He says its hard water?

This weekend is BIG BREW, and so I’m heading over to a brew club members house where....

1. He is on a well
2. He says its hard water
3. We don’t have a water profile.

So what would you do to make sure the water of acceptable for a Blonde Ale.

I have Burton brewing salts and ph5.2…

Worst case is I bring my own water….

CR-

Without a water profile you'd either spend a lot of time adjusting the water and still might not get it right. I'd either bring my own or buy some spring water where you can get the report.

You could run out to an aquarium supply store and buy hardness and alkalinity test kits. Even with that you would want to go to his house and test before the big day. If you know your own water and how to use it I'd go with that rather than try to deal with this unknown devil this late in the game.

I'd bring your own RO water and build the minerals back in with salts. Blonde ales are not very tasty with alkaline & hard water.

You have to bring something to carry the wort back home anyway so just fill that with RO water to take with you. When I had very hard water I would always mix my filtered tap water with RO water. If I was doing a lighter ale I would mix it about 75/25 RO to filtered tap. If I was doing a style that allowed for more harness and mineral content I would just do a 50/50 split.

thanks for all the feed back, i'll be bringing my own water to the party, my other friend who are going are also bringing their own water. i like the guy but i just dont trust his water.. lol

So is this true:

"5.2 is a proprietary blend of buffers that will lock in your mash and kettle water at a pH of 5.2 regardless of the starting pH of your water."

Because I am almost out and considering if I should order more.

masskrug said:

So is this true:

"5.2 is a proprietary blend of buffers that will lock in your mash and kettle water at a pH of 5.2 regardless of the starting pH of your water."

Because I am almost out and considering if I should order more.

Click to expand...

Most say 5.2 doesn't work for ****. I've never used it, but even my LHBS steered me away from it, and they sell it.
Go back to the basics... get a water report and start from there.

masskrug said:

So is this true:

"5.2 is a proprietary blend of buffers that will lock in your mash and kettle water at a pH of 5.2 regardless of the starting pH of your water."

Because I am almost out and considering if I should order more.

Click to expand...

There are a lot of posts by people way smarter than me that say it's "snake oil". That's good enough to keep me from buying the stuff.