How improtant is water treatment?

[Chappie519]

I currently do not treat my water for brewing but i would like too try it and see if theres a difference. What is the best way of doing this?

Should i get some PH and check the water 1st or is there a general procedure?

Cheers

[ColinKeb]

be warned i went seriously wrong with this and wasted a whole brew, speak to the experts about it before you have a go and i would only do it if youre not happy with your beer as it is .

[UserDeleted]

I have pretty soft water, with very low alkalinity, I do no water treatment and my beer is fine.

I should add calcium in order to improve the hot break, and the mash reactions, andf I do have some CaCl2 nd Gypsum but nearly always forget to add it.

[steve_flack]

Like DaaB all I do is carbon filter and adjust pH. Where I live now the water isn't as hard as in Hitchin where I used to live so I really only NEED to adjust pH on pale beers but I check all of them.

I've got some 5.2 pH stabiliser coming from H&G as I fancy giving that a go. Also my pH meter is on the blink and 5.2 is cheaper than a new meter!

[Chappie519]

Ahh, well im not sure but my water is soft and seems like they add a fair bit o chlorine to it. Does anything need to be done to reduce the chlorine, filtering, PH stabiliser, etc?

Chappie

[Gurgeh]

I followed the instructions here http://www.brupaks.com/water%20treatment.htm and am waiting to try out the results (conditioning at the mo)

[bitter_dave]

The question 'how important is water treatment?' can be answered by asking 'how good is your water?'. Most people seem to get good results without water treatments; personally I find my beer dull and chalky if I don't treat my water; guess I'm unlucky.

I used to follow wheeler's water treatment the night before, which seemed to work well for me: add 25 litres to the boiler, add 12 gms calcium sulphate, boil for 15 minutes, add 2g magnesium sulphate. Rack off from the chalk.

However, doing all this the night before a brew was a lot of hassle, so I've started using CRS and DLS and this seems to work well, without needing to boil the night before.

[Mashman]

I use campden to remove chlorine. My water is very hard, since using DLS & CRS my bitters are much better

[PieOPah]

The most I currently do is add half a campden tablet.

[eskimobob]

I've put no although I do use the Campden tablet technique so perhaps that should have been partly...

[Scooby]

IMO the simplest water treatment is to filter it. I don't think it's a question of 'how good is your water' more how good is the beer you produce with it, If your beer tastes fine why do any more?

If you want to check if your mash conditions are correct then measure the Ph if it's in the high 5s then you may need to treat.

I used to boil and treat as bitter-dave (I've been told a local micro does this )but also found it a pain so now I filter and use 5.2 in the mash and lower the sparge Ph with phosphoric acid.

[louthepoo]

At the moment i add half a campden tablet to my water but i've also had a water filter fitted so i'll wait and see if that makes a difference!

[bitter_dave]

I don't think it's a question of 'how good is your water' more how good is the beer you produce with it, If your beer tastes fine why do any more?

That's what I meant

[subsub]

Same as Daab & steve_flack here

[Jim]

Currently I just filter, but I've not got many brews under my belt that way yet. Before that I used campden tablets, and they worked fine.

I used to add gypsum (mainly because most HB books of the time recommended it with soft water), but in retrospect, I don't think that helped my mash pH.