The mineral makeup of your brewing water can have a profound impact on the overall taste of your beer. To help manage this you can adjust your water chemistry with the addition of different ingredients. There are a couple of ways to go about this but by far the easiest was to follow Scotts’ Water Chemistry post on the Bertus Brewery blog (since offline, but previously at http://www.bertusbrewery.com/2012/02/water-chemistry-how-to-build-your-water.html). I’ve included the relevant information below. Just note that this is not at all the perfect approach to correcting water chemistry but it is convenient and gets you most of the way there.

Starting Neutral

It is recommended that you start with reverse osmosis (RO) water as it is completely neutral. Of course you can also start with any water as long as you know it’s mineral makeup and how to get it to neutral – but that’s not the easy way :). Just note that using pure RO water with no adjustments for brewing is not recommended as it can actually reduce brew day efficiency.

tl;dr – start with RO water, and adjust it according to the steps below:

Easy Water Chemistry Steps

• Add 1 tsp of calcium chloride per 5 gallons of water
• Add 2% acidulated malt to your grain bill

Trailor to your Brew

The above steps are the default. You can certainly tailor it to specific beer styles from there. Here are the easy steps that Scott provides for that:

• Roasty beers (stouts, porters) – skip the acidulated malt
• Hoppy styles (APA, IPA, IIPA) – add 1 tsp of gypsum
• Soft water beers (Czech Pils) – reduce the calcium chloride down to 1/2 tsp
• British styles – double the calcium chloride and add 1 tsp of gypsum

That’s it. Happy brewing!