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Hi Community,

Does anyone here use their well water to brew with? I just bought a new house in Wolfville and I was hoping to brew this weekend. I have not had the water tested but it is safe to drink and tastes much better than HRM City water. Any suggestions of how I should treat the water are appreciated.

I just went with an Amazon RO filter and just add salts as necessary (pretending it is basically distilled water). Here's what I picked up.

https://youtu.be/9EeNPTgmeI0

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I would get it tested and then you can figure out if you need to add anything else to brew with. Brewers Friend is ideal for that.

Definitely have your water tested and you will have your numbers going forward. I always brew with my well water and can manipulate it pretty good. If you are brewing this weekend blind you may just notice efficiency is low depending on the style. For some styles I blend with some RO water to get it really dialed in. My water is slightly hard so I need to use quite a bit of Lactic Acid to reduce the PH and I add canning salts, calcium chloride, gypsum and Epsom as and when required. If you don't get it tested your efficiency may suffer as your mash won't be in the sweet spot of 5.0 to 5.6 . I usually aim for 5.2 to 5.3. Plug your numbers into brewing software like EZ Water or Brewers friend for a mash PH prediction and see how it compares to a PH meter while dialing things in.

Is your well drilled or dug? I have a dug well and the composition changes so no real point in working off test results. I bought an RO system and as suggested previously, just pretend it’s distilled and build my profile from zero.

Drilled well here.

My well water is no good for drinking and the built in RO system is too slow to fill 30 litres for a brew day. I found the 5 gallon jugs from Sobeys are a cheap alternative