friend who have had this beer before agree.
So I decided to send a sample of arrowhead Springwater to ward labs and get the results which are as follows.
Ca=56, Mg=9, Na=11, Sulfate=5, Cl=2, HCO3=200, Ph=8.3
This just doesn’t make sense to me. Seems like the arrowhead brew should be more blunted/blah by looking at the numbers......
Any ideas/comments?