Water Profiles

[the_fuzz]

WWWH,
I thing the most important thing in mashing is getting the pH in the right ballpark. You can do this with minerals or a pre-packaged buffer like 5.2.
The minerals then go on to give you other advantages, like altering the hop character, malt flavour, good for yeast health, etc.

For my mind, it's better to learn a bit about the chemistry (never use it if you don't know what it does - you are more likely to do damage than good) and use the correct balance of minerals for your starting point and what you want to achieve. Using nothing is perfectly OK too. Start by using those pH strips and see what your situation is for a few different brews.
Calcium Chloride is probably the most useful one to start with - it's useful for just about everything..

Yeah, I used the "nanograph" from the "how to brew" website and then used it to determine how much I would need of each "mineral" to achieve the PH required for a particular brew. My biggest problem was that I never really sat down and read the stuff on water chemistry properly, I would just skim through and think it is all to hard. Having sat down and read through it for a couple of hours and using the help here, I think I'm getting my head around it

Next weekend, I will have my minerals and PH papers in hand and give it a shot.

Everyone here has been a great help and this is very much appreciated, thanks

 

[LethalCorpse]

Fairly OT, but has anyone's reading about water chemistry uncovered anything about the difference between mineral water, carbonated water and soda water? I'd like to make up some mineral water when I get kegging, and would like to be able to do it better then just gassing water, presumably by adding minerals

 

[Stuster]

LC, PoMo had a thread about just that. Link.

 

[LethalCorpse]

Thanks Stuster, I'll keep going over there