Please guide me through water analysis

Hello,

Never tried to mess with my water before, but figured "eh" let's see what we can do.

http://www.tuscaloosa.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=1554

I've read some stuff about this, but there are quite a few entries on this report that I am clueless as to how they would impact brewing.

So, please share your interpretation and recommended corrections!

Thanks

That's a water quality report. It basically tells you what is in your drinking water to show that water is safe to drink.

What it doesn't tell you:
- The level of Calcium & Magnesium (Hardness)
- The level of Carbonates (Alkalinity)

It does give you the Sulfate level but doesn't have the Chloride or Sodium levels.

What you'll need to do is either get in touch with someone at the water treatment department and let them know that you're a brewer so that they will possibly send you their analysis or have your water analyzed by an outside company (Ward labs). The parts outlined above are what you're mainly looking for.

Knowing these things is only half the battle though. You need to combine these numbers with a grain bill in order to figure out how you'd like to adjust. For example, if you're using a lot of roasted malt in a low alkaline water, you might want to boost the alkalinity because the roasted malts are acidic and will naturally drop the pH of the mash lower than you like. On the other hand, low alkalinity would be ok for lighter beers. In addition to that, you'll want to look at the hop/malt balance and consider a chloride or sulfate adjustment. An adjustment for one style of beer isn't going to be what you want for others.

On a separate but related question, if you run the water through a brita filter, does it remove Calcium/Magnesium or and Carbonates? Can I assume my cities report is unchanged after filtering the water?

There are some Brita-type filters that include hardness-reducing ion exchange filters in them. All of those Brita-type filters include activated carbon filters that remove volatile organic compounds and some heavy metals. The activated carbon does not affect the concentrations of the typical ions of interest to brewers. Assume that the water profile is unchanged unless the unit says it reduces hardness.