ASantiago

Recipes 

What specific information do we need? I can ask the person with whom I'm trying to correspond.

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SpanishCastleAle

Recipes 

Calcium
Magnesium
Sodium
Chloride
Sulphate
Alkalinity

Provided none of the others are way high (way low is fine), the calcium and alkalinity are by far the two most important.

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ASantiago

Recipes 

Excellent. I'll ask about these.

I read the 2010 Water Quality report from OCU closer and you are right: the important stuff is not there. This report is more about contaminants in the water, rather than an analysis of the water make up. I'm sure they have that information somewhere, probably even downloadable.

UPDATE: Just sent my contact another e-mail requesting a water analysis report that contains the information you indicated. No answer to either of my e-mails yet. Must be... Friday...

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Pipeline
Next: American Brown Ale
Fermenting: Belgian Witbier
Conditioning:
Enjoying: American IPA

ASantiago

Recipes 

While doing a little research, ran into this. Considering the topic, I thought it relevant:

Orlando's Water Quality Poor

Dang...

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Pipeline
Next: American Brown Ale
Fermenting: Belgian Witbier
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heeler

Recipes 

Just buttin in and not an expert.......but I have lived in east Florida for 50 years. There are only 3 water soueces in Fl. If you live in the urban service area of your town and Orlando is a bigass town, then you are on county or city water ( check your bills) which is a deep well and the municipality treats that water with chlorine and lots of other chems. They can be removed if you desire, RO is the best at total removal.
Then you have a shallow well --which is very hard and irony and sometimes smelly - but again can be treated to a tolorable taste.
Then you have a flow -- you know the water just flows up from the ground. Thats called an artesian well or what we in Florida call sulphur water. That too can be treated.
And in fact can be quite good if run through RO. I have a flow well and have made some decent beer as well as some decent mash for liquor. I think I remember reading that if you boil your water all those minerals you dont want will be cooked off so no harm no foul. Hope some of this helps.

ASantiago

Recipes 

Thanks for the comments, heeler. Not butting in at all.

I do get county water. Let's see what their response to my inquiries is, hopefully this week. I looked this weekend for a water analysis on the web, but they don't seem to have it posted.

I wouldn't mind the minerals, if they are not off the scale. The other chems, well, I'd rather do without them. I don't have RO capabilities right now, nor do I know where I can conveniently find RO water for sale. But that's OK. I'm using bottled water (spring water; see earlier post) and that has been working out for me just fine.

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Pipeline
Next: American Brown Ale
Fermenting: Belgian Witbier
Conditioning:
Enjoying: American IPA

SpanishCastleAle

Recipes 

Those big water machines at just about every grocery store are RO water, it's 25 cents a gallon at the Publix I go to.

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Early brewers were primarily women, mostly because it was deemed a woman's job. Mesopotamian men, of some 3,800 years ago, were obviously complete assclowns and had yet to realize the pleasure of brewing beer.- Beer Advocate

ASantiago

Recipes 

What kind of adjustments do you do to the RO water for mashing?

Sent from my DROID X using the HomeBrewTalk app.

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Pipeline
Next: American Brown Ale
Fermenting: Belgian Witbier
Conditioning:
Enjoying: American IPA

BoxofRain

Recipes 

My dad lives in Dr. Phillips and he told me the water is considered hard.

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SpanishCastleAle

Recipes 

So far I've been doing what the primer says, I use a little bit of bottled Spring water and a lot of RO. For example, yesterday I brewed a ~16-17 SRM Belgian Dark Strong that had 1.5 lb crystal malt (out of 14 lb total) using 6 qt Spring water + 24 qt RO water + 1.5 tsp CaCl and sparged with 8 qt RO water (never mind the strange volumes). After the last infusion (so it was a fairly thin mash @ just over 2 qt/lb) the pH was 5.43 at room temp. Post boil pH was 5.45 at room temp.

__________________
Early brewers were primarily women, mostly because it was deemed a woman's job. Mesopotamian men, of some 3,800 years ago, were obviously complete assclowns and had yet to realize the pleasure of brewing beer.- Beer Advocate