No water softener. Same water comes in as goes out to sinks, tubs, showers and outdoor spigots.
I like keeping it simple. This method should work well for a lot of styles. Cheers!
I just picked up both of these to follow your lead initially with RO water. One thing I just read thought says the Calcium Chloride is used in place of Gypsum. Any thoughts?
Chloride enhances malt flavor. Gypsum/sulfate enhances hop bitterness. If you prefer one over the other for a particular style then decide based on that. If you want a balanced beer then use them 50/50 or lean a little more towards chloride as calcium chloride is smoother and less “offensive”. If you use a lot of gypsum the beer will taste harshly bitter. Too much chloride? Meh… almost impossible to do that. A calculator like BrunWater is still your best bet if/when you are ready to get serious about water adjustments, which can be put off for later.
^^^^ Exactly. I start my recipies with a 50/50 split and that works well for the beers I like to drink. It works for my hoppy American Brown Ales… right on through to my German Pilsners. Even the Belgian APAs and Porters come out great.
If I have a beer that I want the hops to pop a bit more, or make the malt pop more, I would shift the ratio so that I use more Gypsum to make the hops stand out, or more Calcium Chloride to accentuate the malt. (Note, I have not found a reason to do this yet)
My homes have traditionally had hard well water, and that is what I used quite a bit in my brewing career… the wisdom I have learned is that less is more when it comes to minerals in the water. By going distilled/RO it gets the minerals “out of the way” and with a simple addition of putting back a few minerals to the water…everything becomes consistent and easy… and the flavors become less muddled and stand out on their own.
I had my softened water tested and its only 65 ppm sodium. That’s fine for almost everything. I don’t have anywhere nearby that has RO water and distilled only by the gallon. So I add back what brun water recommends for the beer I’m making.
This is a good point, know what is in the water. Maine has some pretty good water to begin with, so not much ion exchange would happen between Ca-Mg and Na. My soft water would probably be very high in Na, as the hardness is very high.
The blanket statement on not using soft water may not be absolute.
65ppm wouldn’t be too high to use at all, unless you needed to use baking soda to raise pH for darker styles. That would raise Na pretty high.
That’s a case where I would dilute with distilled. I keep a couple gallons handy but it would be a pain to use as my main source.
While 65ppm isn’t off-the-charts high, it’s about as high as I’d feel comfortable going. I’d be concerned that if you start adding a lot of other minerals, then the cumulative effect may net you some minerally-tasting beer.
I agree, I stick to the Bru’nwater guidelines for Na pretty closely. The only time I get close to 50ppm is on really roasty stouts. But Martin corrected me before, saying that you really need to be well over 100ppm Na with high sulfate to get minerally. But less is more as far as water treatment to me - I don’t want to be even close to overmineralized.
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=20124.msg255958#msg255958
Thank you. I’ve been reading and having a hard time understanding or finding a simple formula for building up my RO water. I’d like to make adjustments, but for now, I just want to keep it simple while I learn more about water.
Do you need to add the Gypsum and Calcium Chloride to both mash and sparge water?
Yep.
[quote=“dmtaylor, post:33, topic:18561, username:dmtaylor”]
I add to both. I batch sparge now vs fly sparge (as I used to)… and I have always added the salts to the grain for the mash, and then again when I add the rest of the water. (Either when I start to fly sparge or when I add the second batch of water to batch sparge) PH comes out at 5.2 for all styles.
I read somewhere that the grains help the salts disolve, and after adding the salts to the water a number of times and finding a lot of white residue floating on the bottom of the pots…that is what I do. (granted, If the salts do not dissolve in the grain… I would have no way of knowing).
Ever since adding to the mash tun, however, the PH comes out the same each time. (It may be a coincidence, but if it works…who am I to argue?) 
Good luck and enjoy!
I haven’t thus far ended up with a minerally beer. I’m curious at what point there is so little sodium that you lose the flavor enhancement properties of sodium.
Can the above measurements be scaled down in a linear fashion? 1/2 TBS of gypsum and 1/2 TSB of Calc. Chlor. for a 2.5 gallon brew?
My humble opinion… a tablespoon of each for 5 gallons is actually a tad on the high end. So for 2.5 gallons, maybe just a teaspoon of each is all you need (a teaspoon is 1/3 of a tablespoon). Somewhere in there. It’s all good.
Yep,it scales linnearly. I use a tablespoon because it is easy to be consistent. Going down to a teaspoon per 2.5 gallons should work ok.
Try it,and if the ph seems to settle in ok, go with it.
I am fortunate to have a complete RODI setup in my home. My other hobby is raising rare South American fish. Good thing as my tap is 8.3 ph and liquid rock in hardness. Nice when the hobbies work together. I started with the tablespoon each and will experiment later of changing the ratios for flavors.
Is the 1 TBP of each per 5 gallons the amount I would add to the strike and sparge water? Just asking because I actually need 8 gallons of total water for this 5 gallon all grain brew.