Water report!

Mashing
1

So my local water report would tell me if my water would kill me, but other than that it wasn’t very useful. Calling direct didn’t help. I found a thread about Ward Laboratories and they have a super easy process to test your water for about $28 including shipping. Not bad! Time to open that chapter in How to Brew again… anyone want to weigh in? If taste is an issue, will carbon filtering affect anything other than taste?

pH 8.1
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 269
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.45
Cations / Anions, me/L 4.5 / 4.6

PPM
Sodium, Na 43
Potassium, K 2
Calcium, Ca 40
Magnesium, Mg 7
Total Hardness, CaCO3 129
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.4 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 15
Chloride, Cl 26
Carbonate, CO3 6
Bicarbonate, HCO3 167
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 147

https://producers.wardlab.com/BrewersKitOrder.aspx
2
https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/
3

Don’t know much about water as I have always had the luck of owning a RO system when AG.

A carbon filter will remove chlorine/chloramines. But, you have to filter slowly for it to be effective.

4

Neutralizing the alkalinity is the primary treatment needed for brewing with this water. Acidification will be effective. The rest of the ions are not really excessive.

5

Looks pretty good to me, a decent amount of calcium, fairly low sulfate and chloride but you can adjust those up easily, not terribly high in sodium. I can’t say if the total alkalinity is real high, my sense is its not but as Martin correctly states you can adjust that with a little lactic acid of phosphoric acid.