Water treatment for porter

[danwlx]

Hi all.

I haven't treated my water so far with my brewing and have noticed that my pale beers seem to be more successful than my dark ones.

I'm brewing a porter this weekend and have bought a salifert kit to test my water. The result is a caco3 of 17. I'm looking on the forum and other sites but am totally confused. Can anyone give me any guidance on how to treat my water for the porter?

All help gratefully received!

[gnutz2]

It sounds like your water is very soft so it suits pale beer fine, and by adding darker malts you are messing up the mash ph and not getting the smooth beer your after.

Why not try mashing with only the base malt, this will keep your PH ok, but then add the speciality malts at the end of mash, eg black, choc, roast and crystals, basically the stuff that doesnt need mashing.

[danwlx]

Thanks for the reply and the suggestion. Are there any downsides to only adding the roasted malts at the end? All the porter recipes I've seen don't suggest it as an option.

Also, this will be a porter using rauch malt, I assume that would be mashed with the base malt?

[gnutz2]

I imagine you would get less roasty flavour doing this and yes i think rauch is in with the mash.

Alternatively you can put your water profile (if you know it) into Grahams water treatment calculator and select the porter profile.

[chivelegs]

You could always drop in on me in London and take back a few litres of my water!