Water Chemist Please tell me what this means

This is anaylisis of the water I use to brew its a spring can you please tell me in a NUT SHELL what this means?


Sparta, Tn. (Bon Air Mt.)

SPRING WATER (spring on old bon air rd.)
pH 5.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est 40
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.07
Cations / Anions, me/L 0.2 / 0.1
ppm
Sodium, Na 1
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 2
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 9
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.2 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S < 1
Chloride, Cl < 1
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 3
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 3

Report


Example: Great water for brewing......... ..... .....

or You need to add ........ when brewing pale beer or ........ when brewing dark.


Thanks This stuff is way over my head

Wow not much in there.

Check this out. It will answer all your questions.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/water-modification-videos-ths-spreadsheet-144461/

this might help too, just enter your info.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/ez-water-adjustment-spreadsheet-135095/

It looks like great water for brewing and you can add minerals to brew styles that don't fit.

If water chemistry is beyond then I recommend something like Brewater 3.0 http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/ , it is really easy to use and it works. After using it for awhile you might start to understand the process.

You have good clean water. The hardness is expressed as 9. I would ask the units of measure for the hardness. It is probably expressed as grains and not ppm. If this is true you have excellent water for any style of beer. This water is fairly typical of water used for most american and continental style beers. If you wanted to adjust the water for English style beers you would need to increase the hardness.

Wow thanks all this spring has been tapped for public use for years its just on a side of a road that has a sign that says >Thank God for this Gift< or something like that. Awsome!!!!!!!

Yeah, to be sure I'm not really adding much here, but that water looks nearly pure - there is next to nothing dissolved in it. Conductivity alone tells you that. It would be like using distilled water, you're going to need to add the electrolytes according to the style you want. But that is good news: you won't have to treat anything out, like high sulfate for example.

In a nut shell, if you are an extract brewer, you have perfect water, don't add anything, stop reading right here. If you are all grain, you need to purchase:

Gypsum, brew shop
Calcium Chloride, brew shop
Chalk, brew shop
Epsom, supermarket
Baking Soda, supermarket

Without any additions, you can conceivably brew a decent Pilsner but even then, I'd add a 1/4 tsp of gypsum, calcium chloride, chalk and epsom to the mash.

When you start going to darker beers, you need more residual alkalinity to balance the acidic dark malts. Again,in a nutshell, you'd increase the chalk addition to 1 tsp and add 1 tsp of baking soda. This would be for like a brown beer.

Yes, it's a little more complicated than I'm leading on but you asked for nutshell.

Ha! That's my old water source, I live on Bon Aire Mt. I used the spring water until I had mine tested. The tap water up here is great as well, once you remove the chlorine. If your an allgrainer, it makes great low srm beer (under10) I use salts for anything 12 and above.

As it sits it makes very good pales and ipa's, regardless of the ratios.

Where do you live? It's nice to finally have a few local brewers around.

wildwest450 said:

Ha! That's my old water source, I live on Bon Aire Mt. I used the spring water until I had mine tested. The tap water up here is great as well, once you remove the chlorine. If your an allgrainer, it makes great low srm beer (under10) I use salts for anything 12 and above.

As it sits it makes very good pales and ipa's, regardless of the ratios.

Where do you live? It's nice to finally have a few local brewers around.

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I live in Gainesboro!!! I plan on attending some of the ucmashers meetings soon.

mrbeachroach said:

I live in Gainesboro!!! I plan on attending some of the ucmashers meetings soon.

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That's a long way from the mountain. I need to get to a meeting also.