Making Yorkshire Water into Brewing Liquor

[Carpking]

Hi. Ive been reading through the topics on water treatment and trying to figure out what to do with my water. I have the following information from the water company (averages i know, the lazy option to doing my own testing, but i'm just looking at water treatment for the first time ):
Total Alkalinity 78.7mg/l CaCO3
Total Calcium 44.7 mg Ca/l
Average ph 7.48
So armed with this what would you want to add or take away? At the moment i just add half a campden tab to my HLT. I did notice a sort of really mild tcp flavour lurking in the background of an IPA i made recently and wondered if chlorides were to blame, i'm sure it wasnt infected - i've had infections so i know , but there was something lurking there. I mainly make bitters and darker ales so i think i get away without the water treatment.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as this seems like a 'scratchy head' subject to me.
Cheers.

EDIT: Those figures cover LS10 and LS12 if it helps anyone.

[MightyMouth]

Personally I would ask why you want to treat your water? I know a lot of people do it but I assume they have a reason to do so. If you are currently brewing without treating the water, what is it about your brews that make you want to treat it? Is your efficiency poor? Does the beer taste wrong? I see you mention TCP but that should be taken care of by the campden tablet and I have noticed young hoppy beers do have a taste similar to TCP but that goes after a short while. Anyway the first thing I would do is get some test papers to see what your mash PH is and if it's OK then leave it alone is my opinion, if not then something simple like 5.2 mash stabiliser might help. I know it's the lazy way but for me brewing is a pastime which I don't want to have to think too much about and if ain't broke then don't fix it.

[WishboneBrewery]

I've started messing with my water, its very soft here in Keighley.
I've used the GW Water Treatment calculator to tweak my water, done a IPA and Burtonised my water, done a Stout with the Stout profile...

The most I've noticed is that Gypsum seems to help the yeast clear better, US-05 clears a treat rather than being a floaty blobby mess.
I've been checking my Mash pH's on each mash and always got near enough the mark, I won't be bothering with pH once I've used my test strips up.

Gypsum:
1 Tsp to Mash, 1 Tsp to Boil

[leedsbrew]

I'm LS20 and have only been adding 1 campden tab to 30L of water. I also have had a lurching TCP woft at the back of a brew. Where did you get your info from carpking?

pdtnc, which reservoir does your water come from?

[WishboneBrewery]

Probably not the one yours does! I'm in BD20

Here's my figures:

[Aleman]

And again I ask (*) . . . Why the Sodium Chloride addition?? Ok, if you want to increase the perception of mouthfeel and maltiness then add chloride . . . but why not use more calcium chloride, as at least that is adding a useful (essential!!) cation.

(*) Not a go at you Adam . . . Sorry I missed you at NCBA . . . but I am still trying to find out why practically every article on water treatment suggest adding sodium chloride to beer . . . . I understand that some 'traditional' brewing areas have high sodium and chloride levels . . . but sodium is not required for brewing, calcium is and chloride at least has 'some' benefit.

As I said at NCBA, water treatment boils down to three simple principles

1) Remove chlorine
2) Adjust alkalinity according to beer style
3) Adjust hardness . . . Essentially make sure you have enough calcium which means above 60ppm

Everything else is completely superfluous and unnecessary

[WishboneBrewery]

And again I ask (*) . . . Why the Sodium Chloride addition?? Ok, if you want to increase the perception of mouthfeel and maltiness then add chloride . . . but why not use more calcium chloride, as at least that is adding a useful (essential!!) cation.

I'm only following what the calculator says...

[leedsbrew]

PDTNC, Where did you get your figures from? Yorkshire water?

[WishboneBrewery]

Paul @ BB only just lives up the road, he'd had his water analysed at one of his suppliers, Murphy & Sons.

Though all but the overall Alkalinity can be pulled off the Yorkshire Water report PDF (Give or take the odd bit).

[Graham]

Paul @ BB only just lives up the road, he'd had his water analysed at one of his suppliers, Murphy & Sons.

Although there is certainly something wrong with the analysis. The cations and anions part of the balance check are miles apart. There is nothing much for the 21.58mg/l of carbonate and the 58.6mg/l of sulphate to pair up with. I would not be happy with a professional analysis that is that far unbalanced, particularly as all the tests would have been taken from the same sample, and therefore the answers should be balanced as near as damn it. I would double-check with Paul that the numbers are right, particularly the calcium. There should be a lot more calcium there. It probably won't make a busting lot of difference in practice, as long as the carbonate figure is accurate, but it is nice to start off with a water composition that can actually exist.

[Mountain]

I'm in LS24 and get a slightly different set of figures!

103.6 mg/l as calcium = 259 mg/l as calcium carbonate

Calcium 80.1500 - mg Ca/l
Magnesium 6.2650 - mg Mg/l
Residual chlorine - free 0.10 - mg/l Cl2
Residual chlorine - total 0.16 - mg/l Cl2
Sodium 16.20 200 mg Na/l

pH (Hydrogen Ion Conc.) 7.45 6.5 - 10.0 pH Units

Curiously enough, there are no figures for Sulphates even in the detailed report.

I've noticed I get better beer when using cheapo bottled water or using half bottled half tapwater.
I presume this is due to lower pH and less calcium. So, what's an easy way of adjusting my tapwater?

Would adding a small amount of CRS and MgS04 to my tapwater help?

[Graham]

I'm in LS24 and get a slightly different set of figures!

103.6 mg/l as calcium = 259 mg/l as calcium carbonate

Calcium 80.1500 - mg Ca/l
Magnesium 6.2650 - mg Mg/l
Residual chlorine - free 0.10 - mg/l Cl2
Residual chlorine - total 0.16 - mg/l Cl2
Sodium 16.20 200 mg Na/l

pH (Hydrogen Ion Conc.) 7.45 6.5 - 10.0 pH Units

Curiously enough, there are no figures for Sulphates even in the detailed report.

I've noticed I get better beer when using cheapo bottled water or using half bottled half tapwater.
I presume this is due to lower pH and less calcium. So, what's an easy way of adjusting my tapwater?

Would adding a small amount of CRS and MgS04 to my tapwater help?

Wrong way round. You want plenty of calcium but not much carbonate.
You need fairly accurate information to use CRS successfully.
It is unusual for sulphate not to be shown, I think it is mandatory parameter. Sometimes you find some things are out of alphabetical order in these reports.
There is not enough information there to go much further; you have two different figures for calcium as well.

[softlad]

PDTNC, Where did you get your figures from? Yorkshire water?

Yorkshire Water website will give you their last published analysis of your water if you enter your post code. There are a couple of results missing from the analysis but if you contact their customer service via the web site they will get back to you pretty quickly

[Mountain]

Ah, I see. That makes more sense! Thanks.

The first figure for calcium is listed as the average, second is in the detailed report.
I also couldn't see for looking with the S04!
It's 102 mg S04/l

Will pop the figures in the calculator again.

[Carpking]

Thanks Chris.

As informative as ever. You should write a book.

I think the next brew i do, i will pre-boil the water with a tsp of gypsum per 25L to see if i can taste any difference. I will make a small batch of something i have already made and still have a bottle of lying around for comparison (hmmm... will that work if one has a month or two more conditioning? ). If i can taste a difference i will test my water properly with a kit.
Interesingly, the 'lurking' tcp flavour i got from my Cascade IPA came up in another beer recently..... St Austells Proper Job (commercial not home brew). I wonder if its a charachteristic from cascades that i can detect when a beer is heavily hopped? Is it possible that i could have over hopped my IPA yielding off flavours? Possibly i drank it too young if its bitterness units were around the 40 - 50 mark? I'm sure i could taste it very faintly in 'Proper Job' though it was a nice brew. Or am i talking bo**ocks?
Since sticking to three main hops in my brewing; Fuggles, Goldings and Challenger i have had no problems at all.
Like you say, i think i can just about get away with not worrying about my water but i will try pre-boiling first of all.

Cheers again.