another water question

So am i better off using my tap water (high is all areas) half tap water and half filtered water or all filtered water and add some buffer 5.2? Is it easyier to adjust my own water or start with pure water and add some things to it?

That totally depends... what's your water chemistry like, and what beer are you planning on brewing?

Brewing lots of stouts, porters, anything dark!

Hardness- 283 ppm
Total Alkalinity- 233 ppm
Sodium- 232 ppm
Magnesium- 35 ppm
Calcium- 62 ppm
Chloride- 319 ppm

Anything other numbers I need?

aaronbeer said:

Brewing lots of stouts, porters, anything dark!

Hardness- 283 ppm
Total Alkalinity- 233 ppm
Sodium- 232 ppm
Magnesium- 35 ppm
Calcium- 62 ppm
Chloride- 319 ppm

Anything other numbers I need?

Click to expand...

Good grief, is that stuff still a liquid? You are going to need some major dilution with RO or distilled water to get those sodium and chloride numbers down to something at least halfway reasonable. I would guess about 4:1 for starters. After that you could add calcium carbonate and calcium sulphate to get the calcium up and balance the water for the beer style.

aaronbeer said:

Anything other numbers I need?

Click to expand...

The SO4 (sulfate) would be good to know.

Holy crap, your Na and Cl2 are through the roof.... so sorry.

would it be better to just use purified water and then add to it, insted of trying to balance my water?

I think you would be a lot better off starting from scratch using bottled/purified water than trying to correct what you have coming out of the tap.

damn, looks like seawater. If you're in money saving mode you could probably cut that half and half with distilled and bump up the calcium a little, (for porters and stouts) need to know where your sulfate is at. For stouts I try to lean towards a little higher sulfate than chloride. Plenty of good water profile tools around, I use the one in beersmith.
Tucson water is in pretty good shape for porters and stouts, If i had to deal with your water profile I would just start with distilled and work it up from there.


http://www.brewersfriend.com/water-chemistry/

So on my next order from northern brewer, what additives should I buy to be ready to start from scratch?

Wow you may want to look into an RO system, over time it could pay for itself instead of buying distilled water each time to build up.

You'll want these as common brewing salts to build to any style
Chalk-CaCO3
Gypsum CaSO4 *2H2O
Calcium Chloride CaCl2*2H2O
Epsom Salt MgSO4 *7H2O
Baking Soda NaHCO3

I'd get the chalk, gypsum, calcium chloride from the lhbs. You could probably get them somewhere else as well. The other two are just so easy to buy at wal-mart.

I'm assuming you are just listing all of the possibilities and not suggesting to use all of them right? There is a lot of overlap if you use all of them.

I live in DC and don't trust the water here...since this is kind of related: should I be buying spring or distilled? I want some minerals, and isn't distilled void of that? But at the same time spring can be just about anything, including tap water that isn't any better than what I get from the tap (okay, it has to be a little better, but still).

Thanks.

Right, you need to use the right ones for the right recipes if you want to build up your water from RO. You'll need a different combination to get your bicarb/calcium and chloride/sulfate right per recipe. You also need a little sodium and magnesium.