Treating my water...

[JackA]

First a big thanks to Chris and Graham for demystifying water treatment for the everyday bloke

For my first ever brew, I decided to try using ASDA smart price water after hearing good things about it. The plan was the use the bottles to condition the beer, but I quickly caved in to Norm's great deals and got some cornies. So for my second brew, I followed Graham's advice in BYOBRA and gave my tap water a blast. These two beers are now coming into condition... and I can't believe both beers used the same ingredients! There were a few hitches in the first brew, but I think this would only lead to infection, not actual flavour changes. Thankfully it wasn't infected and is perfectly drinkable - it's quite mellow without much bitterness/aroma. The second brew has a lot more body and I believe a slight harshness to the bitterness. It's been conditioning for almost 5 weeks, so I'm guessing this may still fade, but I'm not holding up my hopes.

Having re-read the water treatment section in BYOBRA, I'm starting to wonder if some of these differences are just down to the liquor. The hardness of the second due to a lot of temporary hardness in my tap water and clarity issues in both due to lack of calcium (Chris recommended adding gypsum to the smart price water, but I really didn't want to have one more thing to think about!). Anyway, I've decided to do another brew using the same recipe, this time with some water treatment, to see what affect it has.

The postman delivered the Salifert test kit this morning, so I gave it a whirl. Result came in at 4.34 meq/L which times by 50 (is this right?) gives 217ppm alkalinity in terms of CaCO3. I'd now really appreciate a little help working out what to do next. Here are the only useful figures given from my water board:
Hardness: 285 ppm CaCO3
Sodium: 13mg/L
Chlorine: 40mg/L

There were averages from the period 01/01/08 to 31/12/08 so frankly they're probably pretty useless anyway.

So, is it worth entering the hardness figure into the calculator? My current feeling is to just add the CRS, and dump in a teaspoon or two of gypsum. Is it worth adding some epsom too? Finally, Graham mentioned in another thread that CRS adds a fair amount of chlorine into solution... would a campden tablet help with this?

Thoughts/suggestions etc are really appreciated!

Cheers

[Graham]

Using CRS plus a bit of extra calcium is fine. CRS doesn't remove calcium, so you will still have the calcium you started out with, which will be about 85mg/l.

That may be enough calcium on its own, but a bit more wouldn't hurt. If your mash pH is too high, next time you brew add more calcium, less if it is too low.

CRS adds chloride, not chlorine as such, they are not the same thing. Chloride affects flavour, a bit, in much the same was as ordinary salt does. There is not much that you can do about it. It will not affect the quality of your beer. Chloride is more appropriate to some types of beer than others. A magic campden tablet will not affect it.

[JackA]

Thanks Graham!

So is it not worth bothering with the campden tablets? Also, do you suggest adding any epsom, considering that I don't know my magnesium levels?

Jack

[Graham]

Thanks Graham!

So is it not worth bothering with the campden tablets? Also, do you suggest adding any epsom, considering that I don't know my magnesium levels?

Jack

Campden tablets: Not for that reason no, but there is no harm to be done in adding a tablet for the usual reasons given on here, but not because of the CRS.

About 5mg/l (or more) of magnesium is a good safeguard, which equates to 13mg/l Epsom salts.

[JackA]

Thanks again Graham! I went to the local HBS to pick everything up and came back with CRS, campden tablets and gypsum. The bloke looked pretty nonplussed when I asked for Epsom salts (said you didn't need them, but that's probably because he doesn't stock them )... anyway I went to the local chemist instead and picked up some Epsom salts there.

On closer inspection the salts from the Chemist say "Magnesium Sulphate Heptahydrate". Is this what you buy from homebrew shops?

[Graham]

Yes, Epsom salts is the heptahydrate. That is what the calculations are based on. It is a bit of a safeguard, as I said above, magnesium deficiency does happen, and all pre-mixed treatment salts contain a bit of magnesium for that reason. Burton waters traditionally have lots of magnesium, so if you wish to emulate that (no reason why you should), then you'll need some Epsom salts anyway.