Do You Bother About Water Using Kits & Bits?

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wyane

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Hi all -- while still on the early to mid parts of the procession-to-all-grain continuum is it worth considering what's in the water and if it's worth modifying?

Do you add stuff (other than malt) to lower the pH of your hops boil? Do you check the pH of the boil? The town water?

I did a couple of batches where I boiled and cooled the water for about half of the 23L wort. Then though I might just be boiling away nutrients that the yeast need. As it went, I didn't notice any difference with the ferment or taste of those brews. Does anyone use packaged or boiled water as part of the brew?

Anyway, I stopped boiling/purifying water other than that in the kettle.
Then I read the HTB book about salt additions and looked up the water quality thingo for our area and my head asploded.

So does a kit and extract brewer need to bother? Maybe just with stouts or darker brews?

Cheers
 
Unless your water is farked, no.

You worry about water profiles and enzymes etc for your mashing and sugar extraction. Since you are using malt extract which has already been mashed to extract the sugars, you needn't bother unless your water is terrible.

For the hop boil, you mainly need to keep the gravity around 1040 for optimum hop utilisation.

Cheers!
 
thanks syl -- what about steeping grain? just plain boiled tap water at 65-70C
 
thanks syl -- what about steeping grain? just plain boiled tap water at 65-70C

Yup, that'll do it for you. Just boil the drained liquid for about 10 minutes to kill any nasties from the grains.
 

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