water quality report... ARRRGH!

i got a water quality report from my local water company. It seems that depending on demand, they draw on three different water sources. two of the sources are very close (pickering east pump = alkalinity 58 hardness 147 and pickering west = pump alkalinity 51 and hardness 139) but the third is very different(upper merion = alkalinity 206 and hardness 324).
I have a god bit of other infor mation on tghe report and would be happy to share it if it would help but my main question is....
Can I use a PH meter to figure out wich water I am working with on any given day? my thinking is that the alkalinity might show up as PH shift when measured.

You can't observe the difference readily with a pH meter. You need to pick up a set of aquarium test kits for hardness and alkalinity. They are typically labeled GH and KH for German Hardness and Karbonate Hardness. These are not too expensive, but you get what you pay for. The really cheap kits (< $15) may not have the resolution to show you that the water is significantly different. Moving to kits that are over $25 gets you into more accuracy. Do a search for aquarium test kits and you should find what your looking for.

There is a discussion of these kits in Bru'n Water, but Kai Troester and AJ Delange probably have better discussions on these test kits. You can download Bru'n Water at the link in my signature line.

Here's a link to Kai's home water testing page:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/At_home_water_testing

I use this API kit, but I double the sample size for more resolution.

Alkalinity and pH are pretty much independent in the sense that you can have water of low pH with high alkalinity and conversely. OTOH the nominal pH values for the various supplies might be different and you might be able to detect which one you are getting by measuring pH through that mechanism.

Its pretty clear that the Upper Merion water has a lot more stuff dissolved in it so a simple test might be to measure the conductivity. The reports may list conductivity or estimated TDS numbers (which are proportional to conductivity). A really simple test might be to boil 100 mL or so to dryness and look at the amount of residue left in the beaker.

Of course an alkalinity test is a very simple test. Everyone is recommending aquarium kits so I'll mention the other source: water testing companies such as Hach and Lamotte.

Ultimately you should be more interested in what the alkalinity and hardness are on a particular brew day than which plant the water came from. Testing is the only way to get that info.

Does the municipality ever blend water from 2 sources? Many suppliers do.

ajdelange said:

Alkalinity and pH are pretty much independent in the sense that you can have water of low pH with high alkalinity and conversely. OTOH the nominal pH values for the various supplies might be different and you might be able to detect which one you are getting by measuring pH through that mechanism.

Its pretty clear that the Upper Merion water has a lot more stuff dissolved in it so a simple test might be to measure the conductivity. The reports may list conductivity or estimated TDS numbers (which are proportional to conductivity). A really simple test might be to boil 100 mL or so to dryness and look at the amount of residue left in the beaker.

Of course an alkalinity test is a very simple test. Everyone is recommending aquarium kits so I'll mention the other source: water testing companies such as Hach and Lamotte.


Ultimately you should be more interested in what the alkalinity and hardness are on a particular brew day than which plant the water came from. Testing is the only way to get that info.

Does the municipality ever blend water from 2 sources? Many suppliers do.

Click to expand...

the cover letter states " Depending on System demand, water supplied to your home may be a blend from either our upper merion reservoir or the pikering creek supply"
the contact from the water company who returned my call mentioned that I was being serviced by pickering so I suspect that is my primary supply, but I have no way to verify what's coming out of the tap. I was hoping that I could correlate a testable value from a real time sample with the water profiles i recieved from the water company and make an educated guess as to the profile of the water coming out of my tap. if the aquarium hardness test will give me an indication of the water hardness can I extrapolate the source- or blend of source- in a ballpark that will allow me to make an intelligent assessment of my water profile?
I understand that sending a sample of my water iwould be definative, but It's not practical for me to wait for a water report in the mail before I brew, and if the report came a week or two later I could very well have a diiferent profile out of the tap.

ok.. so I will start with alkalinity and water hardness test before i brew. making beer seemed like home ec when I started but is turning out be more chemistry. if you folks start talking about valence shells then I'm turining out the lights

Well, calcium has 2 electrons in it's valence shell but that's not important (as Leslie Nielson used to say). You can get it back to a home ec process if you use "blank" (i.e. RO water) for every brew and add salts appropriate for the style being brewed. There is general guidance on how to do that in the Primer in the Brew Science stickies section here. The idea is that the guidelines will get you started and that you can tweak the recommended additions to find the sweet spot just as you would with seasonings in cooking. The alternative approach, adjusting the water you have, requires, as you are aware, knowing what you are adjusting from and what you are adjusting to as well as how to make the adjustments. After years of doing the latter (i.e.frequent water analysis and elaborate algorithms for calculating adjustments) I find myself doing the former (adding salts to RO water). I can, of course, still do all the analysis and calculation I want but brewday is now much simpler and the beers are better.

There are 2 catches here. First, you need a supply of RO water and a pH meter. You really need the pH meter whichever option you choose. The simple option is designed to minimize the need to check mash pH but it is definitely a good idea to do so because insuring proper mash pH is guaranteed to improve your beers (unless mash pH's were proper doing things the way you have been doing them).

But if you want to use the city water then measuring alkalinity and hardness gets you the most important information and from it you ought to be able to deduce which source and if a blend, the approximate blend. IOW if you measure hardness at 235 and alkalinity at 132 it's pretty clear that the blend is about 1:1 of the two source and the other ions should also be about half way between the values for those 2 sources. Even the pH will be about midway between the pH values for the 2 supplies.

I do have a ph checker
http://www.hannainst.com/usa/prods2.cfm?id=040003&ProdCode=HI 98103
but no RO system so I guess I'll be starting off with adjusting the water out of the tap.
I use an whole house filter on my water service and an Aquasan inline water filter at my sink. They take out chlorine/ chloramine and filter to 5 microns, but I don't think it will be stripping out the minerals in solution. I'll test for hardness/ alkalinity and PH and try to extrapolate.
I think I see an RO system in my future but I'm not done beating my head against the wall yet.

I wonder if a pH meter is actually needed. Based on the GH&KH values from the water, the water profile can be adjusted using salts and acids, if necessary. Based on that the mash pH can be predicted fairly well for most beers.

While they tend to read 0.3 pH units low, the colorpHast strips are a pretty good alternative. Eventually you may want to pick up a pH meter, though. I just don't want to move brewers to a pH meter too early since I think that you have to spend almost $100 to get a decent one.

Kai

the Hanna PH Checker is $35.10 on Amazon. It comes packaged with a few envelopes of solution for calibration and cleaning. i purchased additional calibration and storage solution at the same time but in hindsight it wasn't necessary to start out. I used the Hanna checker for the first time. the brew was a relatively high OG (1.074) 3 grain stout so ther was some roasted grain in the bill. I calibrated the PH checker and checked the wort... soo easy and the digital readout is for me a lot more accurate than interpeting a test strip. Reading was spot on at 5.30
took delivery on an RODI water condtioning system also. My chem skills are abysmal so i decided my best chance for consistent correct water profiles would be to start from RODI to build brew water.

I do want to encourage brewers to obtain a pH meter as soon as possible. $100 is the cost of 14 pints (28 during happy hour) at an upscale brewpub so I say forego the pints, buy the meter and brew an extra 14 (or 28) pints with it which pints may be better than the ones from the brewpub (my local guy has a meter but he doesn't use it). No, a pH meter is not necessary if you buy alkalinity and hardness kits but decent ones (Hach) will cost about $35 apiece (about the cost of a decent meter). The meter is not critical for the current application but it is most important for checking mash pH. The spreadsheets, my primer recommendations etc. will cover most cases but the only way to be sure that pH is in the right range is to check it and the only way to check it is with a meter.

Now I am puzzled by this particular Hanna product. It has a resolution of 0.01 pH but an accuracy of 0.2? I figured that must be a misprint. How can it be so inaccurate at that level of precision? It can't be quantizing noise because you can adjust to 7.01 pH in a buffer. It can't be thermal noise because you wouldn't be able to set 7.01 in a noisy instrument - the reading wouldn't be stable. That leaves non-linearity but the laws of physics dictate against that. Maybe it's a misprint and should be 0.02?

i didn't see that (+/-).2 until you mentioned it.
I did the calibration with 7.01 and 4.01 solution and the meter reads in the hundredths scale and actually was pretty stable to the second place when dialing with the calibration solutions. I'll check with Hanna to see if that was a misprint or not.
In the meantime I am wondering if there is a solution I could prepare that would have a PH of 5.3 so I could benchmark the meter at the PH value I am looking to reach in my wort?
Also, since we're talking about ph.... are PH reading affected by the temperature of the liquid being tested?
if I haven't said it before... many thanks for your help

Checking in another buffer at some pH intermediate between the calibration points is an excellent idea. I can certainly give you recipes for buffers at any arbitrary pH but you would have to buy the salts, measure them out accurately and mix them. While pondering this I got a flash: Five Stars 5.2 is a phosphate buffer which happens to buffer in distilled water, despite its name, at pH 5.82 ±0.01 (that's the uncertainty I estimate for my measurement) at 20 °C when mixed at the rate of 1.367 grams (1/4 tsp) in 120 mL (1/2 cup) of DI water. DI water is available at drug stores and super markets. It would be better if you weighed out the product but it's a buffer and the pH shouldn't vary much with the dilution. A lot of brewers shoot (for some reason I haven't figured out) and so have reloading scales. 1.367 grams is 21 grains.

Yes, there are two temperature effects. One is that the actual, true pH of the buffer varies with temperature and the other is that the response of the pH electrode, at any particular pH, changes with temperature. Many meters have Automatic Temperature Compensation (ATC) to take care of the electrode part. I don't see any reference to ATC in the description of your meter (and would be surprised if I did at that price). So it would be important for you to check the pH of the 5.2 solution at 20 °C.

you are the man with the plan!
I have a RODI setup so that will be an easy step to 'check' my checker- after calibrating at 4 and 7 - at a value closer to my target PH.
I contacted the manufacturer and they responded with the same accuracy deviation of +/- .20.
it seems odd in a meter that reads to hundedths to have accuracy deviation in tenths, but I see as you spend more you get more "accuracy". Hopefully the spread might have something to do with the absence of ATC, but even at this degree of uncertainty I am more confident than I would ever be with PH test strips.
forever in your debt, both for the primer and your help here too.