Water Report

I want to do some of the Palmer nomographs so that I can understand my mash pH

Here is what you need

Calcium (Ca+2),
Magnesium (Mg+2),
Bicarbonate (HCO3-1)
Sulfate (SO4-2).

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These are somewhat optional as they can influence the taste of the water and beer, but do not affect the mash pH like the others.

Sodium (Na+1),
Chloride (Cl-1)

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Here is my problem. The City of Phoenix Aesthetic Standards tables do not explicitly list all of these. Futhermore they do not report a delivered average but instead opt for a lowest and highest reported value. Not very brewing friendly.

Here is said report in all of its pdf ignomy:
http://phoenix.gov/waterservices/qualre06.pdf

Beertools Pro lists Tempe Water (different system), but not Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale or Tucson... oddly listing Payson (a burgh of 15,000) over the 5.5 million it ignores.

Aiighhhh!!

BTP Tempe Values

Calcium (Ca+2) - 64
Magnesium (Mg+2) - 21
Bicarbonate (HCO3-1) - 12
Sulfate (SO4-2) - 118
Sodium (Na+1) - 190
Chloride (Cl-1) - 1

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Anyone have these values?


..

Send a water sample to Ward Lab and get The W-6 Household Mineral Test. It will tell you the concentrations of all the ions a brewer needs to know.

W-6 Household Mineral Test $15.00
Sodium
Calcium
Magnesium
Potassium
Carbonate
Bicarbonate
Chloride
Sulfate
Nitrate
Electrical Conductivity
Est. Total Dissolved Solids
pH
Total Hardness (Lime)
Total Alkalinity

johnsma22 said:

Send a water sample to Ward Lab and get The W-6 Household Mineral Test. It will tell you the concentrations of all the ions a brewer needs to know.

W-6 Household Mineral Test $15.00

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Would the W-5 be better or is it wasted money for the extra tests for fluoride and iron? Thanks for the link. I'm going to get my water tested!

olllllo said:

Beertools Pro lists Tempe Water (different system), but not Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale or Tucson... oddly listing Payson (a burgh of 15,000) over the 5.5 million it ignores.

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If I had to guess why they are ignoring Phoenix, it might be that a city that large has multiple water treatment plants that feed a common pipe sytem and secondary water parameters vary depending on your proximity to those plants. Giving a single set of values for the city may be misleading, but Tucson is decent size and they do provide values so who knows. In my county, we are served by three treatment plants into a shared pipe system and the hardness varies from 120 to 240 ppm depending on how close you are to which plant.

RichBrewer said:

Would the W-5 be better or is it wasted money for the extra tests for fluoride and iron? Thanks for the link. I'm going to get my water tested!

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Well, flouride isn't an issue with well water, and the levels in most municipalities is relatively low. I'm not sure that it even has any effect on brewing anyway. Iron in well water can be an issue, but it can be effectively removed with a good sediment/carbon filter. So if you filter your water the iron content really isn't important, as you are removing it anyway.

All that said, for an additional $9 it might be worth knowing.

Bearcat Brewmeister said:

If I had to guess why they are ignoring Phoenix, it might be that a city that large has multiple water treatment plants that feed a common pipe sytem and secondary water parameters vary depending on your proximity to those plants. Giving a single set of values for the city may be misleading, but Tucson is decent size and they do provide values so who knows. In my county, we are served by three treatment plants into a shared pipe system and the hardness varies from 120 to 240 ppm depending on how close you are to which plant.

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I concur, if you look at the water report it lists multiple surface water sources, all of which probably have a varying composition. Your water composition might vary through the year some too, as I'd think the treatment plants might shift around to different sources depending on the availability of water.

With such large variations I don't know that a water analysis will be that helpfull to you. If your water varies by that much throughout the year it will be impossible for you to make meaningfull adjustments...If you are already getting good starch conversion I would just RDWHAHB. If you run into problems with certain styles then either get water from a consistent source or try the 5.2 product.

Thanks for the info everone. I will probabaly go with a test of some sort. IIRC there is a lab here in town that used to do this.

Got Trub? said:

With such large variations I don't know that a water analysis will be that helpfull to you. If your water varies by that much throughout the year it will be impossible for you to make meaningfull adjustments...If you are already getting good starch conversion I would just RDWHAHB. If you run into problems with certain styles then either get water from a consistent source or try the 5.2 product.

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Yes there is variation, but without any other stat, it would be hard what the distribution is. I image they are using numbers from all three TPs. My guess is that some of the outliers are event based such as after a monsoon.

Still, I imagine they have the numbers I am looking for. Internally they must strive for procedures that limit the variance. That's why an average and/or a standard deviation would have been nice. Obviously, they felt that that would confuse the hell out of most 5th graders so they use the highest/lowest.

Again, I think I will get a test. If the procedure isn't too odious (shipping a cold sample), I think that it warrants doing it annually to see what kind of consistancy I get.

It would be cool if someone else in the area would do this so we can compare notes.

You know...Palmer has a spreadsheet with chapter 15 posted on his website. No need for nomographs, punch in your numbers and it spits out your RA and has places to add salts and/or acid to the mash and will spit out your new RA and I think even expected mash pH. The thing is wonderful, I recommend downloading a copy

EDIT: maybe I should read the original poster's thread better and understand the quesitons, sorry Rob. The spreadsheet is still the way to go...'eff nomographs

clayof2day said:

You know...Palmer has a spreadsheet with chapter 15 posted on his website. No need for nomographs, punch in your numbers and it spits out your RA and has places to add salts and/or acid to the mash and will spit out your new RA and I think even expected mash pH. The thing is wonderful, I recommend downloading a copy

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I plan on doing it both ways.
I like the visual nature of the nomographs and I intend to print one up and put it on the beer fridge.

City of Scottsdale just sent ours out. There are three regions just in Scottsdale, so I would think that PHX would have quite a few.

The Scottsdale one is posted at http://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/water/Quality/2007WaterQualityReport.pdf if that helps. Page five shows the zones and seven shows the actual values. My zone is technically PHX water.

I just got a small under-the-counter R/O system from Lowe's for about $150, so you might want to just do that.

Here's my results from Ward:

pH................................................. 7.9
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est..........792
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm........1.32
Cations / Anions, me/L.................... 2.2 / 12.6

------------------------------------------ppm
Sodium, Na............................................185
Potassium,............................................ K 6
Calcium, Ca............................................ 55
Magnesium, Mg...................................... 15
Total Hardness, CaCO 3........................ 200
Nitrate, NO 3-N.................................. 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO -4S....................................... 41
Chloride, Cl............................................ 281
Carbonate, CO 3................................... < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO 3............................... 125
Total Alkalinity, CaCO 3......................... 102
Floride, F............................................... 0.94
Total Iron, Fe........................................ 0.03

"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

Finally found a detailed water report for the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area...Bicarbonate does not show up on the report. Would it be listed under some other name (HCO3 also doesn't show)?

How large of sample did you send and in what type of container. I couldn't find that info on their web site?

4oz is what they want, more is OK.
I sent in drinking water bottles.
Send them full with a little headspace.