Canberra water

[thisispants]

Anyone from Canbera have any knowledge of the water here and its suitabilty for brewing?

I've been making some BIAB's with decent results, however I haven't really looked into the water at all.

I'm just looking at other factors that contribute to the taste and overall quality.

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

The water is very soft, and can make decent beer without any treatment. Adding some calcium sulfate for hoppy beers or calcium chloride for malty beers definitely improves things and brings the beers up to a more classic water profile.

Are you a member of Canberra brewers? We have suburb by suburb water profiles put up every month or so.

 

[thisispants]

Hi, those water profiles sound really helpful. I'm not a member of the Canberra brewers, I've actually been meaning to join however I work shift work and thus far I haven't been able to make it to one of the meetings.

 

[Blind Dog]

I thought water companies had to post water profiles online? Look for the annual drinking water quality report on the water company's website. Just remember that they probably flush with chlorine and/or chloramine every so often so maybe safer to treat with 1 campden tablet in 20L to take care of that

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

No chloramine in Canberra, but certainly chlorine. Chlorine is very volatile, so a pre boil, a filter, or even filling your tun the night before is fine.

Thisispants. If you end up coming in sept, PM me as it's our big Oktoberfest and we'll need to get you a seat.

 

[Kodos]

What Mr No Tip said.

Where do you live? We've got latest samples broken down by suburb. Not much difference between them really, (not all figures are provided for all suburbs) but sometimes northside and southside might draw from different sources.

The main thing we're lacking is calcium, so you want to put something in for that, as Mr No Tip says.

Here is a handful of random suburbs, apologies if it doesn't copy and paste properly, not sure how the forum handles spreadsheets. Figures are June/July from this year.

Average of pH (pH units) Average of Alk-total (mg/L) Average of Chloride (mg/L) Average of Sulphate (mg/L SO4) Average of CA Diss Ca (mg/L) Average of MG Diss Mg (mg/L) Average of NA Diss Na (mg/L) Average of Dissolved Pottasium (mg/L)
Ainslie 7.72 37.40 2.30 5.00 13.50 0.85 3.10 0.50
Bonner 7.75 39.00 5.50 16.90 16.00 2.08 5.05 1.15
Duffy 7.64 37.00 2.10 4.90 14.00 0.85 2.90 0.60
Fyshwick 7.69 38.00 3.70 2.20 15.00 1.85 2.90 0.60
Giralang 7.87 37.80 3.20 0.80 13.67 0.87 2.85 0.55
Kambah 7.78 38.65 2.98 2.15 14.50 1.17 2.98 0.55
Forrest. 7.60 37.00 7.60 29.00 18.00 3.60 7.10 1.60

 

[mondestrunken]

I spent some time thinking about this about a year ago, primarily using Palmer’s “How To Brew”. I too do BIAB, for around 20L final volume. Here's my summary (which is pretty similar to what's stated above).

ACTEW provides water quality statistics buried in their “publications” section of the website, but the table above provides the relevant numbers – Canberra water is low in most of the relevant ions, but does have a fair amount of chlorine.

The principal reason for removing chlorine is that it can result in medicinal flavours. It’s important to remove this pre-mash as the chemical reactions can happen in the mash itself. [topic='64057']Combined wisdom[/topic] of AHB is that the best method for removing chlorine is just to bring the water to the boil.

For a number of reasons, Palmer suggests a minimum of 50 ppm calcium in brewing water, whereas Canberra water generally has around 15 ppm Ca. As mentioned above you can use calcium sulphate (gypsum) or calcium carbonate (chalk) for this. I’ve only ever used gypsum though. Going through the calculations, it works out at about 2 tsp gypsum in 38L water (total water for 20L final volume).

Canberra water is also quite low in bicarbonate, which is great for light-coloured beers, but can result in too low a mash pH for dark beers. Adding sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) can fix this. My calculations work out at about 2 tsp bicarb in 38L water for stout, half that for brown/copper coloured beers, and none for yellow/golden colours.

But, both of these additions are almost certainly not needed for making most beers with Canberra water.

Hope that helps, and I’m more than happy for any constructive criticism on this!