Beer Forum

Anyone have the analysis of Philadelphia Tap Water
Thanks

Whatever is floating in the Delaware river.

I used to live in Philly so I know what you're dealing with. Please, don't use that tap water straight for brewing. Your beer won't be good, and if anyone tells you otherwise they are lying. It has too much chlorine and god knows what else in it. Seriously, the chlorine odor is like the pool at the YMCA. Brita filter it first, then it will be fine for brewing. But the Brita is going to change a lot about the water chemistry, so a Philly water analysis is useless at that point.

You can download the 2008 Philladelphia water quality report from http://www.phila.gov/water/Drinking_Water_Quali.html. It has information on hardness (but does not break it down into calcium and magnesium), alkalinity, sodium, nitrate and residual chlorine. Of this latter, yes, it is higher than most cities at 4 ppm but this can easily be dealt with by adding a Campden tablet to 15 gal of the water. Do that and as the alkalinity is realitively low and the hardness medium you should be able to brew most styles of beer.