Nashville, TN Wards Lab Report

Here are the results from the Wards Lab test of my tap water, in case anyone is curious. I live in Hillsboro Village in Nashville, TN. All results are in ppm.


Na - 7
K - 2
Ca - 30
Mg - 7
Total Hardness (as CaCO3) - 104
NO3 (as N) - 0.3
SO4 (as S) - 15 (making true SO4 - 45)
Cl - 9
CO3 - <1
HCO3 - 68
Total Alkalinity (as CaCO3) - 56
Total Phosphorous - 1.14
Fe - 0.01

Here's mine from Nashville, Davidson County, a few miles west of downtown:

pH - 7.1
Na - 4
K - 1
Ca - 21
Mg - 5
Total Hardness (as CaCO3) - 73
NO3 (as N) - 0.4
SO4 (as S) - 11 (making true SO4 - 33)
Cl - 6
CO3 - <1
HCO3 - 52
Total Alkalinity (as CaCO3) - 43

Cool man, that looks pretty damn close.

here is mine in springfield back in 09.
Sodium, Na 4
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 66
Magnesium, Mg 7
Total Hardness, CaCO3 194
Nitrate, NO3-N 4.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 11
Chloride, Cl 10
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 162
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 133

can you say horrible water to brew with.

What kinds of flavor adjustments (Cl and SO4) and pH adjustments do you guys do?

Lately I've been using Tasty McDole's generic water profile. I've mostly been doing APA, IPA, American Browns, etc., so always a pretty heavy hop presence. I'd probably change it up if I do something more malty.

I really enjoy the Bru'N Water spreadsheet. Using my water report numbers and Tasty's as the target, I input the grains and then first adjust to hit my desired profile, then tweak it to get the pH right. I've had to add some alkalinity my last few brews. I usually settle my Sulfate in the 200s and don't worry about getting up to the 300s. My chlorides I keep around 50.

I've been using EZ Water, which sounds a lot like the one you're talking about, Brad. That SO4/Cl ratio is alot higher than I've been shooting for though. I've been targeting about 100 for both Cl and SO4, but I've been pretty out of balance on that as it turns out. I've been basing my water adjustments on a Wards report for Nashville I found on here a while back and it turns out that it's quite different from the one I just got back.

I've also been using a little bit of acidulated malt from Weyerman in the mash to nail down my mash pH. I use EZ water to estimate how much I need, add a little less and then use those tight range pH strips to nail it down.

I dont use the water I posted I use white house water which is alot softer than even your nashville water and what I do is use acid malt to lower pH and try to get my Ca to 100 or a little over and my Mg to 17 to 20 and the Cl to around 100 maybe higher for a malt foward cream ale then the so4 to 100 to 250 depending on the beer. I usually am going for the lower pH more so than a set ratio. I am planning on doing a gumballhead clone this saturday and I will post back the water I end up building for it.

Csuho said:

I am planning on doing a gumballhead clone this saturday and I will post back the water I end up building for it.

Click to expand...

Hey Chris, where did you get the gumballhead recipe?

its a very simple straight foward recipe. Everything I have found was red wheat malt and pale malt, but if you can't get the red wheat to use white wheat with a little caravienna. I just used white wheat and pale malt and 5oz of amarillo in the boil.

.5oz at 30 min
.5oz at 15 min
1oz at 10
1oz at 5
1oz at 1

and probably gonna dry hop with 2oz.

the water profile I used for it was as follows
Ca 102
Mg 13
Na 7
Cl 50
So4 184
so I had to use 5.5g of gypsum 2g Calicum Chloride 2g epsom salt and used 3ml of Lactic acid to help with the Ph.