Calcium and Carbonates Confusion

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

tudou

Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2013
Messages
14
Reaction score
0
I have several figures for calcium and (bi)carbonates and was hoping I could get some advice on which are the most suitable to use.

Firstly, I have some values quoted from Scottish Water who stopped recording these figures in 2005:

Ca: 17.2 mg/L
Ca Expressed as CaCO3: 42.9 mg/L

I also have an API GH & KH test kit which gives the following results:

KH: 35.8 ppm
GH: 71.2 ppm


Plugging the KH and GH into Bru n' Water, that gives:

Ca: 28.6 mg/L
HCO3 (Bicarbonate): 43.5 mg/L


Other parameters are:

Sodium: 5.75 mg/L
Sulphate: 15.775 mg/L
Chloride: 11.778 mg/L
Magnesium: 1.6 mg/L
Iron: 0.0228 mg/L
Nitrate: 2.5 mg/L
Nitrite: 0.002 mg/L
Fluoride: 0.02 mg/L
pH: 7.4

:confused:
 
Those results are quite similar. Do understand that the reporting resolution of an aquarium test kit is not very fine. So the 29 ppm Ca is quite similar to the 17 ppm report. The passage of time and variation in water source could also create some variation. The rest of the report does seem to balance fairly well. It all suggests that water is a great starting point for brewing.
 
Thanks for the feedback, I'm probably just being pernickety. I had tried plugging them into Bru n' Water but the Cation-Anion ratio was above what is recommended in the comments so I thought I must have typed something in incorrectly.
 
Back
Top