Louisville Water: Should I Add Calcium?

Louisville, KY I've heard has great water for brewing (and distilling). I've only ever used bottled water and extract brewing. I'm moving to BIAB all grain and tap water.

I'm trying to learn a few things:
- to adjust the water with CaSO4 and CaCl2, or just leave it alone?
- would I add the chemicals before the mash?
- what adjustments would you make?

Lousiville, KY 2016 (ppm)
Alkalinity - 66
pH - 8.7
Calcium - 31
Magnesium - 12
Sodium - 27
Sulfate - 59
Bicarbonate - 55
Chloride- 42
Hardness - 127

Which has me coming out looking like:


If I add 3g CaSO4 and 5g CaCl2 it comes out looking:


Would you say this adjustment to the water is necessary?

Thanks for taking the time

Calcium is not necessary for brewing water since the malt supplies all the calcium needed for yeast health. The only reasons to add calcium to the water are to add other anions like sulfate and chloride, or to boost the calcium content to precipitate oxalate or to speed yeast flocculation. In general, having 40 to 50 ppm Ca is good for ale brewing.

That water isn't too bad for brewing. It might be a little too mineralized for the lightest lagers, but its a decent starting point.

It looks like your mineral additions are willy nilly. You should be a little more cautious with the additions.

mabrungard said:

It looks like your mineral additions are willy nilly.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the response

Extremely willy nilly. I still don't know what I'm doing with water chemistry yet, but working on learning. I just brewed up a KY Common and didn't modify the water. Though I would like to go for optimizing the water on my next batch which will be a porter.