Matching up water report with BeerSmith water profile tool

[jack13]

I moved recently and switched to using tap water rather than RO for brewing. This is because my new tap water does not appear to be high in iron as it was in the old place, and it tastes quite good.

I've brewed with it a few times and it seems fine for brewing. But I figure it's time to take a look and see if I can improve it, especially since I've got some basic water additives already.

Below is what I can manage when I try to fill out BeerSmith's Base Profile using the water report I found online for my town. I've pasted in the information from that report below.

Ca: 60? (based on fact that "Hardness as CaCO3" is 60 ppm (average) in the report.)
Mg: ?
Na: 53 ppm
SO4: 11 ppm
Cl: 9 ppm
HCO3: ?

Some things are missing and others are just guesses, hence this post.

So, can I get some help with this (with what's missing above as well as a check on whether what I do have is correct)? Also, I've put in average levels above, but the report shows in some cases huge ranges (e.g., sodium average is 53ppm, but the range is 12 to 129!)...would that move you to just use RO?

Finally, I should mention I run the tap water through a basic carbon filter when I brew. This one, I think: https://www.morebeer.com/products/carbon-block-water-filter-10.html.

Here are the relevant parts of the report:

Thanks!

 

[jack13]

little help?

 

[kevin58]

You can create a custom water profile using just the numbers you have... ask your city for the missing numbers or just take a WAG (I woudln't).

Or you could go to the Ward Labs website and order a brewers test kit and get the exact results you need... and then make a custom water profile. I will include a link at the bottom of a tutorial I found that helped me set up mine.

Beersmith 3 which comes out this weekend (06/16) looks to have improved the water profile tools making it much easier to integrate water treatments directly into your recipe. I'm looking forward to upgrading from BS2 to 3 to try it out.

 

[jack13]

Cool--thanks a lot!