Holy Plzen Batman!

[mongo]

Bloody Hell!

Were in the process of finishing off the construction of a house in Royalla and moving in, and weve just got the results of the tank water quality tests. Here they are:

Ca+2 = 0.4 mg/L
Mg +2 = not detected (<0.1 gm/L)
HCO3-1 < 2 mg/L
Cl-1 <1 mg /L
Na+1 = 0.4 mg/L
SO4-2 = not detected (<2 mg/L)

Holy sh1t thats soft!

Makes Plzen water look hard:

PLZEN

Ca+2 = 10 mg/L
Mg +2 = 3 mg/L
HCO3-1 = 3 mg/L
Cl-1 = 4.3 mg/L
Na+1 = 4 mg/L
SO4-2 = not detected (<2 mg/L)


For a comparison, dublin water used to make Guinness:
Dublin

Ca+2 = 119 mg/L
Mg +2 = 4 mg/L
HCO3-1 = 319 mg/L
Cl-1 = 19 mg/L
Na+1 = 12 mg/L
SO4-2 = 53 mg/L

I rang the lab to talk about these results, and they tester guy said our water was pretty much the same as distilled water.

So perhaps I could do the lightest of beers with this stuff, but could I pull off a stout? I assume that there are a few tankies among the AHBers that have been using this water what do you do?

 

[Malnourished]

So perhaps I could do the lightest of beers with this stuff, but could I pull off a stout? I assume that there are a few tankies among the AHBers that have been using this water what do you do?

Holy crap that's some unbelievable water!

Don't forget to make sure to add some calcium even for your pale beers. I'm not sure 0.4mg/L is quite going to cut it! The upside is that you can happily add both CaSO4 or CaCl2 without your SO4 or Cl levels getting too high.

As for stouts etc., I brew with soft (but not that soft) Melbourne water and I've given up on adding roasted malts to the mash. The amount of chalk required to keep the roasted grains in check in the mash tun really messes with the hop character, and without chalk the beers end up very thin, sharp, acidic and just plain odd. When I batch sparge I just add the dark grains with the batch sparge water, or at the start of sparging when fly sparging. My stouts are 1000 times better now.

 

[GMK]

IMHO the water is too soft - you need to definately add Gypsum...

1 teaspoon for 15ltrs for the mash and 1 teaspoon per 30ltrs for the sparge.
U need these minerals in the mash and biol as it aids the compounds needed to be developed.

Hope i have this right - if not - someone will correct me.

By teh way - Royalla is a nice place.

 

[Hubby]

I have tank water too ... but I haven't started experimenting with it to any great extent yet. I have been using bottled spring water which gives me some certainty and all have been partials due to space/equipment constraints.

This very soft water will have to be treated for various styles (esp for mashing - not so for extract) - even Pils according to your water quality results. A couple of things to consider are:

* Do you have diverters or dumps fitted between catchment and the tanks (ie to prevent bird crap, dust etc reaching the tanks)? This will help maintain water quality over time.

* Over time, the bacterial count in the tank water will increase. It will be necessary to do full wort boils or to filter the water (very expensive option - so is bottled spring water :blink: ).

Also, check out Dave Miller's "The Complete Handbook of Home Brewing" re treating water with salts and acids, and these links: Brewing Waters of the World and Quickie Water Chemistry Primer

 

[tangent]

If you're concerned, bring your tank water up to 80C for a minute in your HLT, that's killed the majority of nasties in it. Then let it rest down to whatever your strike temp is. (usually only a few degrees under 80C)
The great thing about this water is it's a blank canvas, you can add stuff to your water or leave it for lighter style beers. People complain about dust and stuff in your gutters but have a look at a urban water catchment and tell me what you see.... a big unlined earth hole with the occasional abandoned car and dead possum. This is piped to your house in very old rusty pipes.
I'd rather my clean gutters and new water tank any day.

 

[mongo]

make sure to add some calcium even for your pale beers

will do mal, I never realised that it made such a difference to the wort, but someone else has recently reccommended the same thing.

IMHO the water is too soft - you need to definately add Gypsum...

1 teaspoon for 15ltrs for the mash and 1 teaspoon per 30ltrs for the sparge.
U need these minerals in the mash and biol as it aids the compounds needed to be developed.

Hope i have this right - if not - someone will correct me.

By teh way - Royalla is a nice place.

I am surprised you know the place, although you are an ex-Canberran aren't you? Yeah - I really like it. Great if you like a bit of peace!

I have enjoyed not doing anything with the water for too long - looks like I can't avoid it now!

* Do you have diverters or dumps fitted between catchment and the tanks (ie to prevent bird crap, dust etc reaching the tanks)? This will help maintain water quality over time.

* Over time, the bacterial count in the tank water will increase. It will be necessary to do full wort boils or to filter the water (very expensive option - so is bottled spring water ).

no measures in place yet, but there are also no trees or places for birds to land yet - so things are pretty clean at this stage. I'll keep an eye on the quality.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I to have the blessing of tank water, and usually add a teaspoon or 2 of Gypsum and some epsom salts, table salt, bird poo, larks vomit and yak spit to the water...and my beers turn out OK... B)

I also have a 1Micron filter on the outlet of the pump to filter out the frogs and dead rats

And when chilling, I recycle the water back into the tank.

 

[yardy]

gday all,

just to generalise a bit, would the preference be filtered Tank (rain) Water over Bore Water, also could filter, i know i should be getting an analysis but i'm looking for a place to start.

cheers

Yard

 

[goatherder]

Yardy, I reckon as a general rule bore water would be harder than tank water. sometimes very much harder. I'd start with the tank water, it will give you more options to generate water profiles.

 

[yardy]

Thanks GH,
i've always filtered town water through a Brita fitted in the base of a bucket, should i be adding gypsum etc and where can i find such an item ?

cheers

 

[goatherder]

Mate, i'm probably the wrong bloke to ask about adding stuff to brew water. I'm not quite up to that level in my brewing and I have deliberately steered clear of messing with my water until I understand things a bit better.

Some others might have a better idea than me but I reckon getting a baseline analysis done on your water would be the first step. At least you know what you are dealing with and you can add gypsum etc to get the profile you are looking for.

I've taken the view that you don't need to mess with water chemistry to make good beer. I see it as one of more advanced tweaks a bit later on in my learning curve.

 

[Stuster]

Yardy

just to echo goatherder's comments, if you want to add something to your water, you're best off knowing what you've got in there to start with. It's certainly not the first thing to worry about when you are going AG (and not usually a problem before that unless you have seriously bad water). Maybe have a google for the water analysis of the dam that your water comes from (if you are in a town and know which one it is). Your LHBS should have gypsum, but if not MHB has some. (Ross too probably.) Your LHBS guy might also have an idea of the water chemistry. Bottom line, if you are making ok beer now, water issues can wait.

 

[mongo]

hi -
just to provide some background to my water analysis...

I spoke to the water chemistry guy that conducted my analysis, and he reckons that any clean tank water can be treated as distilled. Our bore water was also tested, but it was not far off distilled either.
The thing is though, that bore water is a bit of a risk. even with the analysis that we did, I won't use it, because there is a seperate suite of water quality tests that check for sources of off-tastes, which I didn't get done. It would be helpful to get this done before using bore water. It's generally considered to be an unneccessary test for tank water though.

 

[yardy]

Mate, i'm probably the wrong bloke to ask about adding stuff to brew water. I'm not quite up to that level in my brewing and I have deliberately steered clear of messing with my water until I understand things a bit better.

Some others might have a better idea than me but I reckon getting a baseline analysis done on your water would be the first step. At least you know what you are dealing with and you can add gypsum etc to get the profile you are looking for.

I've taken the view that you don't need to mess with water chemistry to make good beer. I see it as one of more advanced tweaks a bit later on in my learning curve.

Cheers mate, i'll just worry about the maiden run of the Brewery then and stick with filtered Rain Water.

 

[yardy]

Yardy

just to echo goatherder's comments, if you want to add something to your water, you're best off knowing what you've got in there to start with. It's certainly not the first thing to worry about when you are going AG (and not usually a problem before that unless you have seriously bad water). Maybe have a google for the water analysis of the dam that your water comes from (if you are in a town and know which one it is). Your LHBS should have gypsum, but if not MHB has some. (Ross too probably.) Your LHBS guy might also have an idea of the water chemistry. Bottom line, if you are making ok beer now, water issues can wait.

Cheers mate, i was concerned because i've just bought the place and have Bore and Tank only, i'm not going to stress it though, thanks for the advice.

 

[yardy]

hi -
just to provide some background to my water analysis...

I spoke to the water chemistry guy that conducted my analysis, and he reckons that any clean tank water can be treated as distilled. Our bore water was also tested, but it was not far off distilled either.
The thing is though, that bore water is a bit of a risk. even with the analysis that we did, I won't use it, because there is a seperate suite of water quality tests that check for sources of off-tastes, which I didn't get done. It would be helpful to get this done before using bore water. It's generally considered to be an unneccessary test for tank water though.

Thanks mate, some helpful info there, when i bought the place there was an analysis report that the previous owner had left, still moving in and can't find it in all the sh!t now though.

cheers