My water Analysis. Advice needed or whatever!

[pinbrew]

Ok after brewing some chicken soup, well not that bad,,.. I usually have always used RO water for brewing, but in my new location I just installed some carbon filters on my WELL water and thought wtf, should work..

WELL,, after never bothering with testing or adjustin any water, and after my 1st batches have failed, well subject to interpretation, ok they are like cloudy chicken soup,,... I decided to send the water sample in. While it was out I proceded to open up how to brew and look at ch 15,, and listen to the 3 series on water.. ok,, so here are my results...


sodium, na - 115
calcium, ca - 106
magnesium, mg - 27
sulfate, so4-s - 62
Chloride, cl - 90
Bicarbonate, hco3 - 359 < ----------- WOW
Total ALC, caco3 - 294
PH - 7.5


According to this, I should use this water for a double/4x black as ass stout... and that is about it... Looks like I will add a whole other dimension to my brew process,,, water and PH..

Any suggestions,,,,,, I have been looking and have my eye on a 20gallon pressure tank and a 100gpd RO system, and just make buffer/salt additions as needed..... unless I want a stout, and even then I need to probably cut it with some distilled or RO...

[Big Tex]

Actually, that water is not bad if you want to brew a nice porter or stout. I plugged the numbers in to Palmer's spreadsheet and you're good for any malty beer that's in the 21 - 26 SRM range. That being said, if you want to brew a pale ale, your screwed.

I'd recommend brewing porters and stouts until you can get your RO setup running or go buy distilled water and build it up.

[ajdelange]

You didn't state whether the calcium and magnesium are given as the ion or as calcium carbonate which makes it hard to do an analysis. I'll assume you went to Ward Labs as that seems to be where everyone goes and thus assume they are as the ion. If this is the case this water report isn't that great showing an electrical imbalance of 2.8 mEq/L. The balance isn't that good assuming "as CaCO3" either (2 mEq/L) but the former assumption gives a more favorable picture with respect to the residual alkalinity which is still pretty high at 202 ppm as CaCO3 but better than it is (260) if I assume the Ca and Mg numbers are hardnesses (as CaCO3). What this 2.8 mEq/L means is that if all the imbalance came from error in measuring hardness, your calcium hardness could be as much as 140 ppm (as CaCO3) lower than reported (264 - 140 = 124). If all the error lies in the alkalinity measurement then actual alkalinity could be as much as 140 ppm higher (294 + 140 = 335). Neither of these would be good. It also means that anything I say below is suspect because I am starting with specs for a water which cannot physically exist. Assuming the truth to be somewhere in between and that the imbalance is a combination of both these types of errors, errors in measurments of other ion concentrations and omitted ions (ions not measured or not mentioned by you such as nitrate and potassium) the things that hit you in the face about this report are the honking residual alkalinity and the sodium at 115. With respect to alkalinity and effective hardness (320) you are off my chart but close to Brugge and one report I have for Dublin. So the advice to do stouts in probably OK with the exception of the high chloride and sulfate levels which might lend a salty taste but then Dublin isn't the only place where stouts have been brewed and with enough burnt barley you should be able to mask almost anything.

The good news here is that your total hardness (375) excedes the total alkalinity (294) by a healthy margin and you ought to be able to drop the alkalinity down to around 60 by either lime treatment (split treatment would take out about half the magnesium) or heating the water (chalk will precipitate). This conclusion goes away if the alternative hypothesis about the hardness numbers turns out to be the correct one. So simply heating the water and aerating it (to remove CO2) or boiling it (steam will sparge the CO2 out) should get you to a water with an alkalinity of around 60 and a residual alkalinity of about the same (50) because most of the calcium and magnesium will have been stripped out. Supplementation with some calcium will be required but as your sulfate and chloride are already high there are limits as to how much calcium chloride or calcium sulfate you may want to add. Getting rid of the residual alkalinity by adding acids gets you exactly the same result as boiling/lime and then supplementing with calcium salts because for every mEq of alkalinity you remove with acid you get 1 mEq of the cation of the acid (sulfate, chloride, lactate...)

This suggests shooting for Burton-like water which is very high in sulfate but the chloride and sodium levels in your water already excede those of Burton. Nevertheless, were you to add 28.4 mg of gypsum to 6 gal of the water you would acheive a slightly negative RA which is typical of some Burton reports though the effective hardness would be a little higher than any report I have ever seen for Burton. There will also be a tiny pH shift from adding all that gypsum. You should have no trouble brewing a Burton style pale ale with water so treated but it might taste a little salty from all that sodium and chloride.

If you are willing to dilute the water 1:1 with deionized water you can get pretty close to Dortmund (though the sulfate will be high) by adding 3 gal DI water to 3 gal of your water and then adding 2.6 grams of calcium chloride dihydrate and 11.4 grams of gypsum and 2.5 grams of Epsom salts. This should let you do a pretty good Export. Even the sodium is under control here (because Dortmund water has lots of it).

This is not great water for brewing. RO will help but note that it is less effective in handling your biggest enemy which is alkalinity/bicarbonate than other ions. Bringing in distilled water or buying a counter top still may be things you want to consider. Dilution will be your strongest ally.