My water report

Ok ladies and gentleman below you will find the water report for Danbury, CT. I've been brewing all grain batches for almost a year now and haven't had any issues. Really, I'm just wondering thoughts and opinions on it. Thanks in advance!

SammyView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1442032211.249532.jpg

There isn't anything telling you your alkalinity or carbonate levels. That's one of the most important pieces of info.

I'm trying to figure my stuff out too... and the report I pulled up doesn't have alkalinity or carbonate levels either.

I read the primer at the top of this forum and I still don't really know where to start. How do I even know if I have soft water or not?

Are pH strips really useless, or are they accurate enough to determine mash pH?

Neptune said:

I'm trying to figure my stuff out too... and the report I pulled up doesn't have alkalinity or carbonate levels either.

I read the primer at the top of this forum and I still don't really know where to start. How do I even know if I have soft water or not?

Are pH strips really useless, or are they accurate enough to determine mash pH?

Click to expand...

That type of report is intended for drinking water quality (i.e. contaminant levels) rather than for brewing. Contact the water provider (their number is on the report) and ask specifically for carbonate or alkalinity, calcium, sulphate, magnesium, chloride and sodium levels (tell them it's for beer brewing; they sometimes get a bit defensive about specific requests as you could be questioning their water quality).

Then read this https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=198460
It's simple and gives a clear definition of soft water
The following recommendations apply to “soft” water. Here we will define soft as meaning RO or distilled water or any water whose lab report indicates alkalinity less than 35 (ppm as CaCO3 – all other numbers to follow mg/L), sulfate less than 20 (as sulfate – Ward Labs reports as sulfur so multiply the SO4-S number by 3 to get as sulfate), chloride less than 20, sodium less than 20, calcium less than 20 and magnesium less than 20.

I haven't used the strips for pH, but the consensus seems to be that they are not very good.