Artesian Water. Worth Using?

[Minky]

The attached water analysis from Ward Labs is from an artesian well. I have used this water in the past mixed 50-50 with distilled, and made some OK beers. I now have an RO system, and I'm wondering if it makes sense to mix some artesian water with the RO for any of my beers. I brew mostly lighter beers (pilsener, APA, IPA)

I'm concerned that the high bicarbonate level would offset any value there may be in the rest of the mineral content.

 

[Dcpcooks]

You could blend it with RO for dark beers or traditional burton on Trent IPA's. With that said you can add what ever salts you need to RO water and achieve a similar and more repeatable result.

 

[Minky]

You could blend it with RO for dark beers or traditional burton on Trent IPA's. With that said you can add what ever salts you need to RO water and achieve a similar and more repeatable result.

Yeah, I figured that even if I did dilute it with RO, I'd still want to add some other salts. I suspect that building up from RO would make more sense in this case.

 

[ajdelange]

Your water is high enough in alkalinity and hardness that unless you are willing to decarbonate by heating or lime treatment it is essentially 'throw away' water and RO is certainly a more attractive alternative than boiling or lime treatment. You might as well go with all RO which, of course, means that you must add minerals to realize any practical profile for brewing. However it may turn out that there are some blends of your RO water and well water that will give you a profile close to something you want for a particular style. To see simply try different dilution. With 9:1::RO:well you will reduce everything by a factor of 10. Calcium drops to 9.4, sulfate to 5.1 and alkalinity to 29.7. If this happens to suit your needs then you can go with the 9:1 dilution.

A robust spreadsheet or program will let you specify a desired profile and calculate additions of minerals and dilution water with a particular profile that will most closely match the target profile. This is interesting academically but it is probably going to be simplest in most cases to just run with 100% RO with mineral additions.

 

[Minky]

Thanks a lot AJ. That confirms my suspicion that, for the most part, that water just isn't worth the drive to collect it.