Brisbane Water for brewing

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The thing is, using straight tap water (hell, I use water from my 3 month old HWS) is not going to produce awful beer. It will produce decent, drinkable beer - all other factors being considered.

But if you want to set your beer a niche above that, that is when water improvements come into play.

I notice that my Brisbane AIPA aren't a patch on my Tassie water profile adjusted AIPA. Not that they're bad beers, but just not what I know I can produce. That's all.
 
dirtynidge said:
Thanks Rocker (aka Otto?!)
That's right mate :D

I've noticed the hop profiles of my pale ales have improved since I started throwing 10-11g of calcium sulfate and 1-2g of magnesium sulfate into the brewing water (BIAB no sparge), although it might be going too far over. Brisbane water overall is quite low in sulfate, with the SO4 to Cl ratio being about 0.4, which is more geared towards the malty side of things. The ratio on my most recent batches has been closer to 4, so definitely bringing out the hops but it seems to be subduing the malt a little too much so I'll drop the amount down on the next one and see how it goes. Eventually I'll get to a sweet spot and stay there, but the experimenting to find it is a good learning experience.
 
At risk of sounding a bit of a a newb, where do you get your calcium sulphate and magnesium from?
 
I got mine from Craftbrewer (no affil yadda yadda), along with calcium chloride and calcium carbonate. The other two minerals that can be used are bi carb soda and table salt, which are obviously easily available anywhere.

I've found the calcium chloride useful for soaking up moisture in my brew fridge as well.
 
A swim in a chlorinated pool should if your a smoker, would if you are not a smoker ignite your sense of smell of chlorine in QUU tap water. Been human is very subjective to write about the quality of water.
Proceeding with the simple simple scientific method, something needs to happen, time is handy yeah, record results. Needs discovery even though you might of endured time far beyond others. Rules in this world are not spoken often. Harmless youth I remember water tasted not too distant from clear running creaks and rivers. The Brisbane river is a disgrace. The Bremer river is even worse of a disgrace, which for the East, North and the South in Brisbane who are unaware has a heavy toll on the Brisbane River. Why does this relate to water for brewing. Well in the case of many overseas provenances and states they have taken more care and action to change towards cleaner water ways. QUU seems to hide in chemical tap water, where before the local council performed a tad more effort and provided a better tasting tap water. Working at government agencys the rumours where thick with some individuals but no proof, some you did not want to mention fluoride unless your calendar was free.

All I wanted was even flow, similar to the rain just came after the wonderful down pour this afternoon. Man it tastes awesome, not the first wave, the second tastes so much better. Subjective right.
In my patch, I've recorded white and black specs, changes in chemical smells and taste over years. No even flow.of less or more chemicals Yet the bill arrived, ouch. Isn't even fair quality water that what we want to achieve?
So brewers have to use filters, reverse osmosis, water tanks, etc to ensure our quality brewing efforts. Sure tap water is not harmful and taste is subjective, though I can recall a swig of tap water the morning after of a few filtered fine home brew.

Go out to Fernvale or other place 50km from the surrounds of Brisbane and buy the surrounding area milk, I recommend it.
To the tea and coffee lovers, If you have not used the methods for brewing to achieve quality water similar to rain water from the tap. Try brewing your tea and coffee of filtered water, pfft to tap water, the flavour from 3 month old coffee grounds picks up my taste buds in the morning, how could I resist another cup.
Time and effort fellas, money can't buy that.
Water your garden with tap water and expect greenish slow results. Blue couch won't be that desired blueish green colour, it'll be green couch till you change your habits. And waiting can drive me mad.

Back to brewing, since I switched from boiling and chilling in the fridge, which for someone who didn't have 23 litre of containers capacity when I first started. To capturing a bit of rain water and filtering tap water, depth, potential for... a better brew.... Oh how I desire the better brew and enjoy tasting each incremental difference.
 
Tap water seems to do alright on the blue couch in my yard. To my knowledge it hasn't changed from Digitaria didactyla to Cynodon dactylon based on whether it is watered with tap water or rain water... :blink:

IMG_1055.JPG
 
Thanks mate, it looks a bit better now that they've grown up more.. should grab a pic tomorrow and post it in the hop thread rather than derail this one...

But yeah, the tap water works well in the garden and it works well in my brewing too. The only time I use distilled water is when I brew pilsners.
 
Thanks to all for the help.

I've made some adjustments based on the advice above and seems good so far (less than a week in bottle). By adding 11g of calcium sulphate and 2g of magnesium sulphate to 30L of tap water. I have hopefully ended up somewhere around "Tasty McDole's Hoppy water profile" (110ppm Ca, 18ppm Mg), which should suit the APA I've brewed fine.

My next brew is an English IPA and am considering Burtonizing the water. By my calculations I need to add 31g of calcium sulphate and 4g of magnesium sulphate to get to the Burton target of 270ppm Ca and 24ppm Mg

This seems a very large adjustment based on previous comments. I know it is an extreme profile but that seems a lot of sulphates.

Does anyone have any experiences with Burtonizing Brissy water? I would hate to ruin a good brew by going OTT with additions.
 
You need to consider the sulphate and chloride amounts as well, these are what affect the hops and malt influences. Higher sulphate than chloride brings out the hops more, and higher chloride than sulphate brings out the maltiness more. Even stevens on both is a 'balanced' profile.

I don't really take too much notice of the Ca and Mg amounts because they take care of themselves anyway, especially the Ca since the two main salts used for sulphate and chloride additions also add calcium. If the Mg needs a bit of a boost then some of that is added as well.
 
For brewers in and around Brisbane, from the QUU water samples collected weekly from 02/02/2016 to 06/03/2017 at Holland Park (source is Green Hill reservoir)

Bicarbonate: mean: 53; min: 46; max: 56; based on alkalinity result converted to bicarbonate (HCO3)
Calcium: mean: 25; min: 22; max: 31
Chloride: mean: 67; min: 42; max: 130; note all readings less than 100 except two outliers at 120 and 130
Carbonate: mean: 71; min: 60; max: 90; based on hardness results converted to carbonate (CO3)
Magnesium: mean: 14; min: 11; max: 17
Sodium: mean: 40; min: 31; max 56
Sulfate: mean: 26; min: 20; max: 46; note all readings under 30 except three outliers at 35, 39 & 46

Note: Zinc is at threshold measurement level, so yeast nutrient is recommended.

Based on this analysis achieving a suitable sulfate:chloride ratio for some styles of beer could be a challenge. You will almost always need to add gypsum or epsom salts to up the calcium level as a starting point. What I do is add gypsum per Bru'n Water and I if I need to a more balanced style use hydrochloric acid to manage mash and sparge pH and up the chloride level. If you take appropriate safety precautions hydrochloric acid is a viable alternative. Note: HCl is dangerous if not handled with proper safeguards and HCl for pools is not "food grade", but that said it is used in very low concentrations and has to be safe for use in swimming pools...
 
I know someone at QUU. It cost me a six pack of my homebrew. I may have made a mistake in converting the alkalinity to bicarbonate and hardness to carbonate. Raw data from the test results is:

Alkalinity: mean: 86.5; min: 76; max: 91
Hardness: mean: 119; min: 100; max: 150
 
Anyone in or near Strathpine? Sounds like i might need to research a bit more into the water aspect of the beer!
 
just when water is water I asked some questions at the place about my water in Yamba and got a very nice response from the lady there water ain't water in this town as depends on where you are how much chlorine you get etc.
actual numbers she provided was great
 
I requested a report on my water today from Unity Water. I'll report back once received
 
All good info here. I was considering the idea of getting an RO filter and building a profile. There seems to be fair few devices out there - any that come with recommendations from users here (aka for beer). Did you guys end up going with an alkalizer?
 
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