Help balancing Bru'n Water inputs first time

First time trying to treat my water for a pale ale using Bru'n Water. I'm very confused and could use some advice.

My city's water report (http://www.valleywater.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=14713 - RWTP Treated column I think) shows:

Calcium (Ca) 16mg/L
Magnesium (mg) 12mg/L
Sodium (Na) 56mg/L
Potassium 3mg/L
Iron 0

Bicarbonate ?
Carbonate ?
Sulfate (as SO4) 47.4mg/L
Chloride (Cl) 92 mg/L
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Fluoride 0

Also:
Hardness (as CaCO3) 92mG/L
Total Alkalinity (as CaCO3) 63 mg/L

I guess I need to know Bicorbonate and Carbonate. Given PH is 7.8, and Total Alkalinity is 63, I put this in the Alkalinity conversion calculator and get 76.4 Bicarbonate and 0.2 Carbonate.

It then says it's unbalanced. And I didn't need to use "hardness". Did I do this right?

In the end, I'm trying to follow some advice that "1:1 Sulfate:Chloride is pretty crucial" (http://www.alesoftheriverwards.com/2015/08/tired-hands-hophands-clone-revisted.html).

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Based on the brewer's notes, that I've copied below, the water profile used to brew his beer is 'very hard' and the Sulfate/Chloride ratio is 0.8:1 (or expressed as 1.20) and good for brewing a balanced beer'.

From what I've read recently, too much emphasis should not be placed on the Sulfate/Chloride ratio alone without knowing the concentrations of Cl and SO4. Example doubling the concentrations of CL and SO4 will also produce nearly the identical Sulfate/Chloride ratio, 1:1 (or expressed as 0.98) and be good for brewing a balanced beer'.

I am not the most proficient user of Bru'n Water, maybe someone else can fill in any missing pieces here.

Cherry Hill, NJ Tap water
Mash pH 5.35
Water Profile 132ppm Ca, 19ppm Mg, 7ppm Na, 147ppm Cl, 146ppm SO4

doublea said:

First time trying to treat my water for a pale ale using Bru'n Water. I'm very confused and could use some advice.

Click to expand...

Rest assured that you aren't the first to be confused by the way some of these programs treat water report input. The laboratory measures pH and alkalinity as this is much easier to do than measuring bicarbonate and carbonate and, given that the source of alkalinity in most potable water is overwhelmingly attributable to these two species and hydroxyl ions, it is an easy matter to calculate bicarbonate and carbonate. Consequently, the programs should ask for alkalinity and pH and work from there because you really don't need to know the bicarbonate and carbonate contents to solve the chemistry though I imagine most people would want to have an idea as to what they might be. At pH 7.8 and alkalinity of 63 the bicarbonate is 73.9 mg/L and the carbonate 0.2.

The problem you are facing here are laboratory numbers which are not consistent with one another. Even if the bicarbonate number is computed correctly (the small error made by your program does not matter) the profile will not balance. This is because there are not enough cations reported to balance the sulfate, chloride and carbonate and bicarbonate implied by an alkalinity of 63 at any pH. To balance the reported sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium at pH 7.8 would require an alkalinity no greater than 38 and the number is right around 38 at any reasonable (and even some unreasonable, such as 10) pH's.

Thus you have either under reporting of cations or over reporting of anions or both and, as this is a rather substantial imbalance (no laboratory director should be able to look at himself in the mirror in the morning after reporting an ion profile with an imbalance of almost 0.5 mEq/L), there is nothing you can do about it except put the report in the circular file and send off a sample to Ward Labs.

No, it is not crucial to maintain a chloride to sulfate ratio at any particular value though this notion gained popularity for a while. See https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=526109 for discussion of this.

Thanks both, very helpful.

I will double check the report. Fixed the link if you want to see if I'm missing something:
http://www.valleywater.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=14713

And I guess ward labs is the way to go. I just ordered a test kit.

Clearly I have a lot of reading yet to do, but the threads on ratio are helpful. Maybe for this batch I will try distilled/RO and additives, until I know my tap profile.