My First Water Recipe - Seattle - English Barley Wine

Hello All,

I'm going to be doing my first water alterations in my next brew. Here are all (hopefully) the relevant pieces of data:

My water is most likely from the Cedar River in Seattle I'll be using King County Water District #90 water. Here's its profile:

Calcium 22 ppm
Magnesium 0.8 ppm
Bicarbonate (as CaCO3) 18 ppm
Sulfate 0
Sodium 1.9 ppm
Chloride 3 ppm

I'll be brewing an English barley wine (a JW Lees clone). The mash will be 9 gallons of liquor, 33.6 lb Maris Otter, and 1lb 55 lovibond crystal.

My goal in adding salts to my water is to get most of my minerals into proper brewing range (according to this calculator http://www.huizingh.net/EZ-water-calculator.htm, see the Recommended Range in the green Result row), and to get a water that will support a very malty beer with a lighter color (5-10 SRM).

So, here's what I've come up with for water additions (I used Palmer's spreadsheet, Brewater 3.0, and the EZ water calculator):

Mash addition (to 9 gallons water):
2g gypsum
8g CaCl2
2g Epsom Salt
2g Baking Soda

Boil kettle addition (after sparging with 5.5 gal):
1.2 gypsum
4.9 CaCl2
1.2 Epsom Salt
1.2 Baking Soda

This should give me the following water profile:

Calcium 99 ppm
Magnesium 6 ppm
Bicarbonate (as CaCO3) 61 ppm
Sulfate 56
Sodium 18 ppm
Chloride 116 ppm

The RA is -14 and the chloride:sulfate ratio is 2.09.

Does this look okay? Questions/comments/suggestions are welcome.

I have a couple questions about the additions too. Can I use any epsom salts. We have some that we use for soaking body parts in that we got from the drug store. Is this okay to use?

Thanks!

I'm answering because I see no one else has -- I have never made barleywine, that's why I hesitated. So, FWIW when I do brew my first barleywine, which will be soon, I will not have my chlorides that high. I think it will interfere with the malt character. If you look at water profiles from cities, it is rare to have it higher than 100.