My brewing water is tap water that comes from a municipal aquifer and is hard enough that I need to decalcify my coffee maker once a month with daily use. The water tastes great, so all I do for treatment is boil it and let it sit out overnight. In the morning, I pour the water off of the minerals that have precipitated out (there's quite a layer of white/tan chalky stuff).
On a recent Session there was a side comment that some minerals can cause a harsh hop bitterness, and I believe that I have that problem to some extent, but I'm not too worried about that.
My main concern is that I can't seem to get a strong malt flavor to my beer. I have been doing all-grain batches about 3 times a month for a year now and I think that most of my mashing and fermentation techniques are pretty competent. I have been temp controlling my fermentation. I can control the dry versus sweet spectrum by controlling mash temp. It's not that I can't get residual sweetness in my beers, it's that I can't get a strong malt flavor to make itself apparent. I know that many people tend to use the words maltiness and sweetness interchangabley, but I'm really only searching for how to increase the malt flavor part.
This problem occurs in all of the many styles that I brew. I have tweaked a clone of Lefthand Brewing's Blackjack Porter to the point that I have the hop flavor, mouthfeel, sweetness, roastiness, etc worked out almost perfectly, but I'm missing that malt-ball flavor that hits your taste buds right in the middle of a sip - the fleeting flavor that comes between the tongue sensations of sweet/bitter/carbonation and the aromatic hit of hops.
Is there any chance that my hard water is diminishing this malt flavor?
