Anyone in McKinney, TX have a water report? (bru'n water issues)

[Semicole]

I'm trying to nail down my bru'n water spreadsheet and was curious if anyone here brews in McKinney, TX and had a water report handy. I have seen the one listed online, but when I put those numbers into the spreadsheet it's telling me the numbers are faulty - I assume because the water report online doesn't list carbonates or bicarbonates, so I'm having to use the alkalinity conversion calculator.

 

[ajdelange]

That's because water chemists aren't interested in bicarbonate and carbonate (and brewers aren't really either). Alkalinity and sample pH tell the story. Send your numbers along and I'll run a balance calculation. It is probable that even a properly run balance calculation will lead to a noticeable imbalance as labs do not measure everything, do not measure perfectly accurately and may, for example, measure sodium in even numbered months and potassium in odd.

 

[Semicole]

That's because water chemists aren't interested in bicarbonate and carbonate (and brewers aren't really either). Alkalinity and sample pH tell the story. Send your numbers along and I'll run a balance calculation. It is probable that even a properly run balance calculation will lead to a noticeable imbalance as labs do not measure everything, do not measure perfectly accurately and may, for example, measure sodium in even numbered months and potassium in odd.

Awesome I attached the water report below.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Divide the ppm alkalinity by 0.82 and enter that result where BW demands that you enter ppm bicarbonate. It will be close enough for nigh on any practical purpose.

 

[ajdelange]

I ran some numbers for both the untreated and treated water and neither balanced at all well so in the case the data is more of a problem than your spreadsheet. I'd say that you really can't rely on reports at this quality level (the imbalance is a measure of the quality - it should be as low as possible). The reasons for the poor quality here could be any of the ones I mentioned in No. 2. In particular here though there is no post treatment chloride ion concentration listed. Nothing they did to the water (apparently raised the pH with lye to precipitate iron down to below the SPA SMCL for that ion (0.3) and then get the pH back up to 8.2 with sulfuric acid) would eliminate the chloride and it isn't listed as 0 - it's just missing. Without any chloride the treated water imbalance is 5.2 mEq/L. That's terrible! Assuming the chloride is the same as in the untreated water the imbalance drops to 2.4 mEq/L which is way to high to be able to use these values in any meaningful calculation. I would either use the 0 alkalinity method (see sticky) with this water or send a sample off to Ward Labs.

As for the advice to divide by 0.82: That sort of works in a certain pH range (i.e. the error induced is small). But in the pH region near 8 and above it starts to fall apart. In your case, assuming the alkalinity number is correct, the bicarbonate content would be 126.7 mg/L. The approximation would give you 113.4. That's an error of about 12%. Furthermore, modeling all the alkalinity as bicarbonate (responsible for 96.8% of the alkalinity here) ignores the contributions of (OH)-, H+, CO3-- and, in this case, sulfate and silica to it. Where the basic numbers in a water report are this bad(who knows what the actual alkalinity is?) clearly 12% error isn't that significant.

Speaking of the iron: it is below the SMCL of 0.3 but still above the level where brewers are happy which is 0.1 mg/L. 2:1 dilution with RO water would solve that problem. The alternative is installation of some kind of iron remediation on a batch basis applied to the water you use for brewing or iron remediation equipment installed in your house plumbing.