Water treatment?

[daveyk]

Ok so this should perhaps go in the "water treatment forum" BUT my question is directly related to Extract brewing so decided to put it here!

I've done quite a bit of kit brewing, and always used bottled water for this. Now I'm planning my step up to extract brewing I'm just after a bit of advice.....

so here is the sweeping question..... What if any water treatment should I do?

I understand if I'm right that critical water treatment is most pertinent when AG brewing so was wanting to keep it simple and use water straight out of the tap... is this OK or foolish.

Should the water be treated with a campden tablet? (this is to reduce chlorine levels.... right?)

Or should I deal with one variable at a time and just stick to bottled water for now?

I've always been a bit anal about using bottled water, but keep trying to remind myself that monks and other clever people have been making all sorts of brews for centuries with water from muddy puddles among other things!!

Oh yes and I live in Durham... water quality is pretty good I think being Keilder / derwent fed and fairly soft.

Many thanks in advance, for your usual helpful advice.

Dave

[OldSpeckledBadger]

As you're not mashing, the only water treatment you need to do is dechlorinate with a Campden tablet. Adding a spoonful of Calcium Sulphate or Calcium Chloride to the boil might help enhance the malt flavours.

[daveyk]

Although armed with campden tablets, I chickened out of this and bottled water again as I have been doing with kits.... this was for a couple of reasons.

As a first proper dabble with extract, I wanted to keep the water the same to provide a bench mark to test against, and one less thing to worry about.

But mainly the reason was due to only having a smallish jam pan to go on the hob. This holds approx 8l, but I was brewing a length of 10l. I knew that would need to top up a little bit in the FV. would that have been OK to use non boiled tap water treated with campden direct into the FV?