How good is my water profile?

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JoePro

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Location
Richmond
Ca2+: 22ppm
Mg2+: 4.4ppm
K+: 2.1ppm
NH4+: 0.85ppm
Na+: 20ppm
Li+: <0.05ppm
pH: 7.8
TOC: 1.4ppm
SiO2: 6.8ppm
CO2: 2.6ppm
TDS: 190ppm
SO42-: 60ppm
Cl-: 19ppm
NO2-: <0.05ppm
Br-: 0.27ppm
Fl-: 0.81ppm
PO43-: 1.4ppm
Turbidity: 0.5
Total Alkalinity as CaCO3: 88ppm
Total Hardness as CaCO3: 96ppm

What do I need to do to my water to make it ideal for brewing? Should I just buy RO water?
 
Looks pretty good. You need to add gypsum or CaCl to get the calcium up abobe 50ppm, and you may need to mess with the residual alkalinity depending on the style you are brewing, which is easy to do (there are lots of spreadsheets out there for that).
 
Will my mash pH be lower than my standard table? I've read elsewhere that having a 7.8 ph is pretty standard in cities but sucks for brewing.

Thank you for the advice!
 
If you're all grain brewing, you'll definitely want to lower the pH of your sparge water with a little phosphoric acid. 7.8 is entirely too high, shoot for 5.2-5.5.
 
The pH of the water doesn't matter - its buffering capacity relative to that of the grist does. Using some 5.2 usually does a very good job of keeping the sparge water below pH 5.8.
 
The mash pH will naturally drop from the tap water pH. The level of alkalinity in the water and the total acidity of the grain will define the pH drop.

That water is only moderately hard and moderately alkaline. Boosting the calcium to a absolute minimum concentration of 40 ppm or a preferable minimum of 50 ppm is a good goal.

A better resource for learning about brewing water chemistry is Bru'n Water. It is one of the brewing water calculators, but it is more importantly a large brewing water knowledge source.
 
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