Extremely hard water: is it usable?

[mental_orbit]

Attached is my local water report, we're supplied by an underground aquifer. Guessing my levels are very high not sure where to go on adjusting my water if it's even useable.

 

[mabrungard]

Its not great. The Mg is fairly high and the alkalinity is very high. The high Ca level is not necessarily a problem (the main source of the hardness). It appears that a minimum dilution of 1 to 1 is desirable and that will still leave you with a water that needs a lot of acidification.

 

[z-bob]

you might have to add even more calcium. Then either precipitate out the bicarbonate and half the magnesium by adding slaked lime, or boil it to remove the bicarbonate.

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Alkalinity_reduction_with_slaked_lime

Or you can buy bottled water. Or just brew stouts. I'm facing a very similar water report (not *quite* as alkaline but also high in iron) and I'm going the bottled water route for now.

 

[djt17]

That water looks similar to mine. Recently I have been using slaked lime to reduce the alkalinity. Only 6 batches so far, but it appears to be working well. I just got sick of buying water.

 

[jpc]

Mine is close to yours, but not quite as bad, and I don't use it except maybe diluted 50:50 with distilled for sparging. I buy distilled water from a local purveyor of water.

 

[z-bob]

That water looks similar to mine. Recently I have been using slaked lime to reduce the alkalinity. Only 6 batches so far, but it appears to be working well. I just got sick of buying water.

That's the way I want to go eventually. But I want to get all-grain brewing down first before dabbling in water chemistry. If I try to focus on too many things at once I get distracted and don't do any of them right.

Do you use a pH meter? Or just calculate the amount of lime to add using some kind of spreadsheet?

 

[djt17]

That's the way I want to go eventually. But I want to get all-grain brewing down first before dabbling in water chemistry. If I try to focus on too many things at once I get distracted and don't do any of them right.

Do you use a pH meter? Or just calculate the amount of lime to add using some kind of spreadsheet?

I use the calculator at brewersfriend.com; I verify with my pH meter. I add 4.5g. of lime per 8 gal water