New House...New Water

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adamjackson

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My water at the new house tastes minerally and hard. It's well water like the old house but a bit closer to town.

Here's my old well water untreated:

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New House:

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Everything looks a lot weaker except for Calcium which tripled. Guess I'll have to start doing some additions because I really liked my old water a lot more.

There is a water treatment thing in the basement..it has a huge water tub of salt next to it? Not sure what it does exactly but I haven't turned it on yet. Supposedly it reduces the hardness.
 
There is a water treatment thing in the basement..it has a huge water tub of salt next to it? Not sure what it does exactly but I haven't turned it on yet. Supposedly it reduces the hardness.

That is your water softener. It will replace Ca and Mg with Na (or K depending on your salts) and should not be used for brewing.

I couldn't fill in the bicarbonate since this is all of the info I got

Weird I just addressed this like 10 minutes ago.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/need-help-water-report-missing-sodium-thoughts-386210/#post4849132


You have 2 missing variables to find so there is no certainty, but we can make some assumptions and probably get close. If you keep the ~8:1 bicarb:sulfate ratio from the old house, 88 mg/L bicarbonate and 11 mg/L sulfate would work. You can scale up or down but keep the water balanced. It's a start until you get a test.
 
I'm betting that the OP's 'minerally' flavor is actually a metallic flavor. There The ion-exchange softener is aimed at reducing the other hardness ions: iron and manganese. The water report shows both are low, so using the softener may not add that much sodium to the treated water. The report shows the manganese is high enough to taste.

The metallic flavors can make it through to your beer. I suggest you send a softened sample of your water to the lab for testing. I estimate that the sodium will come out around 40 ppm, which is still OK.
 
Thanks for the info guys. So, I'm going to try to get the missing information. For now, I'm diluting the home water 50/50 with Poland spring water. It adds a few $s to each brew but I'm just not a fan of the mineral taste that I get from the drinking water

I actually bought a Brita filter for the sink because it's so high in minerals.
 

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