So then, this water treatment business..

[Kev888]

For quite some time now I've been testing my liquor's total alkalinity and adjusting with CRS, following the guidance back in the day by Daabs/Chris. Aside from that I just do the campden tablet thing and the tsp of gypsum in the mash and in the boil. But I've noticed that my mash PH is often a bit high for comfort and I'm not especially happy with just bunging in a set amount of gypsum regardless, so I feel perhaps I should be putting more effort into this.

The thing is though, my knowledge of chemistry is severely limited and so I need something idiot-proof. Thankfully, I'm not trying to recreate specific profiles, just attain suitable liquor for the recipe. So I was thinking of getting a water analysis (e.g. from murpheys homebrew) and plugging the numbers into Graham's calculator. i believe Murpheys analysis gives you Calcium, Magnesium, Carbonate, Sulphate, Chloride, Nitrate, Alkilinity, Total hardness and PH. I'm not sure about Sodium but thats one of the few things I can get from my suppliers water report.

So is that sufficient, and if so is it actually going to be worthwhile (or even advisable) given that things may change day-to-day? For example severn trent's sodium readings vary between 0.27 and 26mg/L over 8 samples - thats 100 times different! Could I be making things worse?

Apologies if this is a bit vague - just that I suspect i should be doing more, but am uncertain how beneficial it would be. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Cheers
Kev

[trucker5774]

I too have pondered many times about treatment. I am fortunate here in the North West that the water straight from the tap with the fail safe of the campden and gypsum has been fine for everything I have made

[Scotty]

Kev, your water will change regularly. My total alkalinity can differ by upto 70 ppm from one day to the next. I don't know my water's chemical make up but I haven't had any problems

I test and treat my liquor the day before. Firstly adding the required campden tablets, then the required amount of CRS. As for gypsum, I base additions upon the guidelines set out for DLS on Brupaks website - http://www.brupaks.com/brewing-aids.htm.

It may be completely wrong for me to follow this but it has worked for me.

[Kev888]

Yes that figures, I always test the total alkalinity of the water in the HLT, and whilst its usually about the same occasionally it does change quite a bit. Sometimes I've re-tested several times just to make sure!

Thats kind of why I was wondering if getting into the subtleties of different salts is worthwhile unless you also get those tested before each brew day too. So its really useful to hear that the brupacks guide for DLS works for you. Perhaps if you nail the total alkalinity then the variations in its makup are less important than i'd feared!

Thanks for that!

Cheers
Kev