Thursday 4 September 2014

UK beer brewing... and water!

It's been a very long while since my last post, and since then myself and family (wife and 2 little 'uns) have moved to the UK, and just yesterday has our "shipped stuff" finally caught up to us, including my WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery.

So in the meantime I have been drinking and keeping the 660mL bottles of the Scottish brewed BrewDog Punk IPA, which is pretty much a NZ IPA according to myself, due to the very well noticeable and quite agreeable Nelson Sauvin hop presence, although now I have approximately 2 dozen of these bottles I'm looking forward to a new beer!

Now I am almost ready to start making my first ever UK beer I am now thinking about the water more, especially since one of my very last NZ brews appeared to suffer from a Chlorophenol off taste,  probably brought about by chlorinated water.


This PDF gives a good brief over view of a few beer off flavours, including Chlorophenol.


And now I am thinking more about the major part of the 4 (traditional) ingredients that go into a "real beer" (never mind the craft label) this little blurb about different types of water makes interesting and hopefully useful reading, lets see what my next beer tastes like now I have bought some "Burton Water Salts" from www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk, although I think I now I need to find an almost pH neutral water source to make use of these salts properly.

To begin with I might buy 20 Litres of "still water" from a nearby supermarket and if this doesn't work and I have time I might go searching for a nearby natural spring, with many empty water bottles and a wife and 2 girls in tow most likely :)