Water Report

[bigdan]

So I called the city municipal today. The guy on the other end was really helpful with what info he had, but didn't seem to know all the stuff I asked about. I'm also new to this water stuff and not really sure what I am doing, so I am turning to you guys for so help. He told me that the average range of calcium carbonate is 40-60mg/liter, but has droped to 12 and up to 120mg/liter. He said that only happens if they can't blend water. He says they always blend though. He couldn't give the sodium, but says there is no magnesium. He said that there is less than 1mg/liter on chloride and sulfate and the average ph is 7.6-8.4. Were should I go from here? Thanks big dan

[ajdelange]

I'd say the logical next step would probably be to send a sample off to Ward Labs so you can get some hard numbers in front of you. While they may not represent the water that will come out of your tap every day throughout the year they will at least be representative.

From what the municipal guy told you it is clear that your water is low in permanent (choride/sulfate) hardness but the rest of the story is not so clear. Potable water never contains calcium carbonate at the 50 mg/L level but it can have hardness at levels like 40 - 60 mg/L (or higher) "as calcium carbonate" and alkalinity (bicarbonatae) is also usually expressed in those units. So you may have misunderstood when he spoke of "calcium carbonate". With the water being so low in sulfate, chloride and presumably sodium (if it were a major player we may suppose your man would have known something about it) then the hardness and alkalinity are going to be numerically close to one another and so 40-60 mg/L as CaCO3 is probably what that value is. Picking 50 as a number to work with would give you a residual alkalinity of about 36 which means you should be able to brew most styles of beer without treatment or very extensive treatment (a little calcium chloride for continental beers and some gypsum for British). We're going out on a limb here with nothing more to work with than what you have at the moment. Water reports from Ward are resonably priced ($20?) and reasonably accurate. Lots of home brewers use them.