So I live south of the Tampa area and I am getting tired of paying $12 just for spring water every time I brew. I had my county water tested by Ward Labs and these were the results.
PH-6.7
total disolved solids-193
Cations/Anions- 3.2/3.1
PPM
Sodium, Na 16
Potassium, K 4
Calcium, Ca 29
Magnesium Mg 11
Total Hardness. CaCO3 118
Nitrate,NO3-N 0.4
Sulfate, SO4-S 31
Chloride, Cl 20
Carbonate, CO3 <1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 38
Total Alkalinity 31
Those of you more experienced with water chem can you help me understand the results??
I do plan on having on hand a full line of salts to taylor to specific types as well as using software (Bru’n Water) or any other highly recommended program.
I’d say stop paying for spring water. Yours looks pretty good to me.
Personally I like to use EZ Water Calc.
Even though Bru’n Water is a more thorough spreadsheet, I find the EZ Calc more simple to use. Just aim for about 5.7 in the predicted mash pH and it comes out spot on when you measure it.
yeah - you have pretty good water. (BTW rather than buying spring water, you could have been buying RO filtered water at Publix for $0.30 a gallon)
anyhow - you’ll probably only need to add either CaCl or CaSO4 to most light to amber beers whether maltier (CaCl) or hoppier (CaSO4) in order to get your Ca levels in the 50-80 range as well as your Cl:SO4 ratio appropriate.
I’ve been using “florida water” for 5-6 years now and have made some great beers with it - I’ve always carbon block filtered and Campden tablet treated the water though (belt and suspenders approach).
You might want to dilute with distilled or RO to get the sulfates down (93 ppm SO4), depending on the beer style.
The tap water RA is 4 ppm CaCO3, so you should be able to brew pale-to-gold beers without alkalinity adjustment. For very light beers you can add enough Ca/Mg via salt additions. At 50 ppm Ca the RA would be -11; at 75 ppm Ca it would be -29, and that’s about as low as you should need to go.
The only problem might be getting enough bicarbonate into solution for very dark beers. To get to an RA of 200 you’d need to add at least 250 ppm HCO3. I’d look into Kai Troester’s technique of dissolving chalk/baking soda under CO2 pressure.
CaCO3 is chalk. If your LHBS doesn’t have it you could probably get some at a nursery, or buy generic antacid tablets from a pharmacy. Just make sure they don’t have any other ingredients.
