Ward lab results - St. Louis County, MO

Here's what came back from the lab today:

pH 9.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 206
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.34
Cations / Anions, me/L 3.1 / 2.9 ppm
Sodium, Na 27
Potassium, K 5
Calcium, Ca 20
Magnesium, Mg 8
Total Hardness, CaCO3 83
Nitrate, NO3-N 1.0 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 25
Chloride, Cl 15
Carbonate, CO3 13.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 34
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 49
Total Phosphorus, P 0.09
Total Iron, Fe <0.01

There is something very wrong with that report. It has huge errors and is not usable.

Is that because of the high pH, or are there other things that jump out at you as well? When I contact Ward, I'd like to be able to give them specifics of why I think something is wrong with their report. Thanks!

Get back to them. It may just be a transcription error (scaling the alkalinity by 10 gets the right anion count but does not fix the bicarbonate and carbonate). Ward Labs is good about retesting if they screw up.

[EDIT] OP had alkalinity about 10 times as high. Apparently it was a transcription error. See # 7 below.

Ok, apparently my attempt at a copy/paste was a huge fail.

I've edited the original post and would greatly appreciate any feedback.

I'm brewing Biermuncher's OctoberFAST ale next week. Any recommendations on water additions would be appreciated.

The corrected numbers are much better but they are still off a small amount in the carbonate (more like 11) and bicarbonate (33) based on the reported alkalinity. Interestingly enough those would give a very close balance.

But that's probably not what you are interested in. For most ales just brew with it as it is using a measure of sauermalz or a little lactic acid to offset the modest alkalinity.

Thanks.

Any recommendation on the amount of either of those additions for a five gallon batch?

Where in St Louis County are you? There are several water plants here with difference source waters.

For what it's worth this report is VERY close to the values I came up with using various water reports from Missouri American water a couple years ago.

I'm in Valley Park.

Picked up some lactic acid today, and the default amount in Beersmith is.one teaspoon. Anyone know if this would be a good addition to my upcoming brew session of Biermuncher's OctoberFAST ale?

Have to do some conversions: 1 tsp is 5 mL and 88% lactic is 11.5 N at pH 5.4 so a tsp will give you 58.5 mEq. That's enough to handle 13 lbs of a typical Pilsner malt and 9.2 lbs of a typical ale malt. It is equivalent to 6.2 Oz of typical sauermalz which, as a general rule of thumb should be at 2 - 3% oaf a grist that doesn't use much colored malt. Depending on what you have you should be able to figure things out from there.

Thanks for your patience, but to me this is a bit like learning a new language.

Here's the recipe to go along with the water report from the first post:

Batch size: 5.625 gallons

Ingredients:
------------
4.25 lb Briess (2 Row) (2.0 SRM)
2.50 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
2.00 lb Munich Malt (7 SRM)
1.00 lb Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 15L (15.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
1.00 oz Tettnang [3.20%] (60 min)
0.50 oz Tettnang [3.20%] (45 min)
0.50 oz Tettnang [3.20%] (30 min)

This grain bill has a decent amount of colored grains, so that means I don't need as much lactic acid, right?

1/2 teaspoon lactic acid sound like it's in the right ballpark?

Martin or AJ, could one of you explain how the pH is so high but the alkalinity, bicarbonate, etc. is so low? Is it because of the anion:cation ratio?

douglasbarbin said:

Martin or AJ, could one of you explain how the pH is so high but the alkalinity, bicarbonate, etc. is so low? Is it because of the anion:cation ratio?

Click to expand...

I can try. pH is really a potential akin to the voltage of the battery. Alkalinity is a buffering capacity sort of similar to the ampere hour rating of the battery. You can have a tiny watch battery or a huge diesel tractor battery of the same voltage though obviously the watch battery will deliver many fewer amperes for many fewer seconds than the diesel battery. IOW voltage and ampere-hours are independent of one another. It is the same with pH and alkalinity.

There is a relationship between the carbonate content of a water, its bicarbonate content and the pH and that is

pH = pK + log([CO3--]/[HCO3-])

where the quantities in brackets [] are the concentrations of the ions and pK = 10.38 is minus the log of the equilibrium constant for the reaction

HCO3- <---> H+ + CO3--

This shows that I can make a solution of any desired pH by mixing different amounts of bicarbonate and carbonate salts. I can also make the mixture as strong as I want and keep the same pH just by keeping the ratio constant. The alkalinity of the solution is approximately 2*[CO3--] + [HCO3-].

This explanation has been simplified. For example, I obviously can't make the solution as strong as I want because of the finite solubility of the salts.

mgr_stl said:

This grain bill has a decent amount of colored grains, so that means I don't need as much lactic acid, right?

Click to expand...

Yes, that is the implication. The colored malts are acidic.

mgr_stl said:

1/2 teaspoon lactic acid sound like it's in the right ballpark?

Click to expand...

For me to tell you how much you need I have to have the details of each of your malts' acid/base parameters. I don't have any so the best I can do is make assumptions about each of your malts i.e. that they are similar to some malt on which I do have detailed, or at least partial, data. This works more or less well in most cases but isn't spot on. In this particular case I am concerned about the Aromatic Malt. I have some data from Kai Troester on Weyermanns Cara Aroma. This is pretty strong malt with a DI pH of 4.48 and a buffering capacity of -61. Using those numbers in you bill and assuming you mash with enough water to give 1.5 qts/lb you wouldn't need any acid at all as mash pH works out to right around 5.5. Based on this 1/2 tsp would take you down to 5.35. I guess I'd go with half that (1.25 mL) for a prediction of 5.4. But keep in mind that I am guessing about a lot of things.

mgr_stl said:

I'm in Valley Park.

Click to expand...

Good confirmation. When i put my water report together from American Water data I was living at Big Bend & 141, right up the road from you. Your numbers were almost spot on with mine except I had a little more sulfate, but not significantly more.