Joliet water; should i even try.

[CromBrew]

Hey everyone,

So I started all grain brewing earlier this year and have gotten really consistent with my efficiencies, processes, and I have gotten my fermentation controlled. The next logical step for me is to stop buying spring water every time I brew and start using my tap. After reading forever on the subject I called my water department to get my ion levels. I must say it does not look good.

Sulfate - 100
Magnesium - 20-28
Calcium - 60-80
Chloride - 30-50
Sodium - 40
Bicarb - 275-300+
Total Alkalinity - 300+

The water department said they could test a sample from my tap to get specific numbers, but I do not think I should waste my time. Is my water just too hard to even use? I expected to have hard water since I live on top of limestone but I never thought it would be this bad. Let me know what you think.

-E

 

[944play]

It's not going to be any good for a delicate pale beer, but a RIS would probably be fine with that profile. You can dilute your water with RO from a vending machine to get the alkalinity down for lighter brews.

I ended up just buying a RO unit.

 

[ajdelange]

Water like yours certainly presents some challenges but beers have been brewed with such water and will continue to be. So first question is "How does it taste?" I expect pretty awful with that much bicarbonate but you can dispose of a good part of that simply by boiling the water, letting the milky precipitate settle and decanting the clear water. Alternatively you can treat with lime. That's a bit trickier and requires a means of measuring pH. A meter is best but strips are probably good enough for this purpose. I'd try one of those treatments and see how the treated water tasted. You have 3 - 4 meq/L calcium and 1 - 2 mEq/L calcium so you could probably expect to knock out 2 - 3 mEq/ (150 ppm as CaCO3) of the alkalinity. That still leaves quite a bit.

RO is probably the best way out, especially if you are just starting to think about water. Neither boiling or lime treatment is going to touch that sulfate which is pretty hefty and limits your options WRT hops. But you will learn a fair bit about water chemistry if you try one of those more archaic approaches. When I started brewing RO was not so readily available as it is today and not at such reasonable prices.

 

[CromBrew]

The water tastes good to me.

Would I be be

 

[CromBrew]

The water tastes good to me.

Would I be better off building my profile from scratch or diluting with distilled/RO water?

 

[mabrungard]

Typical Midwest water. Great for dark styles, not so good for others. As mentioned above, RO dilution is a great treatment alternative.

 

[ajdelange]

The water tastes good to me.

Would I be better off building my profile from scratch or diluting with distilled/RO water?

Six of one, half a dozen of the other as long as you get the same end result. Starting with RO is easier in the sense that you treat the water as if it has no mineral content and therefore the only things presumed to be in it are things you put into it. OTOH if you do dilutions and adjustments there are more things to consider but the spreadsheets can help you with that. They don't handle things like what happens when you dilute water of one pH with water of another pH very accurately but it usually doesn't matter and the answers they give are plenty accurate enough for homebrewing. The big advantage of taking the dilution/supplementation route is that if forces you to learn more water chemistry. If that's a goal then that's the way to go although you don't have to do it that way at the outset. Another is that it is often possible to get a good profile with nothing more than dilution - you don't have to buy or weigh out any chemicals.

Some will argue for the dilution method on the basis that trace elements (manganese, iron, copper, zinc...) are present to some extent. Others will note that the malt provides plenty of these.

 

[LandoLincoln]

Greetings, fellow Jolietan!

I had our water tested at Ward Labs, btw. Here's the results:

pH: 7.6

Sodium, Na: 81
Potassium, K: 14
Calcium, Ca: 75
Magnesium, Mg: 26
Total Hardness, CaCO3: 296
Nitrate, NO3-N: 0.2
Sulfate, SO4-S: 40
Chloride, Cl: 47
Carbonate, CO3: <1
Bicarbonate, HCO3: 335
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3: 275

Don't ask me what would be best for modifying our water - I'm still trying to work that one out. So far my friend and I have been adding 8mg of calcium chloride to balance out the chloride to sulfate ratio and around 8ml of lactic acid to bring the pH down into the 5.5 to 5.6 range. I hate water chemistry. Going with a 50% distilled water route on the mash seems to do very little to affect mash pH.

 

[CromBrew]

LandoLincoln,

I called the city today and got the flowing numbers. Do you think there can be such a swing?

Calcium 81
Magnesium 29
Sodium 40
Chloride 60
Sulfate 164
Bicarbonate 349
Alkalinity 286

I brewing a Sasion Sunday with 20 SRM and with dilution and CaCl additions I hope to get the following profile.

Calcium 88
Magnesium 22
Sodium 33
Chloride 90
Sulfate 100
Bicarbonate
Alkalinity 229 (153 Residual)

 

[LandoLincoln]

I think I had the water test done around April or May of this year, so I suppose anything's possible.