Water Report Louisa VA

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ridinshotgun

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So I am on a well and got my Ward report back. No filters except sediment.

What do you think about the numbers? Anything I should be aware of?

Sodium, Na 4
Potassium, K 2
Calcium, Ca 7
Magnesium, Mg 2
Total Hardness, CaCO3 26
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.3 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S < 1
Chloride, Cl 2
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 42
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 35
Total Phosphorus, P 0.12
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
 
Looks similar to pilsen water. Good starting profile for pale and maybe amber beers, not so good for porters and stouts. You'll need to bump up your alkalinity when you brew the darker beers to help buffer the acid in the darker malts, over and above adding a bit of gypsum and CaCl2 depending on the style your brewing. Gotta love that water balancing act. :D
 
Good thing I like my pale ales!

I was planning on a brew next weekend and was looking at the calculators and adding a small amount of gypsum to help bitter the brew.

I'll have to start thinking about how to modify the water since my next brew I was planning was a porter. :(
 
ridinshotgun said:
Good thing I like my pale ales!

I was planning on a brew next weekend and was looking at the calculators and adding a small amount of gypsum to help bitter the brew.

I'll have to start thinking about how to modify the water since my next brew I was planning was a porter. :(
Click to expand...

I highly recommend the Bru'n Water spread sheet. It's a bit of a learning curve as It has a lot of adjustment parameters, but Martin includes all of the info in the water knowledge portion. It really helps to illustrate how different water adjustments affect the whole balance. I've also used Brewers friend's water calculator, Had good luck with that one as well, and it's a little simpler. But I'd still invest the time in learning bru"n Water.

Also, If you haven't already, check out the 6 shows on Brew Strong about water. I picked up a lot of good info there!
in the short term, AJ's water adjustment sticky in this forum, is very good at ball parking your brew. It's a great starting point.
 
I suppose I should let one of the water gurus chime in, but those numbers look off. I don't know if the alkalinity could be that high (as modest as it is though) with other ions all being that low. I think I recall A.J. DeLange posting on here somewhere that there's some regular problem in Ward Labs reports with the alkalinity figure. Although he'd definitely be the one to ask about that. In any event, assuming that's accurate, that's a good versatile starting point in my eyes, but would probably still need either additional calcium or acid to drop the pH for really pale beers. If you like pale ales, I'd be using gypsum in just about everything.
 
Qhrumphf said:
I suppose I should let one of the water gurus chime in, but those numbers look off. I don't know if the alkalinity could be that high (as modest as it is though) with other ions all being that low.
Click to expand...

Without actually running the numbers I'd say that things look OK. Hardness and alkalinity are more or less in balance and the sodium and potassium probably balance things out.

Qhrumphf said:
I think I recall A.J. DeLange posting on here somewhere that there's some regular problem in Ward Labs reports with the alkalinity figure. Although he'd definitely be the one to ask about that.
Click to expand...
I did say that but the problem is
1. Supposed to have been fixed (it wouldn't be in older reports of course).
2. Only a problem when pH is over 8 and carbonate reported as > 1.
 
Very nice water. The only thing to concern yourself with is the alkalinity level. A small application of acid or acid malt may be needed in some mashes.

While the bicarbonate level looks high in comparison to the calcium level, you need to understand that in the case of a mineral such as calcium carbonate, there is one equivalent of calcium and one equivalent of carbonate. However, there is a big conversion of those equivalents when moving to units like ppm and changing to a more identifiable bicarbonate concentration. In terms of ppm, 1 ppm of calcium is actually paired with slightly over 3 ppm of bicarbonate. That is why the bicarbonate content 'looks' high.
 
mabrungard said:
While the bicarbonate level looks high in comparison to the calcium level, you need to understand that in the case of a mineral such as calcium carbonate, there is one equivalent of calcium and one equivalent of carbonate. However, there is a big conversion of those equivalents when moving to units like ppm and changing to a more identifiable bicarbonate concentration.
Click to expand...

All of which is why hardness and alkalinity were invented. Just by looking at those two numbers, alk 35 and hardness 26 we see that things are pretty close to balance: 35 - 26 = 9 ppm as CaCO3 on the alkalinity side. For balance we need 9/50 = 0.18 mEq/L cations. Sodium gives 4/23 and potassium 2/39 which puts us a bit over on the cation side but then we have 2/35 chloride on the anion side of the ledger.

Much of the confusion comes because brewers like to think in terms of bicarbonate when they should be thinking in terms of alkalinity. Alkalinity is what the lab measures and bicarbonate is calculated from that which can lead to problems if the calculation isn't done right (as in the Ward Labs problem and that many of the spreadsheets and calculators use a pH independent approximation). Bicarbonate is not really a useful number to someone looking at water and as information about it is implicitly carried in the alkalinity and pH values most labs don't bother to calculate it. That's why you don't find it on municipal water reports in most cases.

The other source of confusion is our insistence in north America on using ppm as CaCO3 as a proxy for normality. This leads to other problems (for example LaMotte's error in their BrewLab kit instruction - also supposed to have been fixed). In the ROW OP's alkalinity would be reported as 0.70 mVal/L and his hardness as 0.52. Someone looking at the report would see that and, noting that the other ions are in small concentration, immediately conclude that the report was pretty close to being balanced.
 
ajdelange said:
All of which is why hardness and alkalinity were invented. Just by looking at those two numbers, alk 35 and hardness 26 we see that things are pretty close to balance: 35 - 26 = 9 ppm as CaCO3 on the alkalinity side. For balance we need 9/50 = 0.18 mEq/L cations. Sodium gives 4/23 and potassium 2/39 which puts us a bit over on the cation side but then we have 2/35 chloride on the anion side of the ledger.

Much of the confusion comes because brewers like to think in terms of bicarbonate when they should be thinking in terms of alkalinity. Alkalinity is what the lab measures and bicarbonate is calculated from that which can lead to problems if the calculation isn't done right (as in the Ward Labs problem and that many of the spreadsheets and calculators use a pH independent approximation). Bicarbonate is not really a useful number to someone looking at water and as information about it is implicitly carried in the alkalinity and pH values most labs don't bother to calculate it. That's why you don't find it on municipal water reports in most cases.

The other source of confusion is our insistence in north America on using ppm as CaCO3 as a proxy for normality. This leads to other problems (for example LaMotte's error in their BrewLab kit instruction - also supposed to have been fixed). In the ROW OP's alkalinity would be reported as 0.70 mVal/L and his hardness as 0.52. Someone looking at the report would see that and, noting that the other ions are in small concentration, immediately conclude that the report was pretty close to being balanced.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the discussion so far on this and I have one question....

I understand that the more important number you mention to look at is alkalinity but how does alkalinity relate to what we are trying to get. For instance if I am brewing a porter how does the alkalinity of my water effect the mash? and how would it or the mash need to be adjusted?

Sorry if it is a dumb question but if you can just point me to someplace I can read more about it that would work too.

Thanks!
 
ridinshotgun said:
I understand that the more important number you mention to look at is alkalinity but how does alkalinity relate to what we are trying to get. For instance if I am brewing a porter how does the alkalinity of my water effect the mash? and how would it or the mash need to be adjusted?
Click to expand...

Mash is made up of water, malt and anything we add to it. There are things in the malt, water and additions that give off protons and there are things that absorb them. The quantity given up or absorbed depends on the natural pH of the substance and the pH of the mix which is the pH at which the number of protons absorbed by the absorbers is equal to the quantity donated by the donors. Alkalinity is representative of proton absorption. Water has alkalinity. Base malt has alkalinity. Dark malt has acidity which is a measure of the proton donating capacity of a substance. In planning a brew (e.g. a Porter) we must guarantee that the total protons absorbed by the base malt and water is equal to the total protons given up by dark malts and acids added to the mash.


ridinshotgun said:
Sorry if it is a dumb question but if you can just point me to someplace I can read more about it that would work too.
Click to expand...

It certainly isn't a dumb question. It is at the heart of mash pH control. There is a writeup at: http://wetnewf.org/pdfs/estimating-mash-ph.html
 

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