Hi everyone, and especially AJ (I am posting this in general forums so hopefully this can be of use to others too).
This is a repeat thread from one I just posted on Probrewer:

Water Analysis, send it out or test in-house?

Just doing the preliminaries on setting up water analysis and deciding if and when to adjust our beers. This is for a brewpub, and our upcoming production brewery setting in Ohio.

I have obtained a city water report, but we would like to back this up with some on-site sampling. The Water treatment plant does not test for Calcium and Magnesium concentrations, just total hardness. Is it possible to calculate these from the hardness and alkalinity values? I don't think so, but just checking.

What makes more sense financially and realistically, if we are going to be sampling, say, once a quarter to track changes: sending it out for lab analysis, or buying a test kit?

And any specific recommendations on labs, or test kits, with your suggestions would be great.

We will be tracking all of our mash and wort pH's of course, in addition to looking into the basic mineral makeup of the water. I know that is the most important part.

Thanks for the help!

Hope AJ has x-ray vision to read that type color!

My best advice would be to send samples off to Ward Labs on a regular schedule. They are very quick to test and get you the results. They will even email results to you for even faster service. http://www.wardlab.com/FeeSchedule/WaterAnalysis.aspx

Wayne

Better use the "AJ Signal"



As Bug said, send out to Ward Labs. I plan on doing this semi-annually just to see if there are changes to the water I use.

I'd say the answer depends on several things. First off, of course, is that if the water is to be RO'd it doesn't matter what the incoming stream looks like as long as the RO unit is working as indicated by its TDS meter. Second, if there is little seasonal variation then it won't be necessary to test very often and Ward Labs is probably sufficient. Third, it depends on what, if any, processing is to be done on the water. If you are doing lime softening, for example, you need to be able to check alkalinity and hardness after treatment to see if the treatment was effective. This is also a good idea if you are building from RO - an occasional check to be sure the scale was set for grams, not ounces etc.

I always advocate for self testing at least until the lay of the land is known. It's a pretty simple matter to test for calcium hardness, magnesium hardness, alkalinity and choride and the investment for pretty accurate measurements (1 -2 mg/L) would be about $450 (Hach digital titrator and chemistries for those tests). If 10 mg/L level results are adequate you could cut that investment in half.

I concur with Bug. I think it was around $30...

Great, thanks for the tips. I think if we are talking $30 to get it done right at a lab, that is probably the way to go. We probably won't need to send in samples that often as long as we keep an eye on mash pH for every brew to see if we are noticing any changes.

FYI, I don't think we will be going with RO or water softeners. We have moderately hard water but I don't think we are going to be brewing the sort of beers that that will be a flavor issue for. We should be able to hit target mash pH by using the proper minerals or acid.