Help me understand my water profile...

[DVCNick]

I'm thinking that water profile might be the next place to look for process improvement for me.
I went and downloaded what I believe is the water report for my area. Going through it, I can pull the following information that I think is relevant (the report is dated 2016, so hopefully stuff hasn't changed).

General treatment procedure:
1) Chlorine is added
2) "Alum and caustic" are added for coagulation, a process that removed cloudiness.
3) Water goes through a settling basin
4) Filtered through sand and anthracite
5) Chlorine is added again
6) Caustic soda is added to adjust the pH to approximately 7.2
7) Fluoride is added
8) Polyphosphate is added for corrosion control

Tested levels various impurities:

Fluoride - .33 mg/l
Nitrate - .12 mg/l
Copper - .0038 mg/l
Lead - .31 PPB

TTHMs "byproduct of drinking water chlorination" - 19-45 PPB
Haloacetic Acids "byproduct of drinking water chlorination" 21-45 PPB

Free Chlorine - 1.44-3.06? (not sure on units)
PH - 7.3
Alkalinity - 12 Mg/l
Phosphate - .6 Mg/l
Hardness - 4 Mg/l

Is this enough information to determine my "starting water profile" for brewing purposes? There are a few other things mentioned but I don't currently think they are relevant. Thanks for any input.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

The relevant items for beer brewing are:
Calcium
Magnesium
Sodium
Chloride (which is not chlorine)
Sulfate
Alkalinity

BTW, the units of Mg/L and ppm are the same thing.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Yep, what Silver is Money said.

The only relevant information that you've given is alkalinity (12mg/L) and Hardness (4mg/L). That tells us that your water is very soft with little alkalinity and should be very good for brewing. Actually, they are so low that you could get away with treating it as per RO water.

 

[DVCNick]

Ok thanks... I forgot to mention, the only things I've done to my water so far is Brita(charcoal) filter which I believe removes chlorine, and on the last batch I added one quarter of one campden tablet to each 5 gallons (about a quarter tablet in the strike water and another quarter tablet in the sparge water) that I read removed some other chlorine derivative that a charcoal filter doesn't get.

So I only have about one thing on that list in the report... do most water quality reports have all the info above? Can the water company give you more info, or do you have to send a sample for testing somewhere?

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Chances are there is already a water report listed for you. Where in the world is your water from?

 

[DVCNick]

I'm in SC, specifically, this is the document I can find from my supplier (this actually is the 2017 version now; looks like the two numbers are the same):

https://www.easleyutilities.com/water/documents/ECU CCR Water Quality Report 2017.pdf

 

[Gnomebrewer]

That document is more for drinking water quality (contaminants) than salt concentrations that affect brewing.

Given that the alkalinity and hardness (Mg and Ca) of your water are so low, you could simply follow the water chemistry primer in the brew science section (sticky) if you don't want to get too technical. The only thing you are really in the dark about are sulphates, chlorides and Sodium.

I can't find a listed profile for Easley, but Greenville (which is likely very similar) is listed by two brewers as
Ca: 1mg/L; Mg: 1mg/L, Na: 8mg/L; Cl: 5mg/L; SO4: 5mg/L; Alkalinity: 10mg/L
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/water-profiles
This supports the 'very soft' water shown in your report. If I was in your position, I'd assume this as my base water.

 

[DVCNick]

Cool resource there, thanks.
Based on other notes in my report for Easley, I'm also guessing that is a safe assumption that it would be very close to Greenville based on the following:

Greenville uses one lake as the base source, Easley uses another, but they are very close by, so I'd think any naturally occurring chemical concentrations would likely be similar? And report states that Easley occasionally buys water from Greenville to meet high demand, and that the treatment process between the two is very similar.

I'll start from there. Thanks again!

 

[Gnomebrewer]

The treatment process is very unlikely to affect anything (other than chlorine or chloramine concentration).