Unscientific, imprecise, and dirty tricks...

[Duane]

I'm brand new with tinkering in water chemistry in brewing, and for now would like to stay that way. I have No interest yet in plugging in numbers in water calculators, buying test strips, or studying water analyses. Really. Honestly.

That being said, is there a safe addition I should try that might improve my stouts, assuming my city water has fairly average numbers (for what it's worth, I live just south of St. Louis, MO). What I have in mind is an addition that would balance out whatever would be added when using a lb of roasted malt in 5 gallons.

Thanks!

 

[Yooper]

I'm brand new with tinkering in water chemistry in brewing, and for now would like to stay that way. I have No interest yet in plugging in numbers in water calculators, buying test strips, or studying water analyses. Really. Honestly.

That being said, is there a safe addition I should try that might improve my stouts, assuming my city water has fairly average numbers (for what it's worth, I live just south of St. Louis, MO). What I have in mind is an addition that would balance out whatever would be added when using a lb of roasted malt in 5 gallons.

Thanks!

How do you want to improve your stouts? Are they harsh, overly roasty, bland, etc, now? If you want to improve them, you have to fix what's wrong with them.

 

[Duane]

Fair enough. Actually, I'm not sure if I can improve them. It's not that I've noticed anything wrong, per se. But I'm wondering if tinkering with water will give me something I don't know I'm missing (better efficiency?).

That being said, I have made stouts in the past that were a bit astringent. I plan to address that by using a dehusked (or de-bittered) roasted malt next time.

 

[mabrungard]

More than likely, when brewing stouts the water has enough alkalinity to produce an acceptable beer. Midwest water is often alkaline and the roast grains are a benefit for neutralizing that. However, Midwest water can have way more alkalinity than even a good dose of roast grain can neutralize, so its possible that this is where the harshness comes from.

The real test is when brewing paler beers. Then its likely that a dose of acid or acid malt would be a quick and easy improvement. However, you would have to know what the alkalinity of the tap water is in order to CALCULATE how much acid or acid malt is needed. The other way is to just start adding acid to your brewing water and seeing how the resulting beer pleases you. I would start out with minor acid additions and work your dose up in subsequent batches.

Wish I could tell you an easy way out, but you really could cut this chase shorter if you would take the time to learn this water chemistry and treatment stuff. Actually on second thought, the easiest way is to use distilled or RO water and follow the recommendations of the Water Primer on this forum.

 

[Hermit]

I have No interest yet in plugging in numbers in water calculators, buying test strips, or studying water analyses. Really. Honestly.

Then you shouldn't be posting this in the science section. All you can really do is trail and error recipes based on your taste buds.

 

[Talgrath]

I'm brand new with tinkering in water chemistry in brewing, and for now would like to stay that way. I have No interest yet in plugging in numbers in water calculators, buying test strips, or studying water analyses. Really. Honestly.

That being said, is there a safe addition I should try that might improve my stouts, assuming my city water has fairly average numbers (for what it's worth, I live just south of St. Louis, MO). What I have in mind is an addition that would balance out whatever would be added when using a lb of roasted malt in 5 gallons.

Thanks!

Honestly, the simplest thing is to just get a full water report (you'll have to call your water supplier, they are required by law to give you a full breakdown of what is in your water), find a water calculator that you like and plug in the numbers, once you have the report this literally takes ten minutes at most and it will tell you exactly what you need to add to get a good beer. The only quick and dirty way is to just brew different styles of beers until you find the styles that work for your water. That may mean the styles that work for your water will not be your favorite styles of beer however.

 

[mabrungard]

Honestly, the simplest thing is to just get a full water report (you'll have to call your water supplier, they are required by law to give you a full breakdown of what is in your water),

Yes, that is true. However, they only have to tell you what the Primary Standards and Contaminant levels in the water are. We brewers are interested in the Secondary Standards and there is no requirement for the utility to test for them or tell the customer what level they are at.

Sometimes you are forced the get the water tested yourself.

 

[ajdelange]

According to your supplier's annual report alkalinity can vary widely from 77 - 242. Stouts made at the low end (harness variations are smaller) would require no additions. Stouts made at the high end would, depending on the grain bill, probably require some acid. In cases of wide variation like this you need to determine the temporal characteristics of that variation or measure alkalinity each time you brew and adjust accordingly. The other approach is to eliminate the variations by eliminating the minerals i.e. by using RO water.

I also note with interest, as I have never seen this before, that your water's testosterone content varies from 0 - 200 ng/L. Given that I have never seen this before I'm not sure what to suggest here. Perhaps you could thump your chest and bellow during dough-in when the level is close to 0.

 

[FourSeasonAngler]

I also note with interest, as I have never seen this before, that your water's testosterone content varies from 0 - 200 ng/L. Given that I have never seen this before I'm not sure what to suggest here. Perhaps you could thump your chest and bellow during dough-in when the level is close to 0.

 

[Homercidal]

You could assume a bunch of things and end up trail and erroring your way through this, or you could just submit a water sample to Ward Labs and get a report detailing exactly what your water chemistry is (on that day) for $30.

The other alternative is to forget your water and just use RO water from a store. Then you can simply ask someone here to tell you how much of each mineral you would need to brew up a nice stout.

 

[Talgrath]

Yes, that is true. However, they only have to tell you what the Primary Standards and Contaminant levels in the water are. We brewers are interested in the Secondary Standards and there is no requirement for the utility to test for them or tell the customer what level they are at.

Sometimes you are forced the get the water tested yourself.

At least where I'm at, they're required to provide the full report if requested, I believe it's actually federal law in the US.

 

[mabrungard]

Unfortunately, there are plenty of water utilities that don't have the resources to perform all the Secondary Parameters that we brewers want to know. Secondary Parameters are not required by law in the US.