whiskeyjack

Recipes 

Any one care to take a look at my water profile and give any advice on what exactly I should do to improve it. I brew mainly pale ales the majority of the time. Any advice would be great, also I don't know the difference of total alk and total hardness, that's just what it said on the water report.

Total alkalinity 80 (CaCo3)
Total Hardness 157 (CaCO3)
Ca Hardness 103
Mg Hardness 54
Sulfate 38
Cl 31
Na 16
PH- 9.1

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WoodlandBrew

Recipes 

Mg 54? Is that ppm or ppb? Other than that it looks like mighty fine brewing water. are your pale ales hoppy?

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ajdelange

Recipes 

Neither. It's ppm as calcium carbonate.

Pretty nominal water. Suitable for lots of generic beers. For minerally, rough hop beers it would need more sulfate. For delicate lagers it needs to be cut with low ion water. But for general brewing use it is fine.

whiskeyjack

Recipes 

I finally found the time to sit down and tinker with beersmith to try and figure out the best way to improve my water. If I dilute half RO water and add 8g gypsum, .3g NaCl, 2g CaCl, and .7g baking soda I can get
Ca 131
mg 27
na 18
so4 166
cl 53
hco3 56
I tried to replicate mosher pale ale, doing this I have raised so4 and lowered mg. However I can't get So4 any higher without raising mg or calcium higher, would that So4 level work for pale ales, compared to what I previously had?

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whiskeyjack

Recipes 

ppm

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"Many mules have matched wits with me, yet almost all have failed!" Pust

300RUM

Recipes 

I would stay away from the baking soda(or any bases) unless you are having too low of mash ph.

Are you having any problems now? I haven't ran it in spreedsheets but it looks pretty good.

300RUM

Recipes 

After looking at it real quick it would say you don't really need to do anything maybe 2 grams of gypsum if you are making a hop forward beer but congrats on great water

ajdelange

Recipes 

It's clearly ppm as calcium carbonate. ppm would be interpreted as 'ppm as the element' or mg/L. Here the calcium hardness is 103 ppm as CaCO3 which is 2.06 mEq/L which is 40.12 mg/L which is 40.12 ppm 'as the ion'.

WoodlandBrew

Recipes 

Yeah, 54 ppm as the ion sounds ridiculously high. is there a way to convert from what he has to the ion concentration?

Also, less is more. Don't go crazy with all the salts. A little CaCl for sweet beers or a little CaSO4 for hoppy beers.

Here is some more information:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/11/basic-water-chemistry.html

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Woodland Brewing Company Brewing science for those of us without a Ph.D
BLOG: Brewing Boiled Down and learn more on The WBC You Tube Channel Ready to drink: Champagne Cider, 50c 28c and 19c Ale, Adventinus clone. Up next: Douppleweizenbock, Eisbock, Saision Terri, Raspberry Cream Ale

Kaiser

Recipes 

Here is a page that shows conversion between units:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_read_a_water_report#convert ing_between_the_various_units

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