North Yorkshire Water Help

I have tied myself up in knots and need some help from anyone who is fortunate enough to understand water chemistry. Im looking to get a water profile for North Yorkshire, namely Masham, Ripon (Black Sheep) If anyone has any other Yorkshire profiles I would be very grateful to get my hands on them as I am about to launch into brewing and brewing true Yorkshire bitters would be fantastic, maybe a Keighley (Timothy Taylor's) water profile?

What I have so far:

Ca: 58.2
Mg: 4.0
Na: 9.1
SO4: 71.0
Cl: 11.5
HC03: ??? (this is where I get confused)

heres a link to the yorkshire water analysis: http://www.ywonline.co.uk/web/WQZ.nsf/0/B66A8584B379A66B802574FD003A0CBE/$file/Wensleydale%202004%20WSZ.pdf

Please explain how I calculate the water hardness. Thanks for your help guys

Pommy

Pommy said:

I have tied myself up in knots and need some help from anyone who is fortunate enough to understand water chemistry. Im looking to get a water profile for North Yorkshire, namely Masham, Ripon (Black Sheep) If anyone has any other Yorkshire profiles I would be very grateful to get my hands on them as I am about to launch into brewing and brewing true Yorkshire bitters would be fantastic, maybe a Keighley (Timothy Taylor's) water profile?

Click to expand...

Why don't you e-mail Black Sheep or Theakstons, tell them what you are up to and ask them to tell you about the water and what, if anything they, do to it? You may never hear back from them but then again you might.

Pommy said:

heres a link to the yorkshire water analysis: http://www.ywonline.co.uk/web/WQZ.nsf/0/B66A8584B379A66B802574FD003A0CBE/$file/Wensleydale%202004%20WSZ.pdf

Please explain how I calculate the water hardness.

Click to expand...

Wensleydale? Are we talking cheese or beer here?

Humor aside, the hardness is calculated from the calcium and magnesium content. For magnesium the formula is 50*(Mg_mg/L)/12.15. The reported magnesium level of 4 mg/L thus contributes 15.5 ppm as CaCO3 to the hardness. For calcium the formula is 50*(Ca_mg/L)/20.04. The reported 58.2 mg/L thus corresponds to 145.2 ppm as CaCO3 for a total of 161.7. There are various other units for reporting hardness. For example, your Mg hardness could be given as 4/12.15 = 0.33 mEq/L and your calcium hardness as 58.2/20.04 = 2.90 mEq/L for a total of 3.23 mEq/L. Then there are French degrees, German degrees, grains per gallon, "as CaO" and the list goes on. In the US ppm as CaCO3 is most common among brewers and in Europe mEq/L (sometimes called mVal) seem to be prevalent.

I poured over the report and found nothing about alkalinity or bicarbonate. Strange. But we know it has to be there because it always is and there have to be anions to offset the cations in the report. So what I did is supply carbo (carbonic, bicarbonate, carbonate) until, at the reported pH, I get a balance of anions and cations. When I do that the alkalinity comes out to be 104 ppm as CaCO3 or 2 mEq/L and the bicarbonate 126 mg/L as the ion. This is iffy because it's based on averages for each of the ions and because in calculating alkalinity I have to pick the end point pH the analyst would have used had he measured it (I chose the equivalence end point: 4.51).

Pommy said:

Pommy

Click to expand...

I thought that was half a word.

Zombie thread...

but this is helpful:

http://www.yorkshirewater.com/extra...?loc=HG4 4EN&lat=54.22463&lng=-1.658129&tab=2

Still nothing on bicarb or alkalinity.

Nope. I'll send a message to Blacksheep. They have been extremely helpful with my questions about brewing Yorkshire ales.

Truly zombie thread. But I love Black Sheep, can't get them here, and besides, working up thoughts on West Yorkshire and would love to get something on N. Yorkshire as well. Anyone know - anything come of this, or otherwise know anything about Masham-area water?