Water With Chlorine

[dickoismad]

Guys my dad wants to know if using the stuff you get from the pet shop to neutralise chlorine in the water for fish to swim in would be a good idea to use in his water. I'm not sure if it would help or hurt the beer, or even make a difference with amount of chlorine that is actually in the water. Has anyone actually tried or know if it would make a difference?
Cheers

 

[Fourstar]

boil it, leave it out overnight and aearate it or add a campden tablet to your water and also leave overnight. This will disperse the Chlorine gas.

If you have a carbon water filter, even better.

 

[felten]

Are the ones you get from the pet shop the same as campden tabs/sodium metibisulfate?

What four* said ^

 

[dickoismad]

couldnt tell you sorry mate, but ill tell him about the boiling and the tablets.
Thanks guys

 

[manticle]

If the water is chlorinated with chloramines (check with the water company) you will need the sulphites/campden. If it is chlorinated with chlorine, boiling will be enough.

 

[boobiedazzler]

Does anyone have a link to water profiles for each state ? After re-reading John Palmer's guide, he claims that you can only really brew within limited style ranges with any given regional profile. Is this slightly overexaggerated - I really would rather focus on other aspects of brewing for the moment. Having said that he's sparked my interest so from now on Im going to measure my mash with pH papers and record the results just out of interest. <br /><br />

edit: fouond it, for sydney and surrounds anyway. For thos einterested>

http://www.sydneywater.com.au/WaterQuality...rQualityReport/

 

[Phoney]

Unless you're planning on using swimming pool water I dont see the point of boiling. I never had any issue with using straight tap water when I was doing kits & extracts.

 

[manticle]

Does anyone have a link to water profiles for each state ? After re-reading John Palmer's guide, he claims that you can only really brew within limited style ranges with any given regional profile. Is this slightly overexaggerated - I really would rather focus on other aspects of brewing for the moment. Having said that he's sparked my interest so from now on Im going to measure my mash with pH papers and record the results just out of interest.

The argument is that you can only brew certain styles successfully using water from a certain region without altering the mash. If you alter the mash according to the beer style you are making it doesn't really matter what the water is.

Melbourne water is reasonably soft and good quality and I have certainly successfully brewed dark beers here with no adjustments. Supposedly we have a similar profile to Pilsen and palmer states that pilsen water as is could not be used to make guinness. I don't believe that's exactly true, based on my own experience. Whether it could be better is another story and one I still don't know the answer to.

However it's possible that you could improve your beer by adjusting the mash pH and help pronounce things like hop profile etc. This is something I've just started playing with so I'm still finding my feet.

Definitely worthy of note - I've said adjusting the mash pH because what you are actully looking at when toying with water chemistry is altering the mash pH, not the water pH per se. The combination of certain malts and certain water will have an individual result which should then be tweaked. No point altering the strike water. I'd also suggest playing around with this is only relevant to people mashing grains of a reasonable quantity (partial or AG).

 

[Wolfy]

Guys my dad wants to know if using the stuff you get from the pet shop to neutralise chlorine in the water for fish to swim in would be a good idea to use in his water.

The stuff you get from the pet-shop is not (usually) just a chlorine neutralizing agent, it usually has other salts and the like which act to buffer and condition the water. But as others have said if your water supply only uses chlorine leaving the water sit for at least 24 hours is all you need to do even if using it for fish.

 

[felten]

Does anyone have a link to water profiles for each state ? After re-reading John Palmer's guide, he claims that you can only really brew within limited style ranges with any given regional profile. Is this slightly overexaggerated - I really would rather focus on other aspects of brewing for the moment. Having said that he's sparked my interest so from now on Im going to measure my mash with pH papers and record the results just out of interest.

I would take Palmer's online reference with a grain of salt (its a bit out of date compared with the print version), the water profiles listed might be just for the local area not necessarily for the brewery. And the breweries will add/remove various things depending on their needs, most of which isn't advertised. I've read/heard a fair bit about how the common Pilsen profile on the internet is actually not as soft as is used by the famous brewery, and that guinness don't make their stouts with 300ppm of carbonates.

There is a lot of differing opinion and evidence on the matter (like this post), so personally I would just make my beer with what I have if I was just starting out in AG; and only make adjustments to water if I was having problems with efficiency, high mash PH, or just wanted to tweak the taste in a different direction after some trial and error.

Have a read of this, it will probably say the opposite of everything I just said but its a good read key concepts in water treatment (Thats the only one I could find on google)

Or you could just throw a teaspoon of 5.2 stabiliser in the mash each time..

 

[Jaydee]

Unless you're planning on using swimming pool water I dont see the point of boiling. I never had any issue with using straight tap water when I was doing kits & extracts.

I'm with you. Our mains water here is.....well mains water. i've done heaps of brews using it and no problems thus far.

About to change to rain water though. should be interesting to see if i can taste a difference.

~J.

 

[phinnsfotos]

I'm a tap water fan. I did one brew with bottled water and I couldn't taste any difference, so I thought that was an expensive PITA, so I just keep using tap water now.

Although I do use the jugs that I bought the water in to chill 8 litres before I do a brew. Easy way to control temp for pitching.

 

[haysie]

Or you could just throw a teaspoon of 5.2 stabiliser in the mash each time..

KISS method works for me too.
Water chemistry is great if you can get your head around it. When and if you do the next award winning brewer steps up and says I added tap water to top up my 10 ltr boil <_<