Intro and source water help

[tboneth]

Hello all,

I'm fairly new to home brewing, though an old hand and most things culinary. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah, home to a large population of non-drinkers, intrusive laws, but wonderful micro-brews. This looks like a wonderful forum, and I look forward to future dialog.

I have a question pertaining to source water (an Artesian well). After looking over some spreadsheets, wrapping my head around RA, etc, I hoped someone may offer some insight into what my water may be best (and worst) at producing (all measurements are in PPM or mg/l):

Ca: 131
Mg: 52.2
Alkalinity as CaCO3: 340
Na: 55
Chloride: 170
Sulfate: 182
pH: 7.2
Effective Hardness: 124
RA as CaCO3: 216

I prefer mild ales, English bitter, brown ale, Scottish ale, steam-type ales, porter, and stout. I like a floral bouquet, good mouth feel, and I dislike strong tannins. Though not opposed to strong IPA, I have lost my appeal for the strong end of the bitter spectrum these days.

Water chemistry has been a fairly new concept, so please bear with me.. I hope the information provided will be adequate. Thanks!


All the best,

-T

 

[ajdelange]

I'm afraid I don't have very good news for you. Now I know why they call it Salt Lake City. Your water is extremely hard and alkaline and untreated it is hard to imagine that it could be used for brewing any beer. I am not sure I have ever seen a reported alkalinity this high - 6.8 mEq/L. The good news, if there is any, is that there is 6.5 mEq/L of calcium as well. This means that, conceptually, you can reduce the hardness and alkalinity appreciably by boiling the water or by treating it with lime. Boiling is quite simple. Lime treatment less so and is probably not for beginners but several people on this forum do it with success.

The easiest thing for you to do is throw this water away, obtain low mineral water from some source, augment it with necessary minerals (see the Primer) and brew.

Many in your situation are installing RO units which are now available at reasonable prices (relative to the old days anyway) from several sources. With water like yours I assume you have a water softener installed. If you do not you will definitely need one for longevity of an RO system.

 

[mabrungard]

It is an unfortunate misconception that people think that a 'spring' means that the water is good. That is no guarantee and in fact its more likely that the water quality is poor. An Artesian spring earns this caution too.

As AJ mentioned, that is crazy mineralized water that is not well suited for brewing. I'm going to have to disagree with AJ on any recommendation of boiling or lime treatment. The high sulfate and chloride concentrations will be unaffected by those treatments and you'll still have a mess. His 'throw away' recommendation is right on target.

You can learn more about water sources and brewing water chemistry at the Water Knowledge page on the Bru'n Water website.

 

[tboneth]

Thanks for the informative replies! I will avoid this water source, despite it being a nice source of drinking water. Most of the local brewers I know use dechlorinated tap water, so I will follow suit.