Ingredients

Some thoughts on ingredients:

Yeast

Most of the time, I prefer to use dried yeast. Dried yeast is very forgiving and starts fermentation quickly. I rehydrate the yeast by sprinkling it into 90 degree water and letting it sit for about 15 minutes. This results in an even quicker start to fermentation.

I have made many batches with liquid yeast cultures, both from White Labs and Wyeast. Unless I am trying to duplicate a specific beer style, I prefer the convenience of dried yeast. Right now I am getting very good results with Fermentis Labs Safale S-05, S-04, and am also impressed with Saflager S-23.

I have had to dump only two batches of beer in over 15 years of brewing. In both cases, the fault was inactive or weak liquid yeast. The harsh lesson learned is to ALWAYS make a starter when using liquid yeast, both to proof test the yeast and to ensure a quick start to fermentation. I have never had any problems using dried yeast.

Water

My water source is a well, delivering very hard water high in iron..
I use well water for my beer, but only after it has gone through a water softener followed by a reverse osmosis system. Then, I treat the water with water salts as per style according to the information found in "Brewing Quality Beers" by Byron Burch