mrbugawkagawk
Well-Known Member
i live in lansing illinois a suburb of chicago, i cant seem to find a water profile with the information that would help me adjust my water. Anyone have any advice?
i like using hot water from the water heater(less time to boil, my hot water is at 140) , are there any filtration systems that i could use that would hook up or that i could modify to hook up to a regular hose faucet?
I am a former chemist who lived in the Chicago area for 40 years. I cannot count the amount of times I did a water analysis on Chicago water. The water in all the Great Lakes is soft water. The hardness was usually around 6 or 7 grains. The chemistry of Chicago water was also very consistent. You can check with the Metropolitan Sanitary District to get all of the specifics. However, you should pay attention to the amount of chlorine in the water, especially if you are an extract brewer.
When the malt company dries the extract or concentrates it for the liquid all of the salts, metals etc from their water supply is left behind. Combining these minerals, salts ions etc with the Chicago water may give you some different tastes than you were expecting. To prevent this from happening when I brewed in Chicago I used bottled deionized water with no problem.
If you decide to use Chicago tap water, I would suggest a good charcoal filteto remove the high chlorine content from the water. If you decide to go thForest Preserve and use some of their well water you will avoid the chlorine but willnow be using hard water and will typically have elevated levels of calciumand iron.
That's weird........I just received the water quality report in my town (Mt. Prospect) and noticed the chloride level was very low. I sent an inquiry about it to the supervisor of public works and he said Nowhere in Chicago do they treat their water with chlorine gas.
From what I've been hearing lately, they're using chloramine more, which is supposed to be harder to get out of your strike water than chlorine. It won't evaporate overnight, and you can't just boil it off. Campden tablets are the way to go, from what I've been told.
-It is unclear whether the city uses chloramine, but at a minimum they use chlorine. Calling the water department is useless - they didn't know what I was talking about and referred me to my alderman. The general consensus among local brewing professionals I've talked to is that Chicago uses chlorine, not chloramine.
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