My water profile

Can someone translate this into something that is conducive to making good beer? Thanks in advance!!

Alkalinity (Bicarbonate) 459ppm
Alkalinity (Total) 376ppm
Aluminum 0.008ppm
Calcium 2.96ppm
Chloride 54ppm
Copper 0.002ppm
Fluoride 1.1ppm
Manganese 0.01ppm
Magnesium 0.65ppm
pH 7.8
Sodium 200
Sulfate 9ppm
Total Hardness (as CaCO3) 8.14ppm
Total dissolved solids 523ppm

Thanks again brewfolks.

Go to www.howtobrew.com and read chapter 15. I think Palmer really does a pretty good job of laying it out there. Also, he has some nifty charts and a downloadable spreadsheet for use at home. Hope it helps, it sure helped me start to understand my water profile (note that is start)

This is very hard and akaline water which makes it suitable only for real dark beers. If you want to use it for other beers, read up on waterchemistry and start treating the water or you may even look into getting an R/O system and build your water from scratch. That's at least what I did.

Kai

Buffer 5.2 by Five Star...

Nate said:

Buffer 5.2 by Five Star...

Click to expand...

Yes, you can give that a try, but you may need quite a bit to overcome the alkalinity of your brewing water which may cause a mineral taste in your beer.

Kai

I've been tinkering with the excel calculator on howtobrew.com.... I think lactic acid is a viable solution with all the residual alkalinity caused by the exorbitant amounts of bicarbonate in my water.

It at least brings my SRM range down below that of evaporated espresso.

Your RO idea is fantastic once I move out of an apartment and into a house. Summertime baby... there's gonna be a mad chemist in a garage somewhere in central Texas.