OVHA Chat

I've been looking for ways to improve my beer. I was wondering if any of you do any thing special with the Evansville water other than filtering and aging.

Also wondering if anyone knows The mineral make up of Evansville water since they don't publish it in the annual quality report.
Calcium
Magnesium
Sodium
Chloride
Sulfate
Carbonate/bicarbonate

Thanks KBHale

I got a response via email from them last year when I was looking into this. I'll try to find the email to verify these numbers but this is what I have in my beer program:

Calcium 118 ppm
Magnesium 44 ppm
Sodium 16 ppm
Chloride 19 ppm
Sulfate 85 ppm
Alkalinity 84 ppm

Here is the email from January 2006:

Mr. Norrick,

I apologize for the delay in answering, I have been on Vacation. The
results in the report are from testing from an outside lab and have only
one value. I will give you the results from our lab with an average, max
and min for the analytes you are looking for with the exception of sodium
and bicarbonate as we do not test these locally.

Ave Min Max Units
Sulfate 85 20 128 mg/L
Calcium 118 88 150 mg/L as CaCO3
Magnesium 44 18 70 mg/L as CaCO3
Chloride 19 2 73 mg/L
Alkalinity 84 58 112 mg/L as CaCO3

Again I apologize for the delay.
Mary


Mary E. Armacost
Water Quality Supervisor
Evansville Water Filtration Plant
1301 Waterworks Rd.
Evansville, IN 47713
Phone: 812-428-0568
Fax: 812-423-1277
e-mail: marmacost@amwater.com

Question is : are these values good, bad, indifferent ?

I'm not sure I see anything that 'sticks out' at me, but then again, this is not an area where I am well-read.

Jack, do you do anything to the water at the brewery?

I figure I'll just filter it and get the natural EvansTucky appellation terroir in my brews personally. Water chem just seems like something where I would manage to make my beers worse, rather than better.

kbhale - as far as other improvements to think about (I have no idea of your brewing style, just stuff that comes to mind)

1. Are you doing 1500ml+ yeast starters ... with a stir plate.
2. Are you controlling fermentation temperature (i.e., with a cooler or some sort of cooled box).
3. Do you measure/adjust mash pH and/or use ph5.2 in your mash.
4. Do you use yeast nutrient (Servomyces, for instance)
5. Do you aerate your wort sufficiently.
6. Do you sacrifice a small animal before each brew (it really helps).

Just some things to think about ... I bet there's more too.

I bought Palmer's 3rd edition How to Brew. From what read and understood (which might be little) the mineral content values Chris Norrick provided look good. Not to low or high for the Rye ale, IPA, Irish Red And Stout I like to brew.

Working on my second liter. I like statements like this. (I have no idea of your brewing style, just stuff that comes to mind)

So here's to much information.

I make my brews the All Grain way. Doing 10 gallon brews. With a year and half experience doing so. Do full 60 minutes plus boils. Not sure how to properly adjust the Ph during mashing. Have not used 5.2. My only experience with Liquid yeast was that it was cooked when I received it. Been using dry yeast for all brews since than. Nottingham yeast as primary. Have not used yeast nutrient before. Don't have an O2 setup. Just shake it up. My ferment storage cabinet keeps the ferment and kegged brews at 60 degrees. I started using a 15.5 gallon keg as a fermenter that I modified so I can remove the trub and yeast. I don't secondary. I just move my brew to keg a week or two after the fermenter has stopped bubbling. Being a medical type person Sanitation is second nature. I tend to sample my finished beers while I brew. There is a certain squirrel that well be sacrificed if I get my hands on the little SOB. Gets in the tree above my brew stand knocks trash and crab apples down and barks at me. Takes bites out of my tomatoes to.

Is the quality and taste of the beer made, improve enough to justify the time and equipment needed to make liquid yeast starters, in your opinion?

Thanks for the replies KBHale

Going out for a mug of Jimvy's Quiet Storm Stout.
On vacation for ten days.
Getting tickets to the Brew Ha Ha for my birthday.
Good wife.
Also have 16 gallon of paint waiting for me,
sucks.

Everything I have read/heard points to the fact that a healthy, sufficient starter turns out a better beer.

Now, that being said, I recently did two batches using the dry Safale US-56 yeast (IPA and APA) and I was very pleased with the results.

One of the magazines a few months ago had an article about an experiment using White Labs WLP001, Wyeast 1056, and the dry US-56. The three yeasts performed pretty comparatively with what seemed to me only minor differences.

So, I can see a case being made that the whole idea of using a large, stirred starter of liquid yeast might be overkill when there's a comparable quality dry product available.

At the brewery, the water is charcoal filtered & ph adjusted with phosphoric acid. The house yeast is SafeAle 56 for ales & SafLager 128 for lagers. We get seasonal yeast from White Labs. Most ales are fermented at 68 degrees. Most lagers begin at 54 degrees & finish over 60 degrees. We stopped aerating before pitching before Eric left, but I started again. The lag time is about same either way.

As a homebrewer, I never checked ph. The water I used was supermarket RO bottled water. I usually added gypsum. I have a temperature controlled chest freezer for fermenting lagers, but ales were always fermented at room temperature. I always used liquid yeast.
I seldom made a starter. I only aerated the wort before pitching by letting the liquid fall from the top of the carboy during transfer.

Evansville city water is great for ales, and OK for lager (Dortmunder style). Way too much alkalinity and calcium sulfate for Pilsner, for that you either need to de-mineralize or use RO water from the grocery (or your own system if you want one).

Phosphoric acid will decarbonate the water nicely, but will not remove the sulfate.

You must also remove the chlorine before use. Boiling will work, so will a tiny bit of sodium bisulfite (1-2 ppm only) or charcoal filtration. Not a problem for anything before the boil, as any chlorophenols will be driven off by boiling, but adding chlorinated water to finished wort will make it taste terrible.

You should also be careful of charcol filters -- they grow bacteria as they get old.

Specific questions can be answered in greater detail.

Peter

You must also remove the chlorine before use. Boiling will work, so will a tiny bit of sodium bisulfite (1-2 ppm only) or charcoal filtration. Not a problem for anything before the boil, as any chlorophenols will be driven off by boiling, but adding chlorinated water to finished wort will make it taste terrible.


I made this mistake this summer. Over shot my mash water. End up with 12.5 gallon of wort instead of 10.5 gallon. Decided to add to add 3 gallon of water to it to make a light brew. Just made 15 gallon of nasty tasting brew. Learned the hard way.

So, if BeerSmith is asking for bicarbonate HCO3, what do I enter? Does it matter?

Received this morning.

Good morning Michael,

The water quality data you requested, follows:

Calcium (as CaCO3) 96
Magnesium (as MgCO3) 44
Sodium (Na) Not Tested
Sulfate (SO4) 90
Chloride (Cl) 20
Bicarbonate (HCO3) 78
Alkalinity (as CaCO3) <1
pH 7.5 - 8.0

Good luck!

Take care,
John T. Dailey
Operations Supervisor /
Water Quality Manager
American Water Enterprises
PH: 812-428-0568
Cell: 812-454-4658

Thanks for sharing. I've not updated my numbers in awhile. Good to have some fresh data.

Given the water quality report, how, if at all, should one treat the water?

In a follow-up email, I asked: Are these levels continually monitored, or routinely, and how subject to change are they?

The response was:

Yes these parameters are monitored daily and they do not fluctuate much -- unless we get a significant rain event.

Here's a comparison from the 2006 report that Chris noted earlier, and the one from last week.

2006:
Calcium 118 ppm
Magnesium 44 ppm
Sodium 16 ppm
Sulfate 85 ppm
Chloride 19 ppm
Alkalinity 84 ppm

2009:
Calcium (as CaCO3) 96
Magnesium (as MgCO3) 44
Sodium (Na) Not Tested
Sulfate (SO4) 90
Chloride (Cl) 20
Bicarbonate (HCO3) 78
Alkalinity (as CaCO3) <1
pH 7.5 - 8.0

You can draw your own conclusions. The alkalinity number is curious, and I will probably follow-up with a question about the difference.

Palmer's How to Brew has an excellent chapter on water chemistry and treatment. I'm still digesting it myself. Would be a great topic for a meeting, unless it's been done recently.

Here's this morning's water profile for Evansville -

Calcium (as CaCO3)            98
Magnesium (as MgCO3)    54
Sodium (Na)             Not Tested
Sulfate  (SO4)                91
Chloride (Cl)                 30
Bicarbonate (HCO3)            106
Alkalinity (as CaCO3)         <1
pH                      7.7 - 8.3