ANOTHER water report.....

yeah, I am going to join the crowd that has a few questions about the water report.


pH 7.6
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 493
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.82
Cations / Anions, me/L 10.4 / 10.1
ppm
Sodium, Na 29
Potassium, K 6
Calcium, Ca 107
Magnesium, Mg 44
Total Hardness, CaCO3 451
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 11
Chloride, Cl 3
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 570
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 467
Total Phosphorus, P 1.48
Total Iron, Fe 0.04



I am just looking to lower my total alkalinity. My thoughts were to treat all my brewing water with phosphoric acid to a pH of 5.5. According to Bru'n water, it will take about 41 ml of phosphoric acid to lower the pH to my desired range. Does this approach sound good, and also, is my Mg high enough where I would need to do something to lower it?

I plan to add in sulfate and chloride on occasion using gypsum and calcium chloride depending on style. Can I use that also to some effect in precipitating out some of the Alkalinity?

Holy smokes, that's a lot of alkalinity! I thought mine was high, and yours has me beat by double! I'd definitely consider a reverse osmosis water system (mine was $119) or purchasing distilled/reverse osmosis water to dilute your water. A lot.

You could also try using pickling lime to decarbonate your water. I tried it, and it worked well but I didn't like the big vessels of water sitting around. It's easy- just stir in the pickling lime, wait a day and rack off the precipitate. Or you can boil to decarbonate as well, but I never tried that.

+1 on RO system. You could probably bottle that water and sell it as antacid. J/k How much does 41ml of acid cost? I know RO system isn't much more than $100. Might be good investment. You might find your water tastes better with some filtering.

I had been purchasing water for the last few years, but now am doing 10+ gallon batches on a new system and find that hauling all the brewing water every time is a pain.

purchasing an RO system might be an option, but ideally I would like to be able to treat the water that I have. I don't have a problem with treating water the day before. I installed running water in my garage and I can just fill up my 25 gallon kettle and treat the water, then pump or drain it to all the plastic water containers that I have built up over the years of buying water.

MachineShopBrewing said:

I had been purchasing water for the last few years, but now am doing 10+ gallon batches on a new system and find that hauling all the brewing water every time is a pain.

purchasing an RO system might be an option, but ideally I would like to be able to treat the water that I have. I don't have a problem with treating water the day before. I installed running water in my garage and I can just fill up my 25 gallon kettle and treat the water, then pump or drain it to all the plastic water containers that I have built up over the years of buying water.

Click to expand...

Then I would definitely try lime softening! Like I said, it worked just fine for me but it was too much water spread out in my laundry room so I only did it about twice.

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Alkalinity_reduction_with_slaked_lime

AJ deLange helped me alot with it, but the basics are in that link.

Boiling or lime softening are candidates for this water. However, boiling would not reduce that excessive Mg level. Therefore, lime softening is the only conventional treatment method suited. Since lime softening takes a bit of knowledge and skill, it may not be appealing to the average homebrewer. That is where a home RO system may be far more appealing.

It may not be necessary to use pure RO water to brew with. A portion of the tap water blended with RO water may be sufficient to reduce the various excessive ion concentrations down to desirable levels.

The lime softening doesn't look too terribly difficult looking at Kai's page. I may play around with that to see what kind of trouble I can get into.