It's all about the Aqua!

[Wortlover]

Last year, we had a water filtration system installed. They gave us a water report. Below are the numbers. Are these enough to get me going, to adjust my water for brew day?


CaC03 Hardness 14
Fe Iron .7ppm
Fe (Post Softener) Iron (Post Softener) .1ppm
Mn Manganese 0
pH 7.5
TDS Total Dissolved Solids 200
Arsenic NT
Gross Alpha NT
Hydrogen Sulfide NT
Radon NT
Bacteria < 1.0 or absent

 

[xpops]

you mentions Post Softener - but no mention of Na content?

 

[Smellyglove]

A filtering system AFAIK exchanges certain ions with other ones. So I you had hard water (magnesium Calcium), the water filter will likely exhange those ions for sodium (Na). So you'll end up with a lot of sodium post filter.

 

[ajdelange]

Last year, we had a water filtration system installed. They gave us a water report. Below are the numbers. Are these enough to get me going, to adjust my water for brew day?

These numbers are not enough to let you know what to do about brewing water (other than buy RO water or install and RO system). The do tell you that you had quite a lot of hardness and alkalinity the hardness part of which was removed and replaced by sodium. The treated water is, thus, not suitable for brewing as it contains more sodium that we are usually happy with. The data also reveals that your source water is higher in iron than is tolerable for brewing.

You could go to Ward Labs to find out what the sodium level is. Perhaps it isn't that bad or perhaps you could get it under control with a modest (1:1) dilution with RO. Attachment of an RO system to the output of the softener is always good advice but you might not want to bear the expense for that. You will also want to know what the water's sulfate and chloride contents are. The Ward Labs report will give you that. If you do send a sample to them send a pre-softener sample. We can easily tell you what the post softener chemistry will be based on the pre filter analysis.

If that 14 ppm as CaCO3 is the hardness at the output of the softener its performance isn't too impressive. Ca++ and Mg++ should each be at about 1 mg/L for a total hardness of about half what you apparently have.

 

[Wortlover]

I ended ordering a small RO system to brew with, $150. With that, I should be able to build water to suit the style of beer brewed. I'm trying not to go too far down the rabbit hole, in terms of the science of water. I do have questions, like when to treat the brew water, before/after mash, and what would be a good list of additives for water tweaking to have. Anyone have a good link to a primer/how to for water
prep?

 

[dyqik]

I ended ordering a small RO system to brew with, $150. With that, I should be able to build water to suit the style of beer brewed. I'm trying not to go too far down the rabbit hole, in terms of the science of water. I do have questions, like when to treat the brew water, before/after mash, and what would be a good list of additives for water tweaking to have. Anyone have a good link to a primer/how to for water
prep?

See the sticky threads "A Brewing Water Chemistry Primer" and "Brewing with low alkalinity water" in this subforum.