Beer Forum

so i finally got a water report from my region but they don't measure for Ca or Mg. They do measure for hardness and alkalinity. Can i make assumptions of the Ca and Mg levels from the info?

Alkalinity (mg/L) as CaCO3 - 89
Chloride (mg/L) - 27
ph (mg/L) - 7.9
Sodium (mg/L) - 14
Sulphate (mg/L) - 37
'Hardness (as CaCO3) - 120

Thanks,

Tg

You can't be exact, since Ca and Mg concentrations are not related. But assuming that Mg is 10% of the Ca content which can be more typical, that hardness value indicates Ca = 40 ppm and Mg = 5 ppm. That is ballpark only.

The alkalinity number indicates bicarbonate content is about 108 ppm.

These concentrations were estimated using Bru'n Water.

Sometimes it's worth calling or emailing the quality manager at the water plant. A polite request and I got the much more detailed report our water folks provide to large commercial and industrial companies. Suddenly I had an excel spreadsheet pages long versus the "standard" customer report.

Hawkeye wrote:Sometimes it's worth calling or emailing the quality manager at the water plant. A polite request and I got the much more detailed report our water folks provide to large commercial and industrial companies. Suddenly I had an excel spreadsheet pages long versus the "standard" customer report.

yeah this is the result of a call although not to the plant itself. i have a spreadsheet which i took the numbers from, it's pretty detailed with readings from plant, from the major pipelines and from reservoirs.

thanks for the input mabrungard!

So i'm looking at taking this water (along with assumptions by mabrungard of Na and Mg) and tweaking it for brewing highly hopped pale beers.

What do you think of my below plan for water adjustment: (additions in gram/gal)

Gypsum - 1.40
Epsom salt - 0.50
Baking soda - 0.20
Calc Chloride - 0.20

This would give me a final profile of: (ppm)

Ca - 140
Mg - 18
Na - 29
SO4 - 293
Cl - 52
HC03 - 141
Ra - 6

This profile is based off the pale ale profile in Bru'n water.

p.s. i really love the program Martin, i'm using it to calculate mash and sparge adidification as well and the water knowledge tab was invaluable. i will look to donate as soon as i can get my paypal accound unlocked.

tg

To tell you the truth, I would nix the baking soda and reduce the gypsum to the point that the estimated mash pH was in the 5.4 to 5.5 range. As AJ and Kai have alluded to, you don't really need to strive for high sulfate and calcium concentrations to produce a good hop focused beer.

In this case, the high Ca content is driving the Residual Alkalinity down too much and that forced you to add baking soda to moderate the mash pH. Baking soda should really be a last choice mineral since sodium and bicarbonate are not good together in wort (as told by J DeClerk). Backing off on the Ca content is another way to avoid pushing the RA too low.

I'm betting that the sulfate content and sulfate/chloride ratio will still be acceptably high for a hop focused beer. But if it isn't, you might consider cutting back the CaCl addition if the ratio isn't to your liking.

For those of you that have checked out Bru'n Water, please note that I inverted the chloride/sulfate ratio to sulfate/chloride ratio after reading Colin Kaminski's arguments for it. It makes sense to express the ratio this way since you typically will have low chloride concentrations but you can have very high sulfate concentrations. The old way of expressing this ratio meant that it was a teeny number when you had high sulfate water (like this Pale Ale profile). And even when you have a very malt focused profile with with chlorides, the ratio tends to stay above 0.5. This is just a change in presentation and not really a change in usage, but I wanted brewers to know that the numbers are reversed.

thanks for the reply.

I only added the baking soda to up the bicarbonate and sodium to match the profile.

Even with the high calcium my estimated mash ph was 5.4.

your right about the S04/Cl ratio, dropping the baking soda still clocks in at about 5.6. cutting out the CaCl would raise it to 8.7.

maybe i'll try this instead:
gypsum - 1.0
Espom salt - 0.50
CaCl - 0.20

est mash profile would still be 5.4

tg

I hate the taste of sodium and keep it out at all costs.