Homebrand Spring Water For Brewing? Making A Coopers Be Stout

[lukemarsh]

I'm making a Coopers Best Extra Stout this afternoon and decided it was a good idea to panic about brewing water on the morning of B-Day.
I've posted on here before about issues with water, but keep getting different responses. My house is entirely dependent on rainwater, which is filtered through a one micron filter. As this wont eliminate ALL bacteria and nasties, I'd need to boil it. I'm a 19 yo slack male who can't be bothered to fuss with such things.

Now, I went and spoke to the man at my local Brewcraft store about adding things like calcium sulphate to the water to harden it up and about using Spring Water in brews. He explained that different types of beer require different types of water, like lagers and ales both would require different hardnesses of water. He said I'd be fine to use spring water for a stout, as it'll have lots of body and flavour to not need hard water.

I've bought two 10L tanks of Woolworths HomeBrand Spring Water to use in my Coopers BES (the recipe I'm using is Coopers Stout can 1.7kg, Thomas Coopers Malt Extract 1.5kg, 500g Dextrose, 20L or 22L final volume) which are currently sitting in the fridge cooling so I can pitch the yeast soon after filling the fermenter at the right temperature.

The typical analysis for HomeBrand Spring Water is as follows:
- Bicarbonate 37.6 mg/L
- Sodium 15.2 mg/L
- Chloride 12.0 mg/L
- Calcium 4.4 mg/L
- Magnesium 2.1 mg/L
- Potassium 0.6 mg/L


Would this water have any bad effects on my brew? Is this ok water to use for any brews?

 

[Pennywise]

I used to use that water to brew with when I was paranoid about my tap water, it was fine for all my brews, pale ales/stouts/brown ales, a tad expensive though. But if you can't be bothered boiling/cooling your water, go for it, it'll be fine.

 

[Fourstar]

unless you are using grain and mash brewing, the composition of your water will have a negligible effect on your beer.

The only reasons to adjust your water as an extract brewer is an addition of Calcium Chloride to help round out malt or Calcium Sulfate to sharpen the bitterness of hop additions The calcium will also assist with yeast health and flocculation too.

That water should be fine.

 

[daemon]

I've never tried it before, but can you use a campden tablet (sodium metabisulphite) to remove any nasties from the water and then use it for brewing? Just not sure how long it stays effective for, ie how long to wait so that it doesn't kill the yeast.

I use tank water but being an AG brewer I boil all the water. I've recently upgraded to a twin filter system (5 micron ceramic, 0.5 carbon) but still don't trust it to use direct.

 

[bullfrog]

I treat all my water with campden tablets. I boil first, out of paranoia, tip into a cube and drop in a campden tablet. I'm told that you want to leave it for at least 24 hours before using it in anything where you'd like to keep your yeast alive, but that works perfectly for me as I need to let the thing cool down anyways.

I'm sure you could probably skip the boiling step and just use the tablets, would work out cheaper than buying spring water all the time.

 

[Bribie G]

Have you thought of contacting the local Neverfail (or similar) mob? I'm sure their product is a lot cheaper than supermarket springwater and maybe contains less salts.

Just checked, 15L is $11.50. Back to the drawing board on that one

 

[lukemarsh]

I used the homebrand spring water for the brew, so hopefully it turns out ok... the only reason I was willing to spend the $5 or so dollars on clean spring water was because my recent brews have turned out shitty (even though the worst brew I used spring water!), so I wanted to spend the extra to ensure it doesn't get infected or anything.

What exactly is a campden tablet? And where do you get them?

 

[bullfrog]

Campden tablets are tablets of potassium metabisulfite. They're used to kill certain bacteria and chloramine, which is used by most municipal water treatment facilities as a more stable form of water purification than chlorine.

You can get them from your LHBS or one of the site sponsors (links at the top of the page).

 

[Bribie G]

Sodium Metabisuphite (edit: and or Potassium) in the form of tablets. Most LHBS and online stores should have them, but Woolies should stock tubs of the Brigalow brand Sodium met powder, one teaspoon is the equivalent of 10 campden tablets and one tablet can treat 20L of water according to Wikipedia

Interesting note on Wikepedia, they are also useful if your swat team decide your brewery is a crack lab and they hit you with tear gas before moving in h34r: