Brewing tomorrow, check my water additive numbers?

[mrdonbonjovi]

Hello All,

I'm going to try to play with the chemistry of my water for the first time tomorrow. I've been brewing for about 6 years and I wanted to try another technique to really help my beer. 5 gal batch BTW.

Baseline Water:
Ca: 25
Mg: 6.5
Na: 19
SO4: 15
Cl: 33
HCO3: 83

Target (IPA Style):
Ca: 100
Mg: 18
Na: 19
SO4: 200
Cl: 50
HCO3: 100

Additions:
Gypsum: 4.6g
Epsom: 2.4g
CaCl: 0.7g
CaCO3: 0.4g

Those are the numbers I get from BeerSmith and they seem to jive well with Bru'nWater. Since I haven't done this before I wanted to make sure I wasn't adding a large amount of a specific additive.

Oh! One last thing I current use an RV Water filter on the water in. Does that mess with any of the values of the baseline water?

Thanks in advance guys!

-Matt

 

[Qhrumphf]

I'll let guys who know better handle the RV filter, but I'd say probably not. My understanding, filters are great for removing undesirables like chlorine, but don't really touch the inorganic ions relevant to brewing.

That said, cut the chalk addition. Even if you needed alkalinity, which you don't, that's not a good way to add it anyway. Without that, the calcium should still be in range, and if it wasn't, I'd cut the Epsom salt too and replace it with gypsum since magnesium is a pretty minor player anyway. And without knowing your grain bill, you may still need to add some acid to your mash anyway.

 

[cyanmonkey]

I'd say removing chlorine would be a benefit, don't you?

That said many people don't trust carbon filters. I don't see how it could hurt.