Podunk town water report

Any opinions on this report?

Seems like it is very unspecific as far as hardness is concerned, or lack of hardness. Looks like I'll have to dig deeper as it seems my small town water district does not do an elaborate report.








For reference I'm thinking of installing an under sink RO and making additions from there for mashing. I brew all sorts of styles but these days mostly English bitters, APA's, and IPA's.

Straight tap water taste is pretty good with very little chlorine taste. I'm mostly worried about Ph and mash efficiency

Honestly the golden rule is "tastes good, brews good' but if your looking for a specific mineral/additive composition I would personally pick a brand of Spring Water that you like/has the qualities your after and use that.

A quick google search for the exact mineral qualities of a given brand is 99% easier than running an analysis of your personal tap water and then fussing around with mineral tablets.

The citywide report is only so useful, because there are a lot of minerals/metals that can potentially enter your tap water either within the city lines or within your own plumbing (the most common/abundant metals being copper and iron)

Not to mention that $5 worth of spring water per batch is a lot cheaper than installing and maintaining a quality home-wide water filter.

This report, like many municipal reports, is issued to satisfy regulatory requirements, not brewers. The best thing for you to do is send a sample off to Ward Labs. This will give you the information you need as a brewer. The low chloride and hardness numbers that you do have suggest that the water will be low in other minerals as well and quite suitable for brewing many if not most styles. This means you can make many kinds of beer and that they will be decent. If you want really good beer then RO with mineral adjustment tuned for the beer is the way to go but perhaps this is not the way for the beginner. Given that your water is OK you can focus on the other aspects of brewing and when comfortable with them turn your attention to the water.

Given the ready availability of inexpensive RO systems you will easily recover the cost of the one within 30 brews or so relative to buying spring or RO water (assuming you pay $5 per batch) not to mention the cost of the petrol consumed in traveling to pick up the stuff. But the main advantage is that you have total consistency and control. A simple water suitable for brewing most beers can be had by adding a teaspoonful of calcium chloride (available at most home brew shops) to 5 gal of RO water. Doesn't get much simpler than that. If this is appealing see the Primer in the Stickies here.

Thanks for the info. I have been slowly tinkering with my setup and I feel like I'm getting close to doing water adjustments. I've been successful with my ferm temps and have had pretty good luck culturing yeast so I feel like the water profiling is the next logical step. I'm just unsure of how I'd like to go about it. The under sink RO seems plausible but it seems I have more research to do. My brews taste excellent (IMO) and seem to improve a little more each time. I wonder if I would be making things better or worse if I tinkered with the water.
Think I'll ponder this one a bit more

It appears to me that this water is probably not very mineralized and can be used very easily in brewing. Getting a more complete picture would be helpful. Assuming that the water has relatively low mineralization, the recommendations of the Brewing Water Primer could be appropriate. Bru'n Water can also help, but you'll have to find out what your water quality is before it can be used.