Water profile

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

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

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.

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?

ppm

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.

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:rockin:

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'.

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

Here is a page that shows conversion between units:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.ph...r_report#converting_between_the_various_units

WoodlandBrew said:

is there a way to convert from what he has to the ion concentration?

Click to expand...

#8 shows how it is done. Convert hardness to mEq/L by dividing by 50 e.g. 103 hardness = 2.06 mEq/L. Multiply mEq/L by the equivalent weight of the ion in question: 20 for calcium and 12.15 for magnesium. That's all there is to it.

Wow a million lights went off and I still feel overwhelmed. Ok so that is not ppm like I thought but hardness. If I use Kai's chart it shows you can take total hardness (mine is 157 as CaCo3) and convert it to get both Ca and MG. In the chart it has 150 close enough. WHich gives me Ca 42 mg/l or ppm and Mg 10.9 mg/l or ppm, and with that being said it is pretty soft water and all I need is a little gypsum ? I know thats what every one is saying lol I just want to understand. Also are the other numbers such as sulfate and chloride correct as in ppm or do they need converted as well ? Thanks every one for the input!

Chloride is typically reported "as chloride", so no conversion is typically needed. Sulfate can be reported "sulfate as sulfur" (SO4-S). In that case, the as sulfur value is multiplied by 3 to convert to "as sulfate".

All the hardness and other conversion calculators are provided in the Bru'n Water software.

whiskeyjack said:

Wow a million lights went off and I still feel overwhelmed. Ok so that is not ppm like I thought but hardness. If I use Kai's chart it shows you can take total hardness (mine is 157 as CaCo3) and convert it to get both Ca and MG. In the chart it has 150 close enough. WHich gives me Ca 42 mg/l or ppm and Mg 10.9 mg/l or ppm, and with that being said it is pretty soft water and all I need is a little gypsum ? I know thats what every one is saying lol I just want to understand. Also are the other numbers such as sulfate and chloride correct as in ppm or do they need converted as well ? Thanks every one for the input!

Click to expand...

Just a word of caution on this: this guesses the ratio between Ca and Mg. That could be different for your water, but for the most part the estimate is good enough.

Kai

whiskeyjack said:

...you can take total hardness (mine is 157 as CaCo3) and convert it to get both Ca and MG.

Click to expand...

Why guess when you have the individual harndesses respectively 103 for calcium and 54 for magnesium? As I showed in #8 you divide "as CaCO3" numbers (calcium hardness, magnesium hardness and alkalinity) by 50 to get the number of electrical charges associated with those ions.

Ca: 103/50 = 2.06 mEq/L
Mg: 54/50 = 1.08 mEq/L
Alkalinity: 80/50 = 1.6 mEq/L

You then multiply by the weight of the ion which has the given amount of charge:

Ca: 2.06*20 = 40.12 mg/L
Mg: 1.08*12.15 = 13.12 mg/L

Alkalinity is a little trickier because the pH is so high in this case. At lower pH you would assume it's all bicarbonate and use 61 as the 'equivalent' weight

Alkalinity: 1.6*61 = 97.6 mg/L bicarbonate

but at pH 9.1 (which is unusually high - out of EPA's recommended range) the alkalinity of 80 yields bicarbonate at 84 mg/L and carbonate at 5 mg/L

The clue that the given number is not 'as the ion' is that it is labeled 'as' something else in what we have discussed so far 'as calcium carbonate'. If a number is not labeled as something else then you can assume it is mg/L of the ion. Other things that often get labeled as something else are nitrate and nitrite which are often expressed in terms of their nitrogen content. Ward Labs is used by many homebrewers and they do this indicating nitrate as
NO3-N and nitrate and NO2-N. In the former case, multiply by 4.43 to get the mg/L nitrate ion. In the case of nitrite multiply by 3.29. Ward Labs also lists sulfate in terms of its sulfur content and labels it SO4-S. Multiply by 3 if sulfate is reported this way.

Sometimes (especially in European literature) you will see hardness expressed 'as CaO'. Sometimes you see phosphate specified 'as P2O5'. In the Ward Labs reports the total of phosphates is expressed in terms of the total phosphorous content.

Went to Beersmith and reset the values to Ca 42, Mg 13, Na 16, SO4 38, Cl 31, and HCO3 98. For 8 gallon BIAB batch it shows if I add 9g Gypsum and 1g CaCl I will get Ca 120, Mg 13, Na 16, SO4 204, Cl 47 HCO3 99. This is alot less salt additions then what I previously had, does this look OK ? These additions ?

And again thanks so much for the help, if you want to actually take a look at my water report for yourself in case I messed something up lol here it is

http://www.ci.quincy.il.us/Utilities/Water/qualityreport.htm