Ward Report on Filtered and Nonfiltered Water

I decided to run a report on my water and i'm having trouble understanding exactly *what* my filter actually does here. The filtered report actually looks worse. I'm using a whole house sediment and carbon filter to do the filtering.

Tap Water:

pH 8.1
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 269
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.45
Cations / Anions, me/L 4.5 / 4.1
ppm
Sodium, Na 47
Potassium, K 2
Calcium, Ca 29
Magnesium, Mg 11
Total Hardness, CaCO3 118
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.5 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 17
Chloride, Cl 51
Carbonate, CO3 3
Bicarbonate, HCO3 91
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 79
Total Phosphorus, P 0.45
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

Filtered Tap Water:

pH 7.9
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 383
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.64
Cations / Anions, me/L 6.4 / 6.4
ppm
Sodium, Na 65
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 42
Magnesium, Mg 17
Total Hardness, CaCO3 176
Nitrate, NO3-N 1.4 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 40
Chloride, Cl 70
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 106
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 87
Total Phosphorus, P 0.67
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

Can anyone help my understand what a carbon filter does to the water beside making it taste fantastic Do I need to attach another water filter to the setup to filter out anything else?

If you are on a public supply the carbon will help to remove the chlorine.

Wouldn't that be Chloride? Then why did it go higher after being filtered?

Is there any possibility AT ALL that you had the samples labled backwards? It looks as if almost EVERY contaminant/mineral was HIGHER in the "filtered" sample. If I had to look at those reports, I would guess that somehow the labels got switched, or you accidentially filled the wrong containers when testing. If you simply re-label the results with the opposite name, then it makes MUCH more sense to me.

It looks like those two sets of data are backwards. How would a filter add calcium?

The non-filtered report was done a month before the filtered report. I'm leaning towards accidentally filling up with the same water or getting the filtered water contaminated some how.

I'm going to have to send in another water sample it looks like.

What should I expect to see drop with a 5 micron sediment filter and a carbon filter (KX Matrikx +Pb1) ?

A carbon filter doesn't do anything to the mineral content of the water. It removes organics (such as the geosmines that make water taste musty) and chloramine but choride, sulfate, calcium.... it doesn't touch.

If you wanted to reduce mineral content, would you have to use something like Reverse Osmosis and add mineral content back?

WesP said:

If you wanted to reduce mineral content, would you have to use something like Reverse Osmosis and add mineral content back?

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Either that or cut your current water with RO water. Half RO, half tap will cut everything by half.

If these are done at different times and you're positive results aren't switched then you have some very noticeable swings in mineral content in your supply. Thinking about the differences between those two months, was there a lot of precipitation before or in between the months? Precipitation around the water supply for your area? A long dry period?

A guy in my brew club drew two samples at the same time, one precarbon filter and one post and sent them at the same time. The values were definitely different by a noticeable amount but I don't know if it falls within normal testing variation.

ReverseApacheMaster, you might be right. I'm located in westside los angeles and we have had a lot of recent storms in the past few weeks.

The water swings make things more difficult to recreate any beer that I make. It will also make things difficult to treat the water for a particular profile.

Should I just test my water on a monthly basis if i'm doing batches every few weeks?

I looked at the water calculator and it is mostly within brewing range. The only thing that it recommends is Calcium and Sodium. So as long as I do that, I should be good to go.

WesP said:

ReverseApacheMaster, you might be right. I'm located in westside los angeles and we have had a lot of recent storms in the past few weeks.

The water swings make things more difficult to recreate any beer that I make. It will also make things difficult to treat the water for a particular profile.

Should I just test my water on a monthly basis if i'm doing batches every few weeks?

I looked at the water calculator and it is mostly within brewing range. The only thing that it recommends is Calcium and Sodium. So as long as I do that, I should be good to go.

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If you're prepared to get a test every month, you might as well get an RO system.

That might get a bit expensive. Some weekends we end up brewing 2 different beers between 10 and 15 gallons.

It's something to think about

WesP said:

That might get a bit expensive. Some weekends we end up brewing 2 different beers between 10 and 15 gallons.

It's something to think about

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Well, keep in mind that for most beers I'd personally only dilute that water 50:50, so you wouldn't need quite as much.