Just got Ward Labs water results. I think I might have to use RO or mix water?

[z-bob]

My water (according to the municipal water report) has 317 ppm of HCO3-. I've been brewing pretty good light beers with it by acidifying the mash with lactic acid and the sparge with phosphoric acid. If I use all lactic acid, I can taste it in the beer, or at least I think I can. Buying acid is cheaper and more convenient than buying water.

My last couple of brews, I acidified the mash, but I did not acidify the sparge water; I sparged with cool water. That worked surprisingly well. I'm going to keep doing that. I will still buy RO water from some beers (Czech pils?) but for most I can actually use this tapwater. A year ago, I didn't think that was possible.

 

[rkhanso]

@rkhanso Where in Minneapolis are you? Are you on city water?

I'm in Plymouth. We have wells, not surface water like Minneapolis (Mississippi River).
The City of Plymouth provides drinking water to its
residents from a groundwater source: 17 wells ranging from
302 to 473 feet deep that draw water from the Prairie Du
Chien-Jordan and Prairie Du Chien Group aquifers.


Since I am doing BIAB, I don't need sparge water. If my water is that bad, I guess that makes it somewhat simple then....just manually adjust some RO water and I'll be set. I'll be reading all the RO water threads now.

I may be wishing I didn't up-size my brew system now that I have to buy water. I have a 25 gallon kettle and I think that 8-10 gallons will be minimum batch because my pot is wider than it is tall.

Thanks everyone, for all the input.

 

[gunhaus]

I didn't mean to give a wedgie - But i really am fortunate to have pretty useful water! There are some minor variations in my over simplistic post- but over-all that split is just about what I do. I have never had it tested because it works well as is and has for thirty odd years. Don't fix it if it ain't broke!

I too read AJ's posts, and I do try to wrap my mind around it all - but i can say with some certainty a lot of it eludes me. I think my maths are too weak or something!!!

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

My water (according to the municipal water report) has 317 ppm of HCO3-. I've been brewing pretty good light beers with it by acidifying the mash with lactic acid and the sparge with phosphoric acid. If I use all lactic acid, I can taste it in the beer, or at least I think I can. Buying acid is cheaper and more convenient than buying water.

Just curious what strength and how many milliliters per gallon of Lactic Acid are you adding before you can taste it?

 

[z-bob]

Just curious what strength and how many milliliters per gallon of Lactic Acid are you adding before you can taste it?

I'm doing 4 gallon brews. At 5 or 6 ml of 88% lactic acid, I can't taste it. At 8 to 10 ml (which I need if I acidify all of the water) I can taste it, or at least I think I can.

 

[SEndorf]

I'm in Plymouth. We have wells, not surface water like Minneapolis (Mississippi River).
The City of Plymouth provides drinking water to its
residents from a groundwater source: 17 wells ranging from
302 to 473 feet deep that draw water from the Prairie Du
Chien-Jordan and Prairie Du Chien Group aquifers.


Since I am doing BIAB, I don't need sparge water. If my water is that bad, I guess that makes it somewhat simple then....just manually adjust some RO water and I'll be set. I'll be reading all the RO water threads now.

I may be wishing I didn't up-size my brew system now that I have to buy water. I have a 25 gallon kettle and I think that 8-10 gallons will be minimum batch because my pot is wider than it is tall.

Thanks everyone, for all the input.

I was guessing we shared the same water system.
We do.
In our area, Cub Foods has RO water with very low TDS at .39 / gallon.
For me, it's not worth the headache of trying to blend. I have a titrate system and measure 340 - 420- ppm.

 

[rhys333]

I didn't mean to give a wedgie - But i really am fortunate to have pretty useful water! There are some minor variations in my over simplistic post- but over-all that split is just about what I do. I have never had it tested because it works well as is and has for thirty odd years. Don't fix it if it ain't broke!

I too read AJ's posts, and I do try to wrap my mind around it all - but i can say with some certainty a lot of it eludes me. I think my maths are too weak or something!!!

All in good fun.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I'm doing 4 gallon brews. At 5 or 6 ml of 88% lactic acid, I can't taste it. At 8 to 10 ml (which I need if I acidify all of the water) I can taste it, or at least I think I can.

I recently treated RO water for a Kolsch using 88% Lactic Acid at a rate of just under 1 milliliter per gallon. The next morning before mashing I sampled the water and could taste 'lactic' in it. The wort going into the fermentor didn't taste of lactic acid at all though. I do BIAB and sparged the grain using ~3 gallons of untreated RO water to hit pre-boil volume. Thanks for getting back to me.

 

[ajdelange]

I too read AJ's posts, and I do try to wrap my mind around it all - but i can say with some certainty a lot of it eludes me. I think my maths are too weak or something!!!

If you have tangled with the Siacci equations the math discussed here should be trivial for you. I must not be explaining things properly.

 

[gunhaus]

Hi AJ

Boy, I don't want to say anything that ticks someone off! So PLEASE don't take anything I say as a slam of any sort - it is not meant to be. Rather I would observe that folks look at this topic differently from different angles.

My maths are fine boss, and i really can follow all of this; although chemistry is not my field. But there are times when you guys get really rolling with all the details and the hows and whys that my head gets to flat out swimming. Now I am by training a ballistic engineer. I design high tech small caliber projectiles, and the equipment to manufacture them. I even wrote a little treatise on the fallacy of the ballistic co-efficient in small arm applications where in I theorized that b.c. is not trackable in a linear fashion as was a popular practice of the day, but was in fact subject to rising and lowering and going static for periods over the course of say 1-2 miles. A notion that was laughed at by a few folks and was really not provable with chronographs, or even sonic displacement measuring devices that are stuck in place at fixed distance intervals. A theory, that as luck has it, proved to be completely true 25 odd years later, as shown by use of modern Doppler to measure trajectory and velocity. (You know what they say about blind squirrels and nuts)

My personal bona fide is not relevant to spit - And I mention it only to point out that if I find myself easily confused by all this, imagine what it is like for guys who don't casually dabble with figures for a living. And that is what I see happening with water chemistry at almost every turn. There ARE guys that really get this and LOVE the extreme details, and the jargon, and the fine tech details! You all provide FANTASTIC detail - and a lot of it might as well be in Klingon to many of us! Some times guys just need to know HOW, and WHEN to add an ingredient to the soup - Not so much the molecular structure of the ingredient, and the in depth chemical break down of the ingredient as is it slowly melds into the broth - If you follow me. I see guys just sort of fading out on this.

I know it is a complex, and detailed field. I also know that the wonderful work you provided in the Brew Science section under the water chemistry primer is a beautiful and simple approach that I admire and am grateful for. (And indeed have used a number of times) But EVEN this and Bru'n Water seems to go over a lot of heads. And I guess I get frustrated on other folks behalf sometimes and I am afraid I have a tendency to get snarky in my old age!(My wife calls it being a crabby old buttinski I believe) I apologize for that! I just hate seeing guys get so frustrated with it all that they give it up or ignore it - because all the deep talk glazes them over.

I know, it would be better if people educated themselves and at least learned the rudimentary aspects of the water science related to brewing - Many do. But many just can't or won't grasp it. And sadly, I think a lot of folks want the fast and simple approach to all of it - A simple cookbook - if you will. Something where they can say, "Ok, I add this much of this to that much of that." Simple numbers anyone can measure, with basic tools anyone can afford, and ingredients that don't take an owners manual to decipher. I know a full lab of fine equipment is a real treat. And a treat far beyond the means of many home brewers. Some of us just have to get by with e-bay ph measures, and plain old hydrometers, and we need to measure on our cheap little digital scales from wal-mart. We would LOVE to have bigger badder toys! After all; he with best stuff at death wins! But in reality MOST of the time - Close enough HAS to be close enough. And it is hard sometimes not to feel as if there is a contemptuous tone being directed to those who need to take a less sophisticated approach.

Now, I am well aware that everyone is free to tune it out and skip a post if it is too overwhelming. But I am afraid sometimes, that many posts on this topic come across as sort of - THIS is essential - if you don't do it your beer will suck- you have to learn it the hard way or it won't work - anyone who doesn't do it will always make and inferior product, etc.

This is of course not true - and I doubt this is the intention. But i know for a fact it is taken that way by some. I had a recent conversation with one of the owners of a LHBS. He said, " I am lucky if I can scrounge up a spare 5-6 hours on the weekend to brew, I don't have hours on end to spare sorting out water profile spread sheets! If I did all that I would never MAKE BEER!"

I am pretty sure there is a lot of that out there.

All that rambling done - I do THANK YOU for what you provide. I find it quite interesting, and I like the challenge of sorting out the parts that evade me at first. I am sorry if I took a snarky view on it (Gave a collective wedgie it was called!) Please keep up the great work. Just try to keep in mind that a whole lot of brewers ain't up there in the Stratosphere with a few of you guys - and sometimes a bit of simplicity may go farther that a whole bucket of complicated.

John

P.S. I think i am going to retire from all this for a while! Beer is supposed to be fun, and it is my escape mechanism. When it starts to make ya cranky it is time to quit reading about it for a while! LOL

 

[day_trippr]

 

[ajdelange]

Boy, I don't want to say anything that ticks someone off! So PLEASE don't take anything I say as a slam of any sort - it is not meant to be. Rather I would observe that folks look at this topic differently from different angles.

Certainly no problem with that or any of the rest of your post either.

My maths are fine boss,

Given what you do for a living I rather thought they would be hence my comment.

...if I find myself easily confused by all this, imagine what it is like for guys who don't casually dabble with figures for a living.

Although the math here is pretty trivial it is, I think, the math that actually gives most readers trouble. The most complicated mathematical concept used in this level of chemistry is the logarithm. I can't begin to immagine what it is like in high school these days but that's where I was introduced to logarithms. Now I recognize that lots of people reading here haven't touched math since high school. They need to understand that this is the Brewing Science forum and that to fully appreciate it they are going to have to make some investment in brushing up on their knowledge of basic science, in particular chemistry, and the math needed to support it.

There ARE guys that really get this and LOVE the extreme details, and the jargon, and the fine tech details!

Those are the people this forum is for but, of course, we try to make the info accessible to as many others as possible too.

You all provide FANTASTIC detail - and a lot of it might as well be in Klingon to many of us! Some times guys just need to know HOW, and WHEN to add an ingredient to the soup... I see guys just sort of fading out on this.

This may not, then, be the forum for you though there is plenty of that sort of info here too.

I know it is a complex, and detailed field.

The frustrating thing for me is that it is really very simple. One mole of CaCl2, carrying no electrical charge) dissociates into 1 mole of Ca++ ions (which carry 2 moles = 2 Eq of positive electrical charge) and 2 moles of Cl- ions which carry one mole of negative electrical charge each. The only tricky part at all is that putting 1 mole of H2CO3 into water gives f1 moles of HCO3-, f2 moles of CO3-- leaving f0 moles of H2CO3 un dissociated. Understand that and how to calculate f0, f1 and f2 (from the pH - see the sticky in bicarbonate) and you have enough to master brewing water chemistry. The problem is that even people who write spreadsheets don't seem to be able to understand this and that means that either I am some incredible genius, the Ramanujian of water chemistry, or I have not figured out how to explain these simple principles adequately. As to the first hypothesis I can assure you I am no genius (and my wife will be happy to back me up on this).