Deciphering City Water Report

[mweg]

Posted this in the all-grain section, but someone suggested this might be a better place.

I have done about a half dozen all grain brews so far, and they have all turned out excellent. However, the more I read on here, the more I worry about water profile and how it might be affecting my beers.

I am currently using city tap water with no additions (many brewers I have talked to here say they successfully use straight city water for everything). I understand that most people here recommend getting a water report from Ward labs or the like, but my city posts a water quality report nearly every day on their website. I feel like this would be far more useful than a sample I take once a year or so, but the problem is I am unsure if the city report contains all the information I need to fill out something like the Bru'n Water spreadsheet or even the EZ Water Calculator.

Here is a link to the water report: https://www.siouxfalls.org/public-works/water-division/water-quality

Would someone be able to help me translate that into some useful info for one of the spreadsheets? Or is it a lost cause? I will also attach a screenshot of today's report so we can keep referencing the same numbers. Thanks in advance for any assistance!

 

[ajdelange]

but my city posts a water quality report nearly every day on their website. I feel like this would be far more useful than a sample I take once a year or so, but the problem is I am unsure if the city report contains all the information I need to fill out something like the Bru'n Water spreadsheet or even the EZ Water Calculator.

You are a fortunate man indeed! Yes, this report contains all the information you need in a form you can plug into any spreadsheet. Possible exception is bicarbonate which most of the popular spreadsheets think is a proxy for alkalinity and prefer to enter bicarbonate though most (all?) of them will allow you to enter alkalinity. If you find one that won't divide alkalinity by 50 and multiply by 61 to get a bicarbonate value of 46.4 mg/L for 38 ppm alkalinity. Because of your high pH that isn't correct (your bicarbonate is actually 40) but the spreadsheets all (AFAIK) use the 61*alk/50) formula. As alkalinity is low the error shouldn't be too great.

The pH is higher than normal but that is not a problem (except possibly in the way the spreadsheets handle alkalinity). Your chlorine is mostly bound as chloramine so that you will need to use Campden tablets to clear that. The high hardness is an eye opener with the consequences to be determined by looking at the anions. Low alkalinity is good news and bad news. You don't have to do much about controlling mash pH. The bad news is not really bad if you like beers that benefit from lots of sulfate because you have that in spades though some brewers like even more. But if you favor delicate lagers which use noble hops it is very bad news indeed. For those beers you would have to buy (or make) RO water.