Need help with water report

I have been brewing for the last year using this water in the attached report. My beers have been great, even scored some great numbers in competitions. Its Sparklets water that is delivered to my office that we use in the water cooler. It tastes great. But, I have this notion in the back of my head about my water. What if my water was better? How would it change the finished product? In my APA's and IPA's I always add some gypsum salt because that's the "norm", but i'm not sure if its needed. Every time I do ad gypsum I end up with beer stone in the fermenter which is a mother to remove. Any thoughts on deciphering this report would be much help. Thanks again for all the awesome threads!

The ND stands for NOT detected, and the number after it is the allowable amount by FDA. Most of the compounds are labeled as ND.

View attachment Water report smart draw.pdf

If you go to the brewing science thread there are a couple stickies there pertaining to water chemistry you can read through, other than that I do not really get into adjusting my water but there are others here that can look at your attached report and make recommendations above what you read in the stickies.

Thanks, I have read the stickies, and based off what I understand it seems like my water is almost RO water. But I'm far from an expert.

btgold29 said:

Thanks, I have read the stickies, and based off what I understand it seems like my water is almost RO water. But I'm far from an expert.

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Me too! I've gone through my report and have found that outside of a couple styles that require certain water profiles I'm in pretty good shape, that's not to say my beer might be better if I got more precise but for me it hasn't proved to be worth the micromanaging

As far as brewing is concerned that water is a blank slate. The TDS is 5, which is kinda where I stop looking. It's not really this simple, but you can think of that as the sum of all your ions. You can't see some of the most important stuff (funny when you get a big long report and still aren't given Alkalinity or Calcium) but they effectively 0 anyway so it doesn't matter.

That's pretty amazing for Phoenix, since my last bottle of RO water had a TDS reading of 13.

GotPushrods said:

As far as brewing is concerned that water is a blank slate. The TDS is 5, which is kinda where I stop looking. It's not really this simple, but you can think of that as the sum of all your ions. You can't see some of the most important stuff (funny when you get a big long report and still aren't given Alkalinity or Calcium) but they effectively 0 anyway so it doesn't matter.

That's pretty amazing for Phoenix, since my last bottle of RO water had a TDS reading of 13.

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Its sparklets water delivered to our office. I'm not sure if the base is Phoenix water and then they filter the heck out of it...? Would make sense.. Hauling water is pricey.. Any recommendations on what to do to this water for good all around brewing water.

My father lives at the base of "Gold mountain" In Cave Creek. There is a natural spring that comes out of the ground up there. It trickles out like a slow garden hose. I would love to do a comparison brew. natural spring vs. Sparklets.

btgold29 said:

Its sparklets water delivered to our office. I'm not sure if the base is Phoenix water and then they filter the heck out of it...? Would make sense.. Hauling water is pricey.. Any recommendations on what to do to this water for good all around brewing water.

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Honestly, I would start with exactly what AJ says in the water primer up in the sticky section. I agree with everything he says (pretty rare for me) and it's a great start. Use enough calcium chloride to get the calcium to 40-50 and nothing else. Leave sulfate at 0. You will probably need some form of acid in the mash for most beers.

Then, (if you have the ability to do small batches this is great), do another with enough calcium sulfate to get the sulfate to 50, and enough calcium chloride to get the calcium back up to 50. The hops will have more 'bite'. Not everyone likes sulfate bite, you can just add more hops and get a different taste.

If you like, next time try sulfate at 100 mg/L and so on.

There are several decent spreadsheets out there that will make work easier. They are just models and will never be perfect, but a good way to get close and learn. EZ water calc is the most accurate for me, and conveniently the least cluttered, easiest to use spreadsheet I've seen.

btgold29 said:

My father lives at the base of "Gold mountain" In Cave Creek. There is a natural spring that comes out of the ground up there. It trickles out like a slow garden hose. I would love to do a comparison brew. natural spring vs. Sparklets.

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Ground water can be just as hard and alkaline as what comes out of your sink. And we can be pretty sure it's NOT snow melt or rain, so it's probably a lot like our water. It hasn't had time to evaporate and concentrate like the rivers, but still going to be WAY more mineral filled than RO. Might be fun to get it tested for the sake of being nerdy about it, but I don't see it being magical Pacific northwest water.