mabrungard

Recipes 

The SM-101 has been superseded by the MW-101 meter. I followed Kai's advice regarding my last meter purchase and have been pleased with the MW-101. I had Hanna pH Checker meters prior. Those Hanna's were decent, but the Milwaukee MW-101 has proven to be better.

Kai needs to update the link to the SM-101 on his site, since it no longer exists. I'd suggest pointing at a MW-101 and explaining the SM was superseded by it.

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runningweird

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so once I get the pH meter and some pickling lime I can start playing with my water.

for a 10 gallon batch I will need a lot of space to treat water in, what do you guys use as a treatment/precipitant tank?

I was thinking of using a 15 gallon hdpe drum with a spigot or ball valve. do you have to empty out the chalk residue after every treatment?

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Kaiser

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No, it actually makes sense to keep it in there since the existing chalk will help the precipitation of more chalk by providing seed crystals. That's why it is recommended to also add some chalk when treating with lime or boiling water.

Once in a while you may want to clean it out.

Kai

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grathan

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Just buy the Colorphast strips. By the time you buy that meter and also buy calibration, cleaning, and storing solution and acids and lime, you will have spent half the cost of a Reverse Osmosis water system. And that cheap meter will most likely drift and need replacement in a year or two. I personally would never buy anything from Amazon with only a 3 star review.

runningweird

Recipes 

reviving an older thread. I now have a 32 gallon trash can, ph strips(no meter yet), alkalinity strips and the feeling of being totally out of my depth.

I was looking at palmers page http://www.winning-homebrew.com/carbonate-reduction.html

and wondering what my temporary hardness was - is it the total alkalinity reading? or the bicarbonate reading?

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afr0byte

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Yes it's the total alkalinity. Your water is a great candidate for lime softening.

runningweird

Recipes 

so - 335x .74 = 247.9

so I would need 247.9 mg/liter of water treated

if I wanted to treat 20 gallons of water that would be 75.7 liters
so 18766/1000 = 18.76 grams of slaked lime
paler says to adjust up 20-30% so

18.76 x 1.25 =23.5 grams slaked lime to treat 20 gallons of water

is this right? that seems like a lot of lime from what I have read.

would I need to add supplemental calcium in in the form of calcium carbonate ?

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afr0byte

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I'd try the 18.76 grams first. That amount (scaled for my water, obviously) has worked for me.

afr0byte

Recipes 

When you do the treatment I'd add half your water and add the entire amount of lime, then stir as you're adding the rest of the water (say a good stir per gallon).

ajdelange

Recipes 

Yes, approximately. I get 23.9 grams (some calculators forget that there is a second component required to overcome the buffering capacity of the water) but the important thing for you to know is that where precipitation is involved things are a little iffy. DeClerck recommends that one calculate an amount and treat three samples one with the calculated amount and two other with respectively ±10% (or perhaps 15%) more or less. Then after the treatment measure the alkalinity and pick the dose that gives the best result.

afr0byte's recommendation is equivalent to doing this. As you add in the second half of the water gradually the pH should stay relatively stable as the chalk forms and precipitates i.e. it should decrease slowly. When all the lime is used up the pH will start to fall back more rapidly. That is your signal that the reaction is complete. Adding more water will only add more alkalinity that won't get neutralized so you should stop at this point. The pH may be higher than where you started (i.e. higher than in your untreated water). As Hubert Hanghoffer pointed out many years ago this is an acid/base titration (the acid is the bicarbonate ion in the source water) and you want to stop at the inflection point. If the end point pH is 8.3 so be it. Remember you don't care about the water's pH. You are doing this to beat alkalinity.

Of course all this is quite a bit of trouble and requires a fairly good pH meter (doen't even have to be as good as the one you should have for checking mash) and you have to weigh out the lime etc. You'll get the same result (decarbonation to about 1 mEq/L) just by heating the water in the HLT and sparging off the CO2. Steam is good for that (IOW you have to let the water come to the boil) but one clever idea is to spray the hot water through a shower head or similar device. You then have to get the water off the chalk and wait for it to cool to mash temperature but you have to get the water off the chalk with lime treatment but you get the hot water as part of the decarbonation process. Any way you look at it each method has its advantages and disadvantages. I'd be inclined to try both, measuring treated water akalinity after each, to see which one was easiest/most effective.