Beer Forum

Perhaps everyone except me already knows this but I just discovered yesterday that Ward Labs reports list sulfate as sulfur (i.e the mg/L number means the milligrams of sulfur in the sulfate - not the mass of the sulfate ions themselves). The popular spreadsheets calculate sulfate "as sulfate" (which makes more sense to me). Before entering your reported sulfate number into one of these spreadsheets convert "as sulfur" to "as sulfate" by multiplying by 3.

AJ,

My Ward report from 9/09 shows:
Sulfate, SO4-S 6 ppm

Palmers spreadsheet lists Sulfate (ppm).

I don't see Sulfur listed anywhere on the Ward report. Did you contact Ward or is in the documentation somewhere?

Thanks,
JD

dunleav1 wrote:Sulfate, SO4-S 6 ppm

The clue is in that -S. "SO4-S" is read "sulfate as sulfur" which means that instead of listing the actual mass of the sulfate they list the mass of the sulfur in it. Note that the same idea is used with nitrate which is listed as NO3-N. That means it's the mass of the nitrogen in the nitrate that they are giving you - not the mass of the nitrate ion. I'm guessing they do this because their background seems to be in agriculture where they like to list the amount of nitrogen, phosophorous, sulfur, etc. applied per acre irrespective of what salt it's bound up in. SO4 -S 6 ppm means that SO4, as we usually think of it, i.e. the mass of the sulfate ions per liter, is actually 18.

Holy beer farts! This has shattered my whole world view. Damn it...but my beer tasted better after all the gypsum I put in it didnt it? Thanks for the heads up AJ...now off to update all my water recipes. Seriously, thank you AJ. This is what I get for taking mostly Anthropology and philosophy in school.

Based on my water it's really not much of a difference, but thanks for the update AJ.
I'll use it moving forward.

Thanks AJ...I also did not know this. I'll update my software. 18 ppm now 54 ppm.