Help reading water report

[iXanadu]

I'm currently doing all extract and some special grain brews. My son REALLY wants to grow into all mash brews, and we are both trying to come up to speed. He's researching the DIY equipment and I have the chore of figuring out what water to use.

We don't drink our tap water. It sucks. But... it -might- be ok to brew with. The water we have been buying and brewing with turns out to have a RO stage. So its probably too clean to do a good job mashing. I 'm referencing the How To Brew book (online version here How to Brew - By John Palmer - Residual Alkalinity and Mash pH) on water report analysis against my water report and I don't see the references needed to calculate what kind of mash PH's our water is going to make.

http://www.chesapeake.va.us/services/depart/pub-util/water/2007_Water_Quality_Report.pdf

My supply is under the column NWR & LG.

There is enough stuff in here to make me want to stay away from it. It might be easier to take the bottled water I'm buying and balance it out - but then I know even less about that water.

Anyone know how to make sense of my cities water report? Is it ok to brew with. Any ideas on how to take filtered and RO water and make it suitable?

Bob

 

[beerthirty]

I have hard water. It took a bit of experimenting but finally settled on a 60/40 split of drinking water to RO. The drinking water still has high TDS but mixed with the RO it seems to balance out.

 

[Gordie]

From my (limited) understanding of this stuff, your water report actually doesn't look that bad, except for the presence of chlorine, which is always bad. Your hardness, chloride, sodium and sulfate levels are all kinda workable. The pH is high and they don't report carbonate or bicarbonate levels or calcium, which are all pretty important.

The best test can often be if it tastes good and if not, dilute it with RO water until it does. I don't do much water chemistry but there are some here who spend a lot of time with it. When all else fails, you can always go get some bottled water and start from scratch...