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Got Water Test back, everything look OK?

Mashing
#1

I thought I would put this out there and see what you guys thought of my water breakdown. I unfortunately use well water so I had to send to get it tested instead of getting it off the city website.

Please let me know if something looks off or if I should be adding something to the water to get it where it needs to be.

pH 7.9
Total Dissolved solids ppm 309
Electrical Conductivity mmho/cm 0.65
Cations / Anions, me/L 7.7 / 8.2

Sodium ppm 15
Potassium ppm 2
Calcium, Ca ppm 72
Magnesium, Mg 41
Total Hardness, CaCO3 ppm 351
Nitrate, NO3-N ppm 1.4
Sulfate, SO4-S ppm 8
Chloride, Cl ppm 13
Carbonate, CO3 ppm <1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 ppm 445
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 367
Total Phosphorus, P ppm 0.03
Total Iron, Fe ppm <0.01

THANKS EVERYONE!!!

#2

That is some hard water. If you aren’t acidifying your water you are probably above the desired pH range for both your mash and sparge. You’ll also may desire to up your sulfate quite a bit (with gypsum) if you are making hoppy beers.

I suggest spending some time with Brunwater. It’s not terribly complicated and there are plenty of people on the board who can answer any questions.

#3

[quote=“mattnaik”]That is some hard water. If you aren’t acidifying your water you are probably above the desired pH range for both your mash and sparge. You’ll also may desire to up your sulfate quite a bit (with gypsum) if you are making hoppy beers.

I suggest spending some time with Brunwater. It’s not terribly complicated and there are plenty of people on the board who can answer any questions.[/quote]

Awesome, thanks for the info Matt, I plugged in my info and for some reason it is saying “Water Report is unbalanced. The Cation and Anion totals should be with .5 meg/L of each” This only popped up after I multiplied my Sulfate level by 3 (since mine was 8 I put it to 24) but that is what the instructions say to do.

#4

Plugged your data in… There are always some “nuances” to water treatment. :smiley: I think I figured it out: You need to adjust nitrate as you did for sulfate. Plug in 6.2ppm for nitrate and you’re golden. Was .06 off until I did this (not much).

Unfortunately, your water is not well suited to pale beers. Along with Matt’s comments, I would encourage you to cut your water 50/50 with distilled for pale beers. While you can use acid, you will likely taste side effects of using that much acid. Cutting should keep the acid from popping up in the flavor profile. My water is similar to yours once cut and even then I use all distilled for german beers.

#5

[quote=“zwiller”]Plugged your data in… There are always some “nuances” to water treatment. :smiley: I think I figured it out: You need to adjust nitrate as you did for sulfate. Plug in 6.2ppm for nitrate and you’re golden. Was .06 off until I did this (not much).

Unfortunately, your water is not well suited to pale beers. Along with Matt’s comments, I would encourage you to cut your water 50/50 with distilled for pale beers. While you can use acid, you will likely taste side effects of using that much acid. Cutting should keep the acid from popping up in the flavor profile. My water is similar to yours once cut and even then I use all distilled for german beers.[/quote]

Hmmmm, for some reason I am still getting the error but by the sounds of it I am going to need to do a 50/50 split with my water and distilled which is kind of a bummer.

Thanks for the responses guys! So the consensus is that I need to do the 50/50 split and add some gypsum to up my sulfate level if I make hoppy beers.

I tried to attach the error I was getting, I must still be doing something wrong.

#6

Yep, hard and alkaline. It is well suited to treatment by either preboiling or by lime softening. The preboiling will only reduce the bicarb and calcium content, but if you perform the lime softening correctly, you can drop the magnesium too.

Right now, the magnesium is a bit high and I would focus on the lime softening technique. Its not very difficult and only requires lime, a couple of large containers, and some acid. A pH meter is very helpful and pretty much mandatory to do this treatment well.

#7

Probably the best write up on lime softening for the homebrewer:
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Alkalinity_reduction_with_lime

Fooled with lime softening once and it was a spectacle! Cool little reaction.

Tony, considering your well water is basically “free”, having to pay for some distilled for homebrew isn’t all that bad…

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