3 ppm iron, will it ruin my beer?

What is the flavor consequence of brewing with water that has somewhere within the range of 3,000 µg/L iron?

my guess is probably yes, but it begs the question what water are you using that has 3mg/L of iron? that really high

Well Water

I'm on a well also and have iron .. I found that if you can taste it in a glass of water, then you will taste it in the beer

How much you taste depends on the beer (ie. Blond = rust, Stout = hrmm, whats that flavor I'm tasting )

I had the same issues so I paid the few extra bucks and bought RO water. The benefit to that is building your own water profile

3 ppm iron is very high. Will give your water a metallic/bitter taste. It will stain your fixtures (toilets, tubs, sinks) and clothes too. We recommend treatment at levels waaaaay below 3 ppm. Keep an eye out for iron bacteria as well. You are an order of magnitude over the recommended EPA limit.

Russ

Makes me wonder what else is in that water too. Iron doesn't come alone...

Think Mn and H2S for starters

Yes, 3 mg/L is 10 times the EPA SMCL and 30 times the amount of iron generally considered acceptable for brewing. To remove it aerate the water thoroughly. It should turn cloudy. Pour it through clean play sand in a bucket with holes in the bottom. The sand at the top will take on an ugly brown color. When you have collected all the water you need, backwash the sand and use it again.

Clearly this is a PITA. There are various whole house iron removing options available.

Clearly this is a PITA. There are various whole house iron removing options available.

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Ha! Your read my mind!

My well water does have an H2S odor, but if I leave it sit in an open carboy which I have aerated well and then let sit for a day this odor completely goes away. I believe that I have iron eating bacteria also. Would any or all of this be an indicator of likely very high SO4?

Is the aeration that I did actually removing the iron somehow?

I brewed with the well water after aeration, sitting, acidifying to remove the alkalinity, and cutting it down to 2/3 RO and 1/3 well, and I just tasted the flat beer I made with this water during bottling, and it does not taste funcalcultionscalcultionsky at all. Flat and a bit sweet from the added priming sugar was all I and two others noticed.

I performed an inexpensive GH/KH test (with liquid titration drops, not the unreliable strips) on my well water several times, and the tests averaged to 42.5 GH and 24.5 KH. That translates to 756 ppm of total hardness as CaCO3 and 436 ppm of alkalinity as CaCO3. RA = 252 if my calculations were done correctly. If I balance cations and anions by assuming the absolutely worst case scenario of all anions besides those contributing to alkalinity coming from SO4, it puts my absolute upper limit for SO4 in the well water at 307 ppm.

Assuming this is the potable water supply at your house, yeow! I suggest you pay to get a drinking water test done (Not a ward labs brewing test). We can help you with any/all of this but in interests of avoiding commercial posts here - please contact us if you want to talk specifics.

Russ
513-312-2343

Silver_Is_Money said:

M
Is the aeration that I did also removing the iron somehow?

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Aerating will get dissolved iron to come out of solution (ferrous iron ->ferric iron) - at which point it can be removed with a particulate filter.

Russ

Buckeye_Hydro said:

Assuming this is the potable water supply at your house, yeow! I suggest you pay to get a drinking water test done (Not a ward labs brewing test). We can help you with any/all of this but in interests of avoiding commercial posts here - please contact us if you want to talk specifics.

Russ
513-312-2343

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We run it through an oxygenator/filter and a softener for home use, but I brewed with it straight up. albeit cut at 2 RO to 1 well. The wort did go through a 60 minute boil.

The oxygenator/filter should remove much of the iron and the softener should get the rest but your 756 ppm hardess (15.12 mEq/L) are going to be replaced by 15.12*23 = 347 mg/L sodium. Is the water really that hard?

44 gpg hardness. Ugh. You'll need a knife and fork for that glass of "water"

ajdelange said:

The oxygenator/filter should remove much of the iron and the softener should get the rest but your 756 ppm hardess (15.12 mEq/L) are going to be replaced by 15.12*23 = 347 mg/L sodium. Is the water really that hard?

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Yes, I was told it has 43 grains of hardness.

Buckeye_Hydro said:

44 gpg hardness. Ugh. You'll need a knife and fork for that glass of "water"

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That's pretty close to the 43 grains per gallon of hardness that I was told we have.

Does the water from the softener taste salty?

ajdelange said:

Does the water from the softener taste salty?

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We don't drink it. We have been buying bottled water for 17 years. We did try it a few times for coffee though, and it makes terrible coffee, so we use bottled water for that also. We did just a few weeks ago have an under the sink RO unit installed so we don't have to buy bottled RO water any more.

Use that RO water for brewing!

I will! I think I've learned my lesson. Being newly retired and in need of a hobby, I just returned to all-grain brewing after a 19 year long brewing hiatus, and we have only lived in this house 17 years, so I never tried its well water in brewing (until now). Once was enough. Now I will build water to suit each batches needs.

With 436 ppm of alkalinity in the well water source, my RO water has measurable alkalinity, but should be free of most of the yuckies. It's proving difficult to pin down the RO waters alkalinity using only the KH test and my aging eyes, but I believe it is in the neighborhood of about 36 ppm.

You can measure the alkalinity of your water fairly easily. Put exactly (as close as you can get it) 1 L of DI water into a container. Withdraw 10 cc with a syringe. Add 10 mL of 88% lactic acid. You now have 1 L of water with 96 mEq of acid in it so it is 0.096 N. Note: if you can measure volumes accurately i.e. if you have mixing cylinders or volumetric flasks measure 1 cc of 88% lactic acid into a 100 mL cylinder/flask and make up to the 100 mL mark. You still get 0.096 N acid. See how many mL of this 0.096 N acid it takes to bring the pH of 100 mL of your water to pH 4.5. Multiply that by 0.96. That's your alkalinity in mEq/L. Multiply by 50 for ppm as CaCO3.

Accuracy will depend on how close to 88% the acid you have in hand actually is and how accurately you can do the measurements.

Were you doing this in a lab you would do exactly what I described but you would be using standardized 0.1 N sulfuric acid bought from a lab supply house.

ajdelange said:

Were you doing this in a lab you would do exactly what I described but you would be using standardized 0.1 N sulfuric acid bought from a lab supply house.

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AJ, you're amazing! I'm checking if I understand the logic here. So as a test case wherein I'm initially assuming 36 ppm alkalinity (as I presently suspect from testing my RO water with the KH test kit) would the answer be 37.5 ml of the 0.096 normal lactic acid solution to hit 4.5 pH?

Not quite. 36 ppm is 36/50 = 0.72 mEq/L so you would expect to use 0.72/0.096 = 0.75 mL. Obviously you would need a syringe to measure out such a small quantity accurately.

Would slaked lime precipitate out the iron?

ajdelange said:

Not quite. 36 ppm is 36/50 = 0.72 mEq/L so you would expect to use 0.72/0.096 = 0.75 mL. Obviously you would need a syringe to measure out such a small quantity accurately.

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If I made a solution of 1 ml lactic acid (88%) in 1 L, would the titration require 7.5 ml for the condition of 36 ppm alkalinity? Or in general, 0.20833 ml per ppm of alkalinity?

Following up here. It's now two weeks post bottling the beer brewed with my well water (1/3 well, and 2/3 RO). I tested one bottle for carbonation level today, and the beer lacks any character, being what I can only think to call one dimensional. Dull would be another good word for it. Thin would be another. Hop presence is greatly subdued vs. what I expected, and there is also no perceived maltiness, and no perception of any body to the mouth feel. I hope it improves in a few weeks, but for now I've learned to stay away from my well water going forward.

Edit: There is no perception of any metallic taste to the beer....

One additional week of follow-up: The beer is much improved after bottle conditioning for three weeks. A nice head, noticeable maltiness, and much more hoppiness, With time I now believe it will actually be just fine. A dramatic difference for just one more week of bottle conditioning.

I tried a bottle of my last batch of beer yesterday; been in the bottle a week. Thin and no character describes it well. I think it will be great in another couple of weeks.

Two weeks is when I crack the first one, start sharing around 3.

I have high iron too, and while the beer was actually ok, the coating of crap precipitating on my brewpot made it a pain. My h20 goes through a softener to remove the iron. The sodium post softener is only 30 ppm so its a compromise im forced into, just add back my minerals as needed. Iron is a PITA

An RO system would take out that sodium if its a problem for you.

Buckeye_Hydro said:

An RO system would take out that sodium if its a problem for you.

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Yep i have an RO for drinking water & baby bottles. PVC pipes are gross! Since i brew big batches i dont use my RO h20; too much work. My western nc well water is super soft, practically RO quality minus the dang Fe. 30 ppm sodium is lower than most municipal tapwater so its all good. Cheers!!