Altering Water Profiles

[kberry]

So I'm thinking of brewing my first IPA this weekend!! I haven't decided on a recipe yet but I'm wondering what consideration I should give to altering my water profile. I have yet to experiment with this for any beer style.

Do many of you alter your water profiles?

My water comes from Pockwock - what should I add to it for making a traditional IPA? Would you make the same additions for an american IPA?

Any help would be great!

-Kevin

[jacinthebox]

I use gypsum when I make pale ales. Although I didn't when I brewed my bid spruce ipa. I'm on well water

[RubberToe]

Hi Kevin, I alter my water with good results.

Do you use beersmith? It handles water profiles well. I don't build profiles on a target city but targeted to style instead. I like to hit around 300 ppm sulphates of an IPA or APA personally. Burton IPA levels are about 600 ppm to compare. I treat my total strike water. Are you brewing 5 or 10 gallons?

[kberry]

Hey Rob

Thanks for the info. I do use beersmith and I brew both 5 and 10 gal batches.

So do you enter your tap water profile into beersmith, designate a target ppm for sulfate then add what it suggests? Do you use gypsum as well? What sort of effect will altering my water have on my final product?

-Kevin

[RubberToe]

My base profile is entered as the Dartmouth water profile you can find here with a search. There's a Halifax profile in the same thread and they're very close, both soft water.

I filter my brewing water with a charcoal chlorine / chloramine filter (99%) filter and then to the water treatment.

In beersmith go Ingredients -> water. You see a list of existing water profiles. You want to create one for your base water, Halifax. I created one for Dartmouth. Set the mineral profile according to your water report and all of the additions to 0 for whatever volume (it doesn't matter since they're all 0). Save it.

Go to tools -> water profile tool. Select your local water profile as your base profile. Play with the additions and you see the target profile change.

This is where some research comes into play. You want to figure out the best water profile for the beer you want to brew. Some people brew by a cities water profile (like London Porter, Munich Dunkel, Pilsner Urquel, Dublin for Stout, etc). I like to figure out the best profile for that style, usually closely related to the target city but not always. For example most of the water in Belguim sucks shit so they either get their water from elsewhere or treat it. So don't use "Belgium" water for Belgian beers.

When I'm brewing a new style I scour the internet, and books, to find what I think is the best profile and then target it.

In beersmith I created a style "IPA 1" (it's a moving target for me) and set it to:

Ca: 100 ppm
Mg: 26 ppm
Na: 12 ppm
SO4: 300 ppm
Cl: 39 ppm
HCO3: 18 ppm

Maybe that could use some tweaking, It's working really good for me but I'm open to suggestions.

In beersmith goto tools -> water profile tool. Make sure your base profile is set. Click target profile, set it to the one you just created (for IPA or whatever). You can click "calculate best additions" or play with it yourself to reach your targets. On my last IPA with about 60 L of water I had 20g gypsum, 16g epsom salt, 4g calcium chloride. That's it. Fucking excellent IPA, served at Hoptoberfest.

It requires some attention to detail but worth it, IMHO. Good luck!

-Rob

[kberry]

Wow thanks for all that info Rob! I'll let you know how this works out for me. I'm debating just using straight city water for this batch then repeating with the water alterations to see a difference. I'll probably just take your word for it though!

Thanks again.

[RubberToe]

No prob. You're right it's probably worth brewing without additions first.

I forgot to add, once you have a water profile built, add the water as an ingredient in your recipe and it will ask you if you want to add the required additions to the recipe then.