Help with water hardness adjustment

I'd like to begin to adjust my water hardness for the style of beer brewed. According to the local water dept., my total calcium/magnesium hardness is 183 ppm +/- 50 ppm. The variation is dependent upon how much well water vs. lake water they're drawing.
A brewer in my area uses 10% phosphoric acid to lower mash and sparge Ph to the proper range regardless of the style of beer he's making. Is this correct method or do I need further adjustments for a given style?

thanks in advance.

Hugh_Jass said:

I'd like to begin to adjust my water hardness for the style of beer brewed. According to the local water dept., my total calcium/magnesium hardness is 183 ppm +/- 50 ppm. The variation is dependent upon how much well water vs. lake water they're drawing.
A brewer in my area uses 10% phosphoric acid to lower mash and sparge Ph to the proper range regardless of the style of beer he's making. Is this correct method or do I need further adjustments for a given style?

thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Can't comment on the phosphoric acid part.

But you can use Palmer's spreadsheet to help you. Works great for me.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html

You can also see discussions here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/help-me-understand-chloride-sulfate-ratio-117953/

And here, where I talk about preboiling my water to remove bicarbonate:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/effectiveness-pre-boiling-water-remove-bicarbonate-134108/

How much calcium do you have? You should be able to remove 5 ppm of bicarbonate for every 3 ppm of Calcium. So if your Calcium is at 100, then you could potentially remove 166 ppm of bicarbonate. That is if you mean you wanna remove bicarbonate. If you mean permanent hardness from calcium and magnesium, dunno...sorry if I'm completely off base here....