What is the bare minimum info you need to 'treat' your water?

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GrumpyOldGit

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Being frugal (or 'cheap') I don't want to spend money on a water analysis unless I need to. We're on a well and the water is hard but is wonderful to drink - but as for brewing, that's where it gets interesting as I want to cut from my current extract & grains approach to all grain BIAB.

When we bought our current house we got a water report but it was a standard house one (though for the price it should have been handwritten on gilt-edged velum). The report does give Hardness (256 mg/l but doesn't state if 'as CaCO3'), Sulfate (10.2 mg/l), Chloride (7.63 mg/l), and pH (7.45) and a few others like iron (all very low) but no Calcium, Magnesium, or Bicarbonate.

I'm not looking to emulate Pilsen, Munich, Burton, etc. but I would like to be able to brew a stout or pilsner or anything in between. Is this enough information to at least be able to baseline the water? Can I get something as simple as add x and y to get a middle of the road water, add more x for a pale beer or more y for a darker beer? Or should I just send a sample off and get a full bells and whistles report?
 
Being frugal (or 'cheap') I don't want to spend money on a water analysis unless I need to. We're on a well and the water is hard but is wonderful to drink - but as for brewing, that's where it gets interesting as I want to cut from my current extract & grains approach to all grain BIAB.

When we bought our current house we got a water report but it was a standard house one (though for the price it should have been handwritten on gilt-edged velum). The report does give Hardness (256 mg/l but doesn't state if 'as CaCO3'), Sulfate (10.2 mg/l), Chloride (7.63 mg/l), and pH (7.45) and a few others like iron (all very low) but no Calcium, Magnesium, or Bicarbonate.

I'm not looking to emulate Pilsen, Munich, Burton, etc. but I would like to be able to brew a stout or pilsner or anything in between. Is this enough information to at least be able to baseline the water? Can I get something as simple as add x and y to get a middle of the road water, add more x for a pale beer or more y for a darker beer? Or should I just send a sample off and get a full bells and whistles report?

If cost is your biggest concern then what I would do is get a repeat ward labs test that way I have a baseline and just assume that is close to the average water from that tap. Then from there I would adjust as necessary using RO water from the local convenience store distribution machine for 25 to 35 cents a gallon to dilute the water and add in extra salts as necessary.

Its a one time cost that is less than 75 bucks that will tell you a lot about your water especially if you want to brew things that are more water profile dependent such as a pilsner where low hardness is key.
 
Being frugal (or 'cheap') I don't want tospend money on a water analysis unless I need to.
Problem is that you need to if you are going to make the best beer.

We're on a well and the water is hard but is wonderful to drink - but as for brewing, that's where it gets interesting as I want to cut from my current extract & grains approach to all grain BIAB.
Hardness is beneficial in the sense that calcium lowers mash pH to some extent but the accompanying alkalinity, if the hardness is temporary, as yours is, more than offsets the benefits or the calcium.

When we bought our current house we got a water report but it was a standard house one (though for the price it should have been handwritten on gilt-edged velum). The report does give Hardness (256 mg/l but doesn't state if 'as CaCO3'), Sulfate (10.2 mg/l), Chloride (7.63 mg/l), and pH (7.45) and a few others like iron (all very low) but no Calcium, Magnesium, or Bicarbonate.
That's enough to tell us that your alkalinity is a whopping 4.7 mEq/L or 237 ppm as CaCO3 (your hardness is also in those units). There won't be many beers you can brew with water that carbonaceous unless you decarbonate it.


I'm not looking to emulate Pilsen, Munich, Burton, etc. but I would like to be able to brew a stout or pilsner or anything in between.
You would not be able to brew most stouts with this water without acid addition or other decarbonation (boiling, lime).

Is this enough information to at least be able to baseline the water?
No. You would need to know how much of the hardness is from calcium and how much from magnesium in order to be able to manage decarbonation. Get a Ward Labs report for baseline and a TDS meter to monitor variations or better yet an inexpensive alkalinity test kit which is really also necessary to monitor decarbonation success.


Can I get something as simple as add x and y to get a middle of the road water, add more x for a pale beer or more y for a darker beer? Or should I just send a sample off and get a full bells and whistles report?
You should have a Ward Labs level report in hand. Once you have decarbonation under control (boil or lime to get the bulk out and 90% of the alkalinity as acid added to get the rest) you can then proceed to 0.5 - 1 gram CaCl2 per gal. and/or an equal amount, or more, of gypsum depending on your taste. See the Primer. You will not be able to make Bohemian Pilsner with this water.
 
After getting my Ward Labs report for our well water, I decided to go with RO water from the grocery store. For a 5 gallon BIAB batch, I spend under $3 for water. I think it's going to be easier for you to go this route than fighting the water you have.
 
I hate to say it, but you're just cursed with well water that is far too hard to use for most beers. Sure, you can brew OK beer with it, but the beer will always have flaws due to the alkalinity. The adage "if the water tastes good it will make good beer" is not always good advice.

If you are going to the expense and effort of brewing, why throw it all away because of the water? Especially since RO water from the store is so cheap? Start with RO and build your water to accommodate the style you are brewing. You will see a dramatic increase in the quality of your beer.
 
I use Bru'n Water, and there are default values for RO water. They're low, but not 0. There are also RO profiles in the Brewer's Friend software that similarly give low values.
 
You can actually start with no information other than your perceptions of your past brews.

If your dark beers always come out better than your pale beers, then its apparent that the brewing water has too much alkalinity. Conversely, if the dark beers come out worse than the pale beers, then the water alkalinity is low.

With that knowledge, you can apply some approximate treatments that are likely to provide some improvements.

In the case of brewing dark beers with low alkalinity water, adding 1/16 tsp of baking soda per gallon of MASHING water will increase alkalinity slightly and probably improve those troublesome dark beers.

In the case of brewing pale beers with high alkalinity water, adding acid to both the mashing and sparging water is in order. Add either 0.5 ml of 88% lactic or 5 ml of 10% phosphoric per gallon of water.

In either of these cases, these are only approximate adjustments that should be in the right direction. But they are not going to be perfect. For getting close to appropriate treatment, you have to know the starting water quality and the grist composition.
 
Jumping in here, when using RO water do you assume the values you input in the software are all 0?
Yes. My RO system meter reads 1-3 ppm TDS so given that I started with water with calcium, magnesium, sulfate, chloride, sodium and nitrate in appreciable quantity the probability is that each is at less than 1 ppm in the RO stream.

For a typical lager I'll put 67 mg of CaCl2 in each liter of water giving me 24.2 mg/L calcium and 42.8 mg chloride. Now let's say that the entire 3 mg/L coming out of the RO unit is calcium so that my calcium level is 27.3 instead of the calculated 24.2. This is clearly the worst case. That would give me 12% error in calcium concentration. Do I care about an error of that magnitude? No I don't as natural systems respond logarithmically and log(1.12) = 0.05 (or half a dB for the engineers). I don't start worrying until the error is a dB (26%) at least.

Now if you have information about what is actually in your RO water because, for example, you have had it analyzed, you might as well use that info but if you are checking your system output with a TDS meter (as you should be)) and the reading is less than 10 then I think all 0's is a good, or better, guess than some arbitrarily chosen RO profile. If you really want that better than half db accuracy you might try assigning the meter TDS (keeping in mind that the numbers aren't true TDS) to the ions in proportion to what they are in the feed stream. This assumes 1) that the TDS reading is really TDS and 2) that the rejection for the membrane is the same for all ions. Neither is true.
 
Start with RO and build your water to accommodate the style you are brewing. You will see a dramatic increase in the quality of your beer.

I'll need to start looking at what the local store has. I know Target sells 'Market Pantry Purified Water' for just under a buck a gallon but they add some minerals that some people find objectionable (though I should be able to get a water report from customer services)
 
If your dark beers always come out better than your pale beers, then its apparent that the brewing water has too much alkalinity. Conversely, if the dark beers come out worse than the pale beers, then the water alkalinity is low.

So far all the beers have come out good enough that I'm not the only person who'll happily drink them. That said, I think I'm going to have to stump up for a test and then wrap my head around the Bru'n Water site and play with a few drops of phosphoric acid or baking soda.

Still, I guess this is part of the fun...
 
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