Got My Water Profile In - Kent County, Rhode Island (City Water)

[TheFlyingSparge]

Starting to get into water chemistry. Ordered a test from Ward Laboratories. So far very happy. They were very fast to get back to me. Sent it in Saturday and got it today. See below:

pH 9.9
Total dissolved solids est ppm 122

Na 19ppm
K 1ppm
Ca 16ppm
Mg <1ppm
CaCO3 44ppm
SO4-S 6ppm
Cl 33ppm
CO3 3.7ppm
HCO3 8
CaCO3 16

Started playing with the values in BeerSmith 2. Pretty interesting. I'm actually pretty stoked about leveraging the water as another "tool" for creating good beer.

Would be interested to get the advice/feedback from those more experienced in water.

 

[mabrungard]

That is a great starting point. It's a bit more mineralized than RO water, but only a bit.

 

[ajdelange]

The first thing to do is to learn to read the report. You have listed CaCO2 twice. The first number, 44 is the total hardness as CaCO3 and the final, 16, is the alkalinity as CaCO3. There is a big difference.

The good news is that the alkalinity, 16 ppm as CaCO3, is so low. Anything under 50 is considered pretty good - the lower the better. Second, the sulfate (6 ppm as sulfur = 3*6 = 18 mg/L sulfate ion) is also low enough for the lowest sulfate level beers you would ever want to brew.

 

[TheFlyingSparge]

Awesome. Thanks for the input. It'll be awhile before I'm confident in the knowledge but glad to be on the journey. Doing my first batch with water additions (NEIPA) so hopefully all goes well.