Soft water for lager kit brewing?

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sevorg

sevorg

Junior Member
Joined
May 2, 2014
Messages
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Location
Newbury
Hi all, I've not posted since my first after joining the forum last year but have been reading many of the excellent posts and learning. I've had some great success since building the brew fridge and using premium kits.

Having temperature control over my fermentation I thought I should try a Pilsner (Brupak's Beers of the World Czech Pilsner). This is supplied with a proper, bottom fermenting lager yeast. I want to get the best out of this expensive kit so checked the water type for Pilsen and it is very soft. So far my brews have used untreated tap water which tastes really good as it is very hard, Thames Water Lower Lambourn Valley - CaCO3 = 295mg/ltr. (Fortunately, chlorine is low at 22mg/ltr.)

My question is, how significant is water type when making kit brews? I know this is important with AG, but with kits the mashing, sparging, etc. has all been done for you, hopefully using the correct water type for the brew style. Is it worthwhile me doing the following?

I am presently keeping the water from a dehumidifier, boiling it to sterilise, and then storing until I have enough for the brew. This is effectively distilled and as soft as possible. I will mix this 4:1 with straight tap water to give some CaCO3 as I've read this is beneficial for the yeast.
 
sevorg said:
My question is, how significant is water type when making kit brews? I know this is important with AG, but with kits the mashing, sparging, etc. has all been done for you, hopefully using the correct water type for the brew style. Is it worthwhile me doing the following?

I am presently keeping the water from a dehumidifier, boiling it to sterilise, and then storing until I have enough for the brew. This is effectively distilled and as soft as possible. I will mix this 4:1 with straight tap water to give some CaCO3 as I've read this is beneficial for the yeast.
Click to expand...

I don't think your water will be a problem for a kit, in fact as long as it's drinkable it won't be a problem for A.G either. Some will argue about water profiles matching styles etc, but me and my mates have done all styles with no problems whatsoever.
 
sevorg said:
I am presently keeping the water from a dehumidifier, boiling it to sterilise, and then storing until I have enough for the brew. This is effectively distilled and as soft as possible. I will mix this 4:1 with straight tap water to give some CaCO3 as I've read this is beneficial for the yeast.
Click to expand...

I may be wrong here, but distilled water is neutral isn't it? Soft water is acidic, hard water is alkaline.
 
Thanks for the replies. I've also read more on this and it does appear to be unnecessary to go to these lengths, certainly for kit brews. I've never had off tastes with any kits since I started using a brew fridge, making bitters, golds, stout and porter kits with success. I just have this soft water for pils nonsense nagging in the head!

I found an interesting article on distilled water here http://www.mercola.com/article/water/distilled_water.htm - which is you skip past the poor health aspects of drinking it says it readily absorbs C02 from the air to become acidic. This will take time and exposure to air so mine may be relatively neutral now but the CO2 from fermentation will make it acidic based on the above article.

Now, I have two kits as they are only 10ltr jobs, and can't muck about tying up the fridge with small quantities, so I've decided to do a back-to-back test of distilled verses full-on hard tap water and can then share the results on here. It's a bit of a PITA as it means using six 1 gallon demijohns as I can't fit two decent sized fermenters in the fridge at the same time.

Once it's up and running I'll start a new thread in the "Beer Brewdays!" section.
 
I honestly think you need to pay attention to the Total Dissolved Solids in your water source. A lot of hard waters like mine in London are already more saturated with minerals, etc. which has a large effect on the water's ability to further dissolve more solids.

The best example I can give is brewing a cup of tea or coffee (I know, I'm repeating myself again), but it's clear that with filtered water, or soft bottled water with a low TDS, that it simply tastes better. I can't see how this couldn't also have an effect on beer brewing. I guess it's a case of how noticeable the difference is in beer.
 
Totally agree with the tea statement, especially as it keeps the crunchy bits out of the tea if we don't filter. However the hard tap water tastes so good for drinking on its own, soft water neat tastes wrong to me. I guess it's what you are used to with your local water type.

I'm going to try both and compare the results as I always have lots of willing tasters to get a number of opinions from who I'm sure will help with that bit!
 

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