Where to get well water tested?

[HopRunner]

I think I've gotten to the point in my brewing where I need to know exactly what is in my water. I want to have two samples analyzed. One right out of the fossit and one after your basic canister type carbon water filter.

I'm on a well and don't use City water. I suspect that my towns municipal water supply is probably close to my well water but I don't want to rely on those numbers for my water calculations.

I'm not sure who does this kind of work and how much it costs.

[TheDarkSide]

Although I've never sent my water out for testing, I have heard the Brewcasters mention this company before:

http://www.wardlab.com/

[DannyW]

Ward Labs http://www.wardlab.com/ test W-6 for $16.50. Worth every penny.

[HopRunner]

Thank-You very much for the link. I'm going to send some off ASAP.

[BadRock]

Ward Lab Rocks! They will email you your results within a day of receiving your sample if you request.

[ajdelange]

The good news about Ward Labs is that they give you QC information on each report. The bad news is that the quality they report is, at least in the case of the report I'm looking at right now, not that good showing a cation/anion imbalance of 1.4/1.1 mEq/L. This amount of discrepancy (12% of the ion content) is equivalent to 15 ppm as CaCO3 alkalinity or hardness and represents either an ion not accounted for or a measurement error or a combination of both. I can't fault Ward labs here because I don't know if this is typical or a fluke. This report is pretty useless for all but the most casual purposes as this particular water has a reported total alkalinity of 25 (of which the imbalance is greater than half) and a calcium hardness of 35 (of which the imbalance is almost half).

A.J.