Understanding North Jersey Water Report

[rgregoryirving]

I've finally decided that I'd like to start venturing into water chemistry in the pursuit of better beer. That being said, I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hydrant with all of the information out there and some of it is hard to interpret.

Attached is a copy of the most recent water report, and below is a screenshot of what I've plugged into Brewfather so far (and what I need).

My understanding is that both Calcium and Magnesium are contained within the reports 'Hardness', but how am I to break that down for Brewfather? Also, from what I can tell is Bicarbonate = Alkalinity on this report? Edit: Used the Bru'n Water spreadsheet to calculate Bicarbonate at 60ppm.

Thanks so much in advance for any help!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

If Alkalinity has been reported "as CaCO3", and is 49.6 ppm, then HCO3- is about 60.5 ppm.

Since your report does not include Ca++ or Mg++ ion ppm's, but does report Hardness (which we will presume to also be "as CaCO3") at 52 ppm, we can make a 'nominal' ballpark projection of your Ca++ and Mg++ ppm's as follows:

Total Hardness = 52 = 2.5(Ca++) + 4.12(Mg++)

For 'nominal' soft water roughly about 70% of Total Hardness comes from Ca++, and 30% comes from Mg++. (as first observed and noted by Kai Troester, aKa Braukaiser)

(0.70 x 52)/2.5 ~= 14.6 ppm Ca++ (rounded)
(0.30 x 52)/4.12 = 3.8 ppm Mg++ (rounded)

 

[rgregoryirving]

Thank you so much for those additional calculations, I really appreciate it!

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I should add here that although my recent online experiment attempting to see if there is correlation between TDS and Hardness rapidly crashed and failed to show any level of significance at all between TDS and Hardness, there does indeed appear to be a recognizable correlation between Hardness and the 70%/30% relationship to Calcium and Magnesium ions.

That said, if the 'nominal' water clusters around 70/30, that does not mean that any individual fresh water source will perfectly conform to the nominal/norm.

Perhaps an open experiment in computing Ca++ and Mg++ ppm's based solely upon ppm Total Hardness (as CaCO3) as reported for exclusively Ward Labs, and single sourced 'natural' fresh water data is in order.

 

[Whiskeymovie]

What part of north Jersey? Some towns have pretty good water for brewing right out of the tap, some, not so much. I would try and get a municipal report. When I lived in Madison, the water was actually pretty decent for brewing, but when I moved to Florham Park (one town over), the water was horrendous for brewing and I went 100% RO.