Madison, WI Well Water Reports

Madison Brewers:

While searching for a way to secure a more accurate report for my tap water (aside from sending a sample to WardLabs--which I will do shortly...), I came across the following links that might be of help to those in the Madison, WI area.

This one allows you to plug in your street address and access the water report for the well from which your water is drawn.

This one allows you to browse by the various wells in the city and links to their reports.

For my address, it lists the dates for which my water is drawn from specific wells, the transition time between those wells, and much of the pertinent data needed to adjust brewing water.

However, the latest report up there is from 2010, and it is again the average of samples taken--tho at least it is an average from that one well as opposed an average taken from all the wells across the city. Not as accurate as sending a sample to the lab, but these numbers will get you closer than anything else I've found.

Happy Brewing!

ryanjbrowne said:

Madison Brewers:

While searching for a way to secure a more accurate report for my tap water (aside from sending a sample to WardLabs--which I will do shortly...), I came across the following links that might be of help to those in the Madison, WI area.

This one allows you to plug in your street address and access the water report for the well from which your water is drawn.

This one allows you to browse by the various wells in the city and links to their reports.

For my address, it lists the dates for which my water is drawn from specific wells, the transition time between those wells, and much of the pertinent data needed to adjust brewing water.

However, the latest report up there is from 2010, and it is again the average of samples taken--tho at least it is an average from that one well as opposed an average taken from all the wells across the city. Not as accurate as sending a sample to the lab, but these numbers will get you closer than anything else I've found.

Happy Brewing!

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Just moved from Madison about a year ago after finishing grad school. The one issue about Madison is that given areas get their water from a number of different wells. I called the water utility and tried to figure out what well was being used at any specific time. They said they could not tell me that with any certainty, as the well is constantly changing, or they are drawing from several wells at a time for a given area. All you can really do is average all the wells, and hope for the best. Turned out well for me (no pun intended).

Biobrewer said:

Just moved from Madison about a year ago after finishing grad school. The one issue about Madison is that given areas get their water from a number of different wells. I called the water utility and tried to figure out what well was being used at any specific time. They said they could not tell me that with any certainty, as the well is constantly changing, or they are drawing from several wells at a time for a given area. All you can really do is average all the wells, and hope for the best. Turned out well for me (no pun intended).

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I just posted this up on the Wine & Hop Shop Facebook page, and I'll put it here too (should help you zero in on which well you're drawing from):

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If you're interested in all the brewing-relevant minerals/ions/elements in the water coming from your tap at home, take a look at the following links provided by the folks at the City of Madison Water Utility and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene:


This link will tell you the well from which your tap water is drawn -- and during which time of year/season. Just plug in your street address:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/waterQuality/testing/inorganics.cfm

Then, here's the 2011 Inorganic Analyses Summary for all the wells in Madison:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/waterQuality/testing/documents/IOC.2011.0811.pdf.

In a few weeks, the 2012 reports will be found here:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/waterQuality/testing/inorganics.cfm

One note: The Inorganic Analyses Summary is still the averages of samples drawn from the wells, so it may not be exactly the numbers coming out of your faucet. But, it gets you much closer to what's in your water than the annual city-wide averages of all the wells sent out in the mail.

Once again, a big thanks to the folks at the Madison Water Utility and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene!

Enter your address to find the wells serving you. Then go into the main well's most recent report and look for the link to the Inorganics Table. Click that and it will take you to the most recent inorganics table which list the important things like Ca, Mg, Hardness, Alkalinity, etc. It took me a while to find the most recent ones at first.

I've been trying to input the numbers from my well report (#25) into the brunwater spreadsheet and can't get the ions to balance.

Does anyone in Madison use the excel sheet? I do biab and because of the large water volume and our high alkalinity my mash ph (measured with a calibrated ph meter) is always too high. I did half ro/half tap water last time and mash ph was still 6.0.

I strongly considering using all distilled or RO water and adding salts next time.

I'm sorry to resurrect an old thread, but rather than create a new one that deals with Madison water, I though I would query here. Mods, if that is frowned upon, I of course deign to you and your deletion of the post.

Bottom line, I'm finding my address draws from a few wells as well, and it changes summer & winter. So without a Ward report, it's very hard to get a bead. From what I can tell.

That said, we've got pretty lousy water for brewing pale beers. We've a nominal 70 CA, 41 MG, 9 NA, 21 SO4, 19 Cl, 364 HCO3 and RA of 224 (these figures are drawn from Mark Garthwaite's paper on Madison brewing water, which I found very interesting. It's very close to what I found as well, with current reports).

I'll have to say a hopefully blanket statement that I've forgotten almost all I knew about brewing science but am fighting to get some of it back. And that wasn't much "then." Won't go into it but to say a medical condition over the last decade has had a party and one of the results is a dying memory. Meaning, sorry if I ask things a few times or repetitively, brewers.

Even treating with enough calcium and slaked lime, I can't see anything to do with the magnesium in this water. Never had a water I couldn't use, but here, would you guys just start from RO and build up? Or am I missing something?

Many thanks.

You don't list alkalinity but I calculate it at close to 6 mEq/L from the RA, Ca and Mg. That's pretty strong motivation to go to RO.

ajdelange said:

You don't list alkalinity but I calculate it at close to 6 mEq/L from the RA, Ca and Mg. That's pretty strong motivation to go to RO.

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AJ, sorry - alkalinity is 298. I'm very ill-versed on calculations and conversions anymore (have to go back to see how to convert to mEq/L), but working on it. Thanks for the help, and additionally for all the work you do.

I hate going to RO because so much of the appeal to me is to say, "this is fine water, and we're making use of it." But as I used to say with my winemaker cousin, he's really a grower, and brewers are alchemists.

The conversions are pretty simple. If all you are given is the bicarbonate (which would be unusual because the lab measures the alkalinity) then alkalinity ~ 50*bicarbonate/61. This approximation starts to fail as the pH gets higher. But from the definition of RA we get alkalinity = RA + ( [Ca++]/20 + 0.5*[Mg++]/12.15 )/3.5 which is good at any pH. If alkalinity values calculated both ways are close then we know pH < ~8. Otherwise pH larger than 8. I got 298.4 when I calculated it from RA and 298.1 when I calculated it from bicarbonate so I assume your pH < 8 (not that it really matters if we know alkalinity).

Many of the currently popular spreadsheets insist on having alkalinity input as bicarbonate as their authors didn't fully appreciate the core significance of alkalinity when they originally prepared them. Even though most of them by now do (I hope) the bicarbonate concept is sort of cast in concrete. Nevertheless I always encourage people to think in terms of alkalinity. It leads to clearer understanding of what is going on in the establishment of mash pH and in discussion of decarbonation (see below). Trying to get people to think in terms of alkalinity is a self assigned mission (or, I suppose, windmill).

If working with your water rather than taking the easy way out with RO (and it is easier) is preferred then you can supplement your calcium and boil or treat with lime. The latter is a little trickier and really requires the use of a pH meter but lots of people seem to figure it out without a pH meter.

You have almost 6 mEq/L alkalinity (298/50) and 70/20 = 3.5 mEq/L calcium hardness. You would want to supplement calcium hardness to be at least equal to alkalinity so you will need 2.5 mEq/L extra. If you got half from gypsum then and half from CaCl2 then sulfate would be increased by 59 mg/L and chloride by 43 mg/L both of which would give you pretty reasonable levels for many pale beers. Add these before boiling or lime treatment. After boiling or lime treatment alkalinity would be about 1 mEq/L (50 ppm) and calcium at about 20 mg/L. If you wanted more calcium going into the mash then you could add more calcium salts, at the expense of increased chloride and/or sulfate which might not be an expense at all and you might get alkalinity a bit below 1 as a consequence of this.

Thank you AJ, like I said, I will have to read and re-read, just the way it is (was not this way, once upon a time, but those times are gone....is what it is), but I'm getting it slowly.

I was happy to pre-treat the water to get it to the 50 ppm alkalinity figure. (Mark Garthwaite references a chemist to explain the hard bottom floor of 50 ppm HCO3 after slaked lime treatment - I believe that chemist is you, yes? A post perhaps on slaked lime treatment procedure? - but I just want to make sure I'm keeping figures straight; 50 ppm HCO3 according to the above leaves me with Alk = 80, not 50. Have I missed something?) and replace calcium salts as needs be; but we've got a high Mg as well, and I am unaware of any effect on this ion concentration - though I've just likely missed it. If I knew Mg would be brought down to a reasonable figure after slaked lime, I think, I'd be more predisposed to giving it a try. Any further advice here, AJ?

One thing I will say, is, using RO, emulating Martin Brungard's presentation of historical brewing waters, I am able to fairly easily come up with his "pale ale" water:
CA 140
Mg 18
Na 25
SO4 325
Cl 55
HCO3 110
(Using HCO3 only, I come up with total alkalinity of 90. I don't yet know how to find RA, from the other figures in the table).

I think I'd like to pull the Cl-SO4 ratio closer to 1:3, as this profile above is still extreme by my tastes - not a fan of some overly-burtonized bitters. Like Yorkshire beers, and presumably its nominal water content average as reported. So, deciding basically between water types but Mr. Brungard's, I think, is a good base.

Gadjobrinus said:

I was happy to pre-treat the water to get it to the 50 ppm alkalinity figure. (Mark Garthwaite references a chemist to explain the hard bottom floor of 50 ppm HCO3 after slaked lime treatment - I believe that chemist is you, yes?

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To clarify a couple of things:

• I'm not a chemist
• I didn't discover the 1 mEq/L limit. I first saw it in, I believe, DeClerck

Gadjobrinus said:

A post perhaps on slaked lime treatment procedure? - but I just want to make sure I'm keeping figures straight; 50 ppm HCO3 ...

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I'm sure I've done several posts on the subject. The limit is 50 ppm (1 mEq/L) alkalinity as CaCO3 because that is the equilibrium alkalinity for water over limestone and exposed to air. The bicarbonate concentration under these conditions is 61 mg/L.

Gadjobrinus said:

...according to the above leaves me with Alk = 80, not 50. Have I missed something?)

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Apparently. Bicarb at 50 ppm corresponds to alkalinity of about 41.

Gadjobrinus said:

but we've got a high Mg as well, and I am unaware of any effect on this ion concentration - though I've just likely missed it. If I knew Mg would be brought down to a reasonable figure after slaked lime, I think, I'd be more predisposed to giving it a try.

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By use of the so called 'split' lime treatment you ought to be able to get rid of 1/3 to 1/2 of the magnesium ion. You can get even more out but it requires adding lots of sulfate or chloride or phosphate. RO is more practical for getting Mg really low.

Gadjobrinus said:

One thing I will say, is, using RO, emulating Martin Brungard's presentation of historical brewing waters, I am able to fairly easily come up with his "pale ale" water:
CA 140
Mg 18
Na 25
SO4 325
Cl 55
HCO3 110

Click to expand...

You don't need anything like that much calcium nor any magnesium and certainly not any bicarbonate to make a decent pale ale. Now some might like a minerally quauty in their ales and some might like a little salt and some might like some magnesium but I certainly wouldn't start out with a profile like this. I'd work up to it in steps seeing if adding all these minerals improved the beer at each step.

Thanks AJ. For better of worse, I've never dealt with a water like this. It's mostly been Chicago city water (Goose Island), out on a rented farm (Not great for pales, phenomenal for dark beers), and Marquette, Michigan. Long lost to me, but seem to recall it was great water - Lake Superior water. BTW, the farm water, very alkaline, very high in carbonates. Only beer I entered into competition, a strong scotch ale, and it won 2nd in the midwest regionals for the AHAs. It was slated to go on to nationals, but my in-laws drank the rest of the samples, not knowing.

On the lime procedure, yes, it was you, and a "split" procedure sounds familiar. Monitoring pH as you go. I have it bookmarked and am going back to it.

Thanks for the help. I am wont to keep sulfate down to about 3:1 with chloride, so:

Ca: 57
Mg: 18
Na: 21
SO4: 175
Cl: 57

and HCO3, on your post above, zipped out of there. Wasn't looking forward to incorporating chalk, anyway.

Post-edit: Just looked through some of my brew session records from 2001-2005, which is when I last brewed. My water of "choice" for all bitters and pales was a Yorkshire profile. And all my dark ales, at least those I looked through (robust porter, Baltic porter, imperial stout) emulated London Tap.

Yorkshire is known for "malty" pale beers. Yet my beers were known for their strong hoppiness, since that's what my family and friends liked, as did I. Seems to me there are so many variables in brewing that it's very hard, as with all living systems, to look at a variable in isolation without viewing the whole as a system.

ajdelange said:

You don't list alkalinity but I calculate it at close to 6 mEq/L from the RA, Ca and Mg. That's pretty strong motivation to go to RO.

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AJ, just wanted to say, I was trying to find where I saw your method for slaked lime, and in thumbing through Palmer and Kaminski's book to better understand some of this, and found it on pg. 111. Elsewhere he talks of your experimentation. Just to say thanks again, and I'm really looking forward to this. I'm focusing on water for the time being.

It's hardly my method. Breweries have been using it for a long time. The best explanation I have seen was given to me by an Austrian chemist (from Salzburg yet) who explained it as the neutralization of lime by the acid HCO3- ion:

Ca(OH)2 + 2HCO3- + Ca++ ---> 2CaCO3 + H2O

Thus you add the lime to a portion of the water and the pH goes way up. You then add more water (containing the acid) until the pH falls back to a reasonable level (8.3).

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

Look at the section towards the end about reduction of magnesium.

That would be the 'split' procedure referred to in #11 and #12.