Hi All,
Need a little help with next steps on what to do with my water… The below is the report from Ward Labs. Clearly my water is pretty soft. What should I be doing next? What kinds of additions should I make (if any)?
Na- 11ppm
Ca- 9 ppm
Mg- 2 ppm
CaCO3- 31 ppm
SO4-S - 3 ppm
CI- 6 ppm
CO3- 3
HCO3- 26
CaCO3- 27
Thanks! :cheers:
You can make anything you want with that water. For light-colored beers, just add some calcium chloride for malty beers and gypsum for hoppy (mash and kettle), and for dark beers you’ll probably need some chalk or lime in the mash and then chloride/gypsum in the kettle depending on style.
Doesn’t he need to take the S04 and multiply it by 3?
3x3=9, so not an issue with Cl2 @ 6 and both in single digits.
If you want to get fancy,you can get beer captured and on page 177 in the book , their is a ppm guide lines for each beer style and then get BeerSmith and do the calc ,really simple if you have BS
this is one of those things that is added to that all the small steps make a difference at the end results ,
You would not want to see my water report from wards my hardness was 218 and temp was 175
Put it this way I could do a barley wine or stout and thats about it ,I brewed for about two years before buying an RO unit from air, water and ice ,the ED unit and a 20 gallon tank cause I brew 10 and 20 gallons at a time , my beers did and about face when doing water profiles, and plate chiller ,adding oxygen to the wort, it was all those things that combine made a better beer all together
I use RO in all my beers now and with a lot better results then a hard well water, the saying goes of you like your water you will like you’re beer ,I find that to be not true , I brew several kits and all grains and always had a bitter or a taste that I didn’t like until I stared using this method
Hope this helps
Whish my profile looked like that! Beats the 25 gal of RO on my brew day.
[quote=“beercheer4me”]I use RO in all my beers now and with a lot better results then a hard well water, the saying goes of you like your water you will like you’re beer ,I find that to be not true , I brew several kits and all grains and always had a bitter or a taste that I didn’t like until I stared using this method
Hope this helps[/quote]
I’d agree, my water tastes fine but was also getting a bitter or off taste in my beers. Obvious now that I learned about water chemistry and mash pH but it was most prevalent in my lighter beers, not in my extract batches and dark beers.
Cheshire, you really can do anything you want with that water. Adding some minerals for different styles may give some better results if you want to read up on it. Learning how to use Bru’n Water or EZ Water makes it pretty easy to play with how to adjust your water. Took me a bit of time to wrap my head around how to use them but quite easy once you figure it out.
Sorry… end of the semester! But wanted to thank everyone for the great information. Really appreciate it!
