BeerBorg

I agree, the Levitation recipe is just great without changing anything.

Bumping, I did two 5.5 g batches (Brown Ale, Pale Ale) on 1/9 let these go, did the 18 g (faux Pils, used US-05) batch 1/23, all three were water profile adjusted and I paid attention to mash Ph. I pulled samples on all 3 last nite all were 1.053 OG, Brown was 1.008, the Pale was 1.006 and the Pils, which is only a week in was 1.003! All were mashed @ 152-154, the sample of the Pils tasted great for only 7 days in, I am letting it go till the weekend and get all 3 kegged before Asheville. I am convinced that between having corrected water with the needed minerals and an acceptable Ph that the yeast is able to go to town and do its job much more stress free. This is the 4th beer now since I did water adjustment AND Ph, all 4 have basically finished attentuating in a week.

Steve, I've read that proper PH definitely does make a difference in yeast health. I'm still tweaking my water and think that's the only thing holding my beers back. If I could find a cheap and decent RO system, I would but everything I've looked at is complicated and expensive.

RO systems are expensive and would take a couple of days to accumulate the water needed for a brewday. Now I have found that Walmart has RO water in their water dispensers at the front of the stores around me. I thought it was spring water before I started using my tap water and adjusting, I went up with a dozen empty jugs, almost started filling jugs when I decided to read some more on the display found out it is RO and it is about 30 cents a gallon compared to already bottled distilled @ 80-90 cents a gallon.

This summer I may do 2 batches of a lighter, pale ale and try one with no water treatments (other than campden for chlorine) and another with treatments to see how they differ. I've started to use lactid acid to bring my ph down and do notice a difference so far but I think depending on the time of the year, my water is treated differently here so I'm not sure how I can keep up with and test the water often myself. Our water department doesn't give out regular water test reports, only annually.

I buy water for $0.50/gallon from my local water purification store. I adjust from there (since I started treating water about 2 years ago) and think that I do get better beer from it. It's less than 2 miles to them and they provide the same water in the bottles that we drink in the house. I use EZ Water Calculator as well and have been happy so far.