Water Chemistry Question

[Bugeater]

Last nights show got me to thinking. You see information all over the place on how to play around with water chemistry. It is all fairly simple if you know your own water profile. You also find all sorts of charts in books, on the web, and even in brewing software showing the water profiles of water in major brewing cities around the world.

However, as Colin pointed out last night, all breweries adjust their water. Thus those brewing city water profiles are not necessarily all that helpful.

What I would find helpful would be a chart showing a "recommended" or "ideal" water profile for the major styles of beer. This would give us a much better target to aim for than trying to duplicate a water that the brewery would further monkey around with. It would be good to know what levels of calcium, magnesium, chlorine, carbonates, etc. are recommended for various beer styles so I can doctor up my water accordingly.

Does anyone know if such a chart exists?

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

[jamilz]

I don't think all professional breweries adjust their water. Some make no adjustments. Some make only pH adjustments with acid. And some make mineral adjustments.

Personally, I think far too many amateur brewers ruin their beer by adding all sorts of mineral salts. I think about 25% of competition entries suffers from vast over use of mineral salts.

[JonesZ]

I think NOT understaning your water is a recipe for disaster. If someone had told me to get a water profile prior to going all grain it would have saved me much heartache and frustration. I hear over and over again, don't worry about it. Well if you got water similar to mine, that is just worthless advice. I made countless IPAs with my local water and everyone of them turned out with a harsh bitterness. Turns out my water is great for making Porters and Stouts and bad for making Pale Ales and anything that is highly hopped. Even making Jamils Robust Porter(excellent BTW), you can taste the mineral content. I buy reverse osmosis water a $1.50 per 5 gallons and add the minerals I want with my 'cocaine' gram scale.
I wrote to Andy Tveekrem at DogfishHead and recieved his general water profile for Pale Ales.
Na 10-20
Ca 100-200
Mg 10-30
SO4 300-500
Cl 20-40

This is about what I shoot for and things haven't been better.

[Big Chooch]

Where you at in Houston? I'll be moving back there soon. Maybe I should start thinking about tinkering with the water then. In Hawaii, the waters great for jsut about any beer, so I haven't put much thought into it.

[JonesZ]

Where you at in Honolulu?.... my father just moved back from there. Im in NW Houston (spring-cypress/249) to be exact. As you probably know, Houston has a large number of water districts, but overall the water is 'hard' I believe my residual alkalinity is 160. 50-70 would be nice. Shoot me an email when you get in town.

[Big Chooch]

Wow, that bad, eh?! Yep, time to start worring about water! I'll be down on the SE side (seabrook, clearlake). I'll shoot you an email when I get down there, Thanks!