Hard water... too hard?

[MrSpiffy]

It seems that I made a mistake in my last brew, where I used softened water. (Normally, I've filled from the kitchen tap, which is not softened.) How hard is too hard for water? Do most people just cut with R/O water to reduce hardness? I have an R/O system I can use, if I replace the filters. And I can reuse the gray water for our garden or something. So, that might actually work pretty well. (brew day = watering day?)

Here's a link to my area's well stats:
Inorganics results

Any thoughts?

 

[ajdelange]

RO water does indeed make a brewer's life easier. See the primer.

 

[944play]

Your water looks a lot like mine, so I got an RO unit and mostly follow the primer (though I like sulfate more than AJ). I direct the waste water ('concentrate') into the washing machine basket and do a load of cold laundry on brew days.

 

[MrSpiffy]

Thanks, guys. I'll check out the water chemistry primer. I keep forgetting to check the stickies for stuff like this...

 

[mabrungard]

Hardness is almost never a problem in brewing. The alkalinity is the primary problem with this water. If the OP tried to brew with this water after softening, it was probably not a good result since the hardness went down while the alkalinity stayed constant. Therefore, the RA sky-rocketed along with the mash pH.

In the case of this water, its almost ideal for lime softening. That treatment could knock the calcium content down below 15 ppm and the magnesium below 3 ppm when properly performed. The decision to do this type of water treatment depends on how much effort the brewer wants to contribute to their brewing. Time and effort is required. If the brewer is not into that sort of effort, then buying a RO unit is a lot easier.

 

[MrSpiffy]

I'm thinking that, since I already have a R/O unit, I'll just go that route. I haven't run into lime softening before, so maybe that could be interesting. Any links on how that works with brewing?

Also, it looks like I linked the wrong PDF... should be fixed now.

 

[MrSpiffy]

I noticed a nifty tool in the How to Brew site for determining an estimated mash pH:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html

According to the instructions, I'm just under a pH of 6.1, using the unsoftened city water. Looks a bit high...

Could I just use some 5.2 to get down into the proper range? Or would you guys still recommend R/O water?

 

[mabrungard]

I noticed a nifty tool in the How to Brew site for determining an estimated mash pH:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html

According to the instructions, I'm just under a pH of 6.1, using the unsoftened city water. Looks a bit high...

Could I just use some 5.2 to get down into the proper range? Or would you guys still recommend R/O water?

Yep, its nifty. Too bad its totally wrong. Don't go down that path if you are brewing dark beers. That is where that resource falls flat.

5.2 doesn't work. Don't waste your time there. You are better off with the RO water.

 

[MrSpiffy]

Okay, so is there any point to "crafting" specific variations of minerals and salts? Or is there a happy medium that I can use most of the time? Or is it more like once I head down this path, I may as well just calculate what type of water I want for each and every brew I create?

Is there a resource that at least recommends how to set your water up for success with different styles of beer?

I will add that I really enjoy nice, thick, sweet and malty beers. I love porters and stouts (particularly sweet stouts or milk stouts). But, I also like something that's lighter, yet creamy. Nothing too bitter, though. I'm not a fan of IPAs, by any means. (yet...)

 

[ajdelange]

Sort of. The Primer will get you started but it demands that you get down to low mineral water by dilution with RO which may be a problem for you if you don't have a source of RO. The Primer will get you a good beer (dark or light despite what you may be told) most of the time. You can do things that will screw up a beer made under its guidance. The alternative to it is to acquire a thorough understanding of water chemistry which I highly encourage but that is not something in my experience trying to push that over about 25 yrs that most people are willing to undertake.

 

[MrSpiffy]

Well, considering that I've already dealt with water hardness and buffering capacity, when dealing with marine aquariums, I would imagine that a good chunk of water chemistry and pH around brewing deals with those same topics. We used different scales for measuring hardness in aquariums, but hopefully that gets me off on the right foot. (We measured in kh and dh, but some also measure in meq/l for carbonate hardness.) I'm willing to read and learn about water chemistry, although in my experience it's not something that I'll put into practice to its fullest capacity. But I want to know enough to understand what's going on and how to set myself up for success.

I do have access to R/O water, both at the grocery store that's 2 minutes away and with my own R/O system. So, I have no issues getting pure water to start from.

I also dealt with other minerals, like calcium and magnesium, and adding them into my system to maintain coral growth and health.

Edit: I do want to add that I'm not really that big into actual chemistry, so I'd like to avoid doing any equation balancing, if possible. I'm not sure how in-depth this is going to get, so just throwing that out there right away.

Edit #2: I stumbled onto the Kaiser water calculator spreadsheet. Looks like a decent place to start tinkering. Any thoughts around it? Looks pretty detailed.

 

[ajdelange]

Your post implies a very thought provoking question: What constitutes the thorough understanding I said you needed in my earlier post? An easy, but frivolous, answer would be that you should read Morgan and Stumm or a similar text. Certainly most of the hard core chemistry is in there. But there is also a whole lot of stuff in there you wouldn't need to know. And you would also need to know how that basic chemistry is applied to brewing. So that's not the answer.

So let's try another approach: Water chemistry would be very straight forward if it weren't for the carbonate system. Calculating how much calcium chloride to add to get a given level of chloride is pretty simple. I think a core concept in brewing water chemistry is that you must be able to look at the equation

CO2 + H2O <---> H2CO3 <---> H+ + HCO3- <---> 2H+ + CO3--

and be able to calculate from the pH what fraction of the total carbon atoms are in each of the three species. Or turn things around and calculate the number of carbon atoms in a sample from the amount of acid it takes to move it from its pH to another lower pH (i.e. it's alkalinity). If you can do things like that you can then do other things like prepare a spreadsheet that will synthesize a one water profile from another by addition of DI dilution water and salts. But in practical brewing one seldom does that so is that something you need to know? I think so. There are other similar examples but this is the most important one. So perhaps the answer is to get up to speed on acid/base chemistry with emphasis on Henderson-Hasselbalch equation.

Clearly a properly constructed spreadsheet is a good way to learn the quantitative aspects of Henderson Hasselbalch and other brewing related stuff. Some things to look for
1. Does it calculate the electrical balance of a specified water profile?
2. Does it calculate the distribution of carbo species as a function of pH and temperature?
3. Does it tell you whether a water profile is super saturated with respect to both calcium carbonate or carbon dioxide and what the saturation pH is for CaCO3?
4. Can it accept specification of alkalinity in either moles of carbon per liter, mvals or ppm as CaCO3 and, with the latter 2 does it ask what the defining pH for alkalinity is?
5. Is it capable of synthesizing a water profile at any (reasonable) pH from a source water at any (reasonable) pH using dilution water of arbitrary ion content and pH and does it calculate the amount of carbonic acid required to dissolve calcium carbonate?
6. Is the synthesis based on minimizing the weighted (weights chosen by user) RSS of the logs of the ratios of desired and synthesized ion contents?
7. Does it have a selection of acids, organic and mineral, for use in pH adjustment and are the buffering capacities correctly calculated for the case of weak acids (e.g. phosphoric)?

But that's only half the story. Deep understanding comes not only from understanding the theory but realizing how it applies to the real world. In other words one also needs lots of experience and that comes from brewing and taking and recording lots of measurements when you do.

After over 20 years of pondering this basic question I have concluded that most brewers will not choose to undertake this learning process nor probably should they. At one time I thought the answer was "Give 'em a spreadsheet that does all the hairy stuff" and the result was a spreadsheet that does all the stuff I listed above plus a lot more but that isn't the answer either. A user has to understand the underlying chemistry in order to use such a spreadsheet effectively. That's why the Primer was written

 

[MrSpiffy]

ajdelange, thanks for taking the time to write all of that out. It really is informative, and thought-provoking. That's an incredible amount of information for anyone to absorb, let alone the average homebrewer. I can understand why most would choose to ignore the science and just opt for an easy solution. I'll admit, all of those items have me a bit intimidated. I'm by no means a chemistry wizard. But I understand a bit of how the bicarbonates provide buffering capacity, and how hydrogen ions decrease pH (not to mention how the hydrogen bonds with carbonates to kill that buffering capacity before finally lowering pH). I need somewhere simple to start. I think the biggest issues is getting your mash to the proper pH. But, obviously, there's a lot more to water chemistry when it comes to calcium, magnesium, and other minerals and salts that affect flavors, foaming/head retention, mouthfeel, extraction, etc.

I guess what I want is a good place to start learning this stuff, and implement one thing at a time as I brew. Otherwise, it'll feel like I've been thrown in the deep end with concrete shoes and no floaties, you know? Learn about alkalinity and buffering first, do a brew implementing what I've learned. Then learn about calcium/magnesium, and do another brew. Trying to learn everything and then implement it all at once would be really overwhelming.

Spreadsheets are all fine and good, and they'll probably be where I start. But I want to know what's going on behind the scenes, at least in a basic form. I don't necessarily need to know all of the chemical equations, but understanding how each item affects the mash, fermentation, etc. will be really helpful. I really liked this page from braukaiser.com. It helps to illustrate the point, show some equations, but also explain what's going on in a fairly comprehendable fashion. (It's also where I found a handy spreadsheet at the bottom of the page.)

For me, this needs to happen in baby steps, in order for it to really stick in my head.

 

[ajdelange]

I don't advertise it widely but the spreadsheet I partially described above is available at www.wetnewf.org. Perhaps more significant to this discussion is that there is also a users manual at the same place. If you were to download both of those and read the manual working the examples with the spreadsheet you would have at least been exposed to the core of the water chemistry you need to understand for brewing. I don't usually mention it for the reasons discussed in the earlier post. It may be overwhelming to you but you have absolutely nothing to lose except a few minutes of your time if you download it and have a look.

[Edit] I just put the latest version of the spreadsheet out there. It's got some features that are not documented in the manual which I haven't updated in quite a while (e.g. the ability to calculate recovery limitations in RO systems). Also it's done in Office 2011 for Mac which won't open spreadsheets from PC versions of Excel and there may be trouble going the other way too.

 

[MrSpiffy]

I can't thank you nearly enough for sharing that site with me. There's so much information and a lot of tools to go through, but it's a treasure trove of knowledge. Much of it is probably beyond where I'll even approach for homebrewing. But it's great to have access to it, if I need/want it. Makes me wish I had paid a little more attention to subjects like chemistry and heat transfer in college.

I've saved copies of the NUBWS and the user manual. I'll read them and see where I can go from there. Thanks again!

 

[MrSpiffy]

One thing I'm noticing in the spreadsheet is a lot of little calculations strewn all over the place. Are those used within the calculations? Or are they something you used to help in making the functional areas of the spreadsheet?

Also, the water report I have from the city isn't as detailed as what you have available in your spreadsheet. Is it pretty common that to get a more-detailed report from the water utility you need to request it?

 

[ajdelange]

Those are my 'scratch' calculations. As I've stopped promoting this I've stop maintaining it in 'ready for prime time television' form. I've taken out those scratch things and re-posted it. In general, if it's not in a colored area it's not part of the 'official' spreadsheet. For example the RO limiting salt area and the calculation of the acid needed to set mash pH to a particular value are, at this point 'experimental'.

Some cities post very thorough inorganic data with information in things like strontium and thallium and some don't even give you alkalinity data. It depends. The spreadsheet allows input of the most prevalent ions. If you don't know what fluoride or potassium levels are just leave those blank. The only place they are used is in checking on the balance of the report. You will never design brewing water to have x ppm potassium and y fluoride (though you could as the synthesis section does have some potassium salts and you can reduce fluoride by dilution).

Most guys seem to get a Ward Labs analysis of their water. It covers the ions important to brewers.

 

[MrSpiffy]

Thanks. I just didn't know if I could get rid of those extra cells to clean things up, or if they were necessary for something. I get a bit anal about making documents tidy, when I write them up. Must be the engineer in me taking over again... It's odd how I'm picky about some stuff like that, but don't really care about other things that might drive people nuts.

I don't know if I'll go so far as to get my water analyzed, at this point. I plan to do my next brew with R/O water, and use some of the main salts/minerals to build it up to something close to ideal. I guess I want to try out working with water chemistry a few times to see if I can really notice a difference in the quality of my beer. Not that I don't think it can be a game-changer, especially with lighter beers. But I'm still so new to brewing that I don't know if my own techniques would impact the quality more than the water, right now. I just tried my first AG brew, so I need to work on refining my technique a bit more with that, too. (I'm thinking my own mill would help a LOT.)

I know there are other techniques for dealing with hard water. But I'm guessing it's just easiest to get pure R/O water and make your own water profile from scratch, rather than trying to manipulate or shoehorn city water into some other profile. Might as well just take this route from the get-go.

Here's my general plan for water:
I want to try out making water from R/O source water. Find some different water profiles that match the beer I want to make, and then try to replicate that with my beer a few times. As I start getting more into it, I'll probably dabble more into some of the more advanced areas of your spreadsheet a little bit at a time to see how it affects things. My thought here is that I don't want to change too many things at once. Otherwise, I won't know what happened or changed, should something go wrong (or right!).

By the way, what's your background? Chemist?

 

[ajdelange]

I don't know if I'll go so far as to get my water analyzed, at this point. I plan to do my next brew with R/O water, and use some of the main salts/minerals to build it up to something close to ideal. I guess I want to try out working with water chemistry a few times to see if I can really notice a difference in the quality of my beer. Not that I don't think it can be a game-changer, especially with lighter beers.

It certainly can be a game changer. It was, for me, the final step in achieving what I consider very good beer as opposed to good beer. The problem is, as we've discussed and as you've seen from NUBWS, the subject is at least intricate if not complex. You have confessed to being an engineer. This disease is not curable and effects one throughout his entire life though perhaps those close to him suffer more (see ). Brewing water chemistry is the sort of thing engineers just can't keep their hands off. There are more over engineered homebrews out there than Carter's got pills (and almost as many spreadsheets, calculators, apps, nomographs.... - all done by engineers).

But I'm still so new to brewing that I don't know if my own techniques would impact the quality more than the water, right now.

They certainly can. Tweaking water is definitely for advanced brewers. Just as you need to learn how to ferment and package wort before you move on to wort production (i.e. go to all grain) you need to master the techniques of wort production before moving on to the nuances of water refinement. But, of course, if you can't get anything but poor quality extract you won't be able to produce good extract beer so also you won't be able to produce good beer from grain unless you have decent water. That is what the Primer is for. It tells you how to make decent water from RO for broad style groupings.

I strongly encourage you to resist the temptation to do anything more than follow the Primer at this point in your brewing career. The odds of a spreadsheet leading you astray are, IMO, greater than the odds of it bringing you towards better beer. This doesn't mean that a spreadsheet cannot be a fantastic educational tool. I encourage people to plug their tap water or RO water into a spreadsheet and play around with salt and dilution water additions

I know there are other techniques for dealing with hard water. But I'm guessing it's just easiest to get pure R/O water and make your own water profile from scratch, rather than trying to manipulate or shoehorn city water into some other profile. Might as well just take this route from the get-go.

Absolutely true. It is the way more and more brewers are going these days. The downside is that you don't get the learning experience that comes from learning to decarbonate with lime or by boiling. You can, of course, take those up experimentally if you want to (and NUBWS has sections for calculations on both).

Here's my general plan for water:
I want to try out making water from R/O source water. Find some different water profiles that match the beer I want to make, and then try to replicate that with my beer a few times.

Here's where you run into problems. You can, from DI water, synthesize any reasonable (means the profile must balance electrically - many don't) mineral profile very accurately (typical ion concentration error 1% or less) if you imitate the way the water was made by nature. Most water contains calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate enters the water when limestone is dissolved by carbonic acid and to match such water you must do the same thing. NUBWS can do all the calculations but that's not the point. The point is that fiddling with CO2 is a big PITA and the result is seldom worth the trouble because the first thing a brewer confronted with natural water usually does is remove the calcium carbonate or figure out how to neutralize it or how to get around it otherwise and you would have to do the same. So why bother putting the bicarbonate in in the first place?

The ultimate reflection is probably that you can make better beer by not mimicing a profile than you can by mimicing one. This implies that you can make a better Burton Ale than the original brewers of Burton did and that's probably true. The most experienced brewers follow the Primer (not the Primer exactly but it's general principles - See Gordon Strong's book).

By the way, what's your background? Chemist?

Electrical engineer (retired).

 

[MrSpiffy]

I have to say that you've been extremely helpful in pointing me in the right direction to continue improving my beer-brewing skills. I have to agree that, at this point, the spreadsheet and manual are still a bit befuddling, and probably will be until I get quite a few more brews under my belt. But it's all been eye-opening at just how much can really go into the entire brewing process. The primer is a really great place to start, and it's not overly complicated for someone just dipping into AG or water chemistry to start with. It's gotta be the engineer in me that keeps poking and prodding to understand more about the chemistry. Even though I don't even really like chemistry, I still want to understand what's going on and how to improve things.

By the way, my background is mechanical engineering. I knew a few EEs in college, and they tended to dive into more-technical subjects quite a bit more than others did. But, like you said, once you've got "The Knack" it never goes away. I hate being so analytical sometimes, trying to figure everything out. I don't even really care! But I just HAVE to know! Ugh!

Anyway, I'll start out with the primer. But I'll still keep copies of NUBWS and the manual, as I'm sure I'll gradually want to know more and more as I get into it. Now's the time to get my processes down for brewing, bottling, etc. I'll work out the more-technical details as I continue brewing.

Thanks, again! You've been a big help, and given me a great place to work from.

Edit: The only thing that drives me nuts is that the primer measures in teaspoons and such. I'd much rather have weights, since they're more accurate.

Edit: Edit:... and there's the engineer in me talking again.....