My Local Water Report

http://www.johnsoncitytn.com/wqr.pdf

Is this showing all of the information I need or should I request a more detailed one?

In an email reply I also got this information.

All of these results will be in mg/L if that is ok. And of what you requested, this is what I found.

Alkalinity: averages around 45 mg/L this time of year
Hardness: averages around 50 mg/L this time of year

Nitrate: 0.374 mg/L
Sulfate: 5.43 mg/L
Chloride: 11.6 mg/L
Sodium: 5.45 mg/L

The alkalinity and hardness is ran daily at the water plant. The other results are sampled for and tested once a year by an outside lab.

The report is virtually useless. The email helps. That water is probably fine for brewing, but you don't have much specific information. I'd ask them when they typically see the highs and lows for the hardness and alkalinity and what the ranges are. You will probably need to send off a sample to Ward to figure out the relative calcium and magnesium content that produces that hardness value.

mabrungard said:

The report is virtually useless. The email helps. That water is probably fine for brewing, but you don't have much specific information. I'd ask them when they typically see the highs and lows for the hardness and alkalinity and what the ranges are. You will probably need to send off a sample to Ward to figure out the relative calcium and magnesium content that produces that hardness value.

Click to expand...

"We usually see the highs in the summer months and the lows in the winter months. Average during summer for hardness and alkalinity 40-60mg/L and during winter 25-50mg/L".

What does this mean for my brewing?

It is still meaningless, but it does show that the variation isn't that large.

I requested more detail from my water supply and they sent over the actual lab results. The values they put for maximums were the actual test values. It had a couple other things but not much. It never hurts to ask and I emailed the guy saying I'm a homebrewer and a chemist so I'm curious if they had more.