Low mineral content in brewing water

[broadbill]

Finally got around to testing my well water that I use for brewing. To date I have been using my water "as-is", I am still learning the ins/outs of water chemistry and the impacts on beer.

What struck me about my water was how low some of the levels of minerals were (which is good I guess, easier to add than to subtract) if compared to some of the "famous" brewing waters. Also, my impression that is that this water would be better for lighter beers than for darker beers, if being used without additions (this would also line up with my personal experience that my lighter beers tend to be better than my dark ones).

Is there anything in this report that I should be concerned about/red flags in an initial analysis? Anybody else ever see these sort of low minerals levels in their water? My first thought is that I pulled a non-representative sample to test. My goal would be to make add-ins of existing water to specific beer styles instead of the RO approach and building from the ground up. Anybody see an issues with this from the initial report?

Thanks in Advance!

---
pH 8.3

Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 182

Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.30

Cations / Anions, me/L 3.3 / 3.3
-----
ppm

Sodium, Na 57

Potassium, K 2

Calcium, Ca 13

Magnesium, Mg 2

Total Hardness, CaCO3 41

Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)

Sulfate, SO4-S 6

Chloride, Cl 13

Carbonate, CO3 1.6

Bicarbonate, HCO3 149

Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 124

Total Phosphorus, P < 0.01

Total Iron, Fe < 0.01

"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

 

[ajdelange]

Those numbers aren't particularly low. In fact the sodium is higher than typical (but is not at a level you need worry about it). The parameter that you need worry most about is the alkalinity and your is typical and thus high enough that you will need to take steps to mitigate its effect.

 

[broadbill]

OK, thanks for the input. I guess I need to plug this into one of those spreadsheets and start futzing. As far as the alkalinity goes, I was to be calculating and working off of a Residual alkalinity value, correct?

 

[thereverendmaynard]

That is my understanding as well. THere are a couple you tube videos on brew'n water.

John Palmer had a video and was suggesting do your mineral additions to get to a target RA for the beer (low RA for light, higher for Dark) and also target the SO4/Cl ratio (high for IPAs, low for maltier) He said as high as 9:1 for IPA

 

[ajdelange]

I never know quite what to say about RA because it does have validity for comparing my water to yours and I did publish that chart years ago which lets you see where your water falls relative to that of the great brewing cities but it turned out to be kind of a Frankenstein's monster as lots of people started thinking of RA as the major design parameter for adjusting brewing water which it isn't.

RA is all the alkalinity minus the protons released by calcium and magnesium ions from dough-in to knockout. To estimate mash pH properly one must consider 90% (or so) of the alkalinity and protons released by Ca and Mg reactions at dough - in. Plus the programs that calculate RA tend to include acids and bases that you add as part of RA which is technically OK but, I think, confusing to users. As I say, it is not technically wrong to do that but those added acids and bases should be in a separate place in the proton budget so you can clearly see what their effects are (e.g. if you need 100 mEq protons to neutralize 90% of the alkalinity of the water and 80 to neutralize the alkalinity of the base malt you can see right away that 150 mEq of acid isn't quite enough and you are going to need 30 more from, for example, dark malt.

I think the general advice you'll get from the folks here (who haven't obsessed over this to the point where the forest can't be seen for the trees) is to ignore RA and tune for pH. I'd go along with that advice.

 

[mabrungard]

I never know quite what to say about RA because it does have validity for comparing my water to yours and I did publish that chart years ago which lets you see where your water falls relative to that of the great brewing cities but it turned out to be kind of a Frankenstein's monster as lots of people started thinking of RA as the major design parameter for adjusting brewing water which it isn't.

Amen to that! The current free version of Bru'n Water still has a cute chart that plots the brewer's water on AJ's chart with RA results for various brewing cities. After hearing far too many brewers relying on RA, the next free version of Bru'n Water already has all references to RA and that chart removed. It also includes only a passing depiction of the SO4/Cl ratio.

We will rid the brewing world of those false parameters yet!

 

[broadbill]

Amen to that! The current free version of Bru'n Water still has a cute chart that plots the brewer's water on AJ's chart with RA results for various brewing cities. After hearing far too many brewers relying on RA, the next free version of Bru'n Water already has all references to RA and that chart removed. It also includes only a passing depiction of the SO4/Cl ratio.

We will rid the brewing world of those false parameters yet!

Is that that RA is more complicated than necessary or not really indicative of what is going on in the mash process (false parameter). Again, I'm just diving into this, interested to know the various philosophies out there.

 

[broadbill]

I never know quite what to say about RA because it does have validity for comparing my water to yours and I did publish that chart years ago which lets you see where your water falls relative to that of the great brewing cities but it turned out to be kind of a Frankenstein's monster as lots of people started thinking of RA as the major design parameter for adjusting brewing water which it isn't.

RA is all the alkalinity minus the protons released by calcium and magnesium ions from dough-in to knockout. To estimate mash pH properly one must consider 90% (or so) of the alkalinity and protons released by Ca and Mg reactions at dough - in. Plus the programs that calculate RA tend to include acids and bases that you add as part of RA which is technically OK but, I think, confusing to users. As I say, it is not technically wrong to do that but those added acids and bases should be in a separate place in the proton budget so you can clearly see what their effects are (e.g. if you need 100 mEq protons to neutralize 90% of the alkalinity of the water and 80 to neutralize the alkalinity of the base malt you can see right away that 150 mEq of acid isn't quite enough and you are going to need 30 more from, for example, dark malt.

I think the general advice you'll get from the folks here (who haven't obsessed over this to the point where the forest can't be seen for the trees) is to ignore RA and tune for pH. I'd go along with that advice.

Thanks for the explanation...I did hear the focus has moved away from replicating famous water to matching water to style, I am still trying to understand how it all fits together.

 

[ajdelange]

Is that that RA is more complicated than necessary or not really indicative of what is going on in the mash process (false parameter).

RA is actually an attempt to simplify things. That's counter to my personal philosophy which says if you want things KISS use the Primer. O/W understand what is going on as fully as you can.

Again, I'm just diving into this, interested to know the various philosophies out there.

Based on that here's an example of a proton budget. The numbers are the amounts of protons required (the proton deficits) to reach a pH of 5.45 for each of the mash components:

Water 5 gal alk 100: 33.41 mEq
Calcium (60 mgL): -8.1
Magnesium (12.15 mg/L): -2.7
Lactic Acid (3.75 mL): -43.1
11.8 lbs Rahr Pale: 64.9
1.06 lbs Briess 90 L: -15.8
1.06 lbs Crisp Chocolate 600L: -28.5

SUM: 0

The water needs 33.4 mEq and the pale malt 64.9 mEq and the lactic acid and dark malts supply it. The total of these deficits is 0. If you have these numbers in a spreadsheet (which is, of course, where I got them) you can easily play games balancing the amounts of malts and acids to get you a zero sum at desired pH. Do you see RA in this list? Well it is there. It is, as Kolbach defined it, the sum of the first 3 terms.

Could we do this with a spreadsheet like:
RA: 22.6
Lactic Acid (3.75 mL): -43.1
11.8 lbs Rahr Pale: 64.9
1.06 lbs Briess 90 L: -15.8
1.06 lbs Crisp Chocolate 600L: -28.5

Surely, as long as the sum is 0. Or how about incorporating the lactic acid into the RA as many of the programs do:

RA: -20.5
11.8 lbs Rahr Pale: 64.9
1.06 lbs Briess 90 L: -15.8
1.06 lbs Crisp Chocolate 600L: -28.5

Technically that's right too but we have now obscured the contributions of the components of RA thus making it a little harder (IMO) to see whether one should adjust, for example, the calcium level. Besides that the main objection in the third example is that we are calling RA something other than what Kolbach defined it to be.