My Cities Water Quality

[BlakeL]

Should I use my tap water as is or do I need to filter or add anything additional?

This I the most recent Water Report I could find for my city:

http://www.longwoodfl.org/filestorage/210/212/618/624/2010_Longwood_CCRFinalweb.pdf

 

[bleme]

Your city doesn't report many of the things important to brewers, like pH and hardness. I would check with the treatment plant or the actual testing lab to see if you can get more information. You might be stuck with paying for your own report though.

 

[BlakeL]

I sent out an email to my cities public utilities manager to see if they can give me a more detailed water quality report. Hopefully I won't have to get it tested myself.

 

[BlakeL]

Your city doesn't report many of the things important to brewers, like pH and hardness. I would check with the treatment plant or the actual testing lab to see if you can get more information. You might be stuck with paying for your own report though.

Here is the response from the utilities manager:

"Our pH averages 8.0. The Total Hardness in the water is around 130 mg/L. Let me know if you need additional parameters."

What other info should I ask him for? Are these values he sent alright for brewing?

 

[ajdelange]

You would like to know in approximate order of significance
Alkalinity
Calcium
Magnesium
Chloride
Sulfate
Sodium
Iron
Potassium
Nitrate
Nitrite
Manganese

Down through sodium is pretty much the basic list.

 

[BlakeL]

You would like to know in approximate order of significance
Alkalinity
Calcium
Magnesium
Chloride
Sulfate
Sodium
Iron
Potassium
Nitrate
Nitrite
Manganese

Down through sodium is pretty much the basic list.

Thanks for the info. I sent a reply with that list. Do you think my hardness and ph look alright?

 

[BlakeL]

Here are the other parameters. How does my water look?

Alkalinity – 130 mg/l Total Alkalinity – all Bicarbonate
Calcium - 36 mg/L
Magnesium – 7.2 mg/L
Chloride – 39 mg/L
Sulfate – 8.4 mg/L
Sodium – 26 mg/L
Iron - .0082 mg/L
Potassium - NA
Nitrate – 0.1 mg/L
Nitrite – 0 mg/L
Manganese - .0018 mg/L

 

[ajdelange]

Well you plainly have too much ndash but other than that the main problem is that the alkalinity is high and will have to be dealt with one way or another. There are various ways to do that:
1. Dilute with RO water and follow the recommendations of the Primer
2. Neutralize with phosphoric or another acid
3. Add additional calcium salts and boil or treat with lime to precipitate calcium carbonate

The RO solution is the simplest in the sense that you don't have to know or measure anything except teaspoons of calcium chloride or calcium sulfate. You would need to cut your water about 4:1 RO:tap. This would reduce the alkalinity to 26 which should be OK. But this approach is essentially throwing your water away and you need to have a source of RO water which may involve transport of the stuff or the expense of an RO system. More and more brewers seem to be going that way.

The acid addition is conceptually simpler i.e. it's easier to add 1.74 mL 80% phosphoric acid to each 5 gal of tap water than it is to drive to the store to obtain RO water but you really should measure the alkalinity each time you do this as 1.74 mL is right for 130 ppm alkalinity but not for 100 and the actual alkalinity out of the tap is likely to vary. Another approach is to buy a pH meter (which you should have anyway) and add phosphoric acid incrementally until a pH of 5.5 is reached. This is what one large craft brewery does. There are other possibilities in choice of acid i.e. sulfuric and/or hydrochloric which can simultaneously reduce alkalinity and augment sulfate and/or chloride. You will need to use one of the spreadsheets to calculate those amounts.

The final option is the least practical and requires the most work and equipment.

 

[afr0byte]

The final option is the least practical and requires the most work and equipment.

I agree it's more work but, as someone with no cheap source of RO and no softener to feed an RO unit, the price is pretty nice! My latest tripel, made with lime softened water, turned out great! The small-ish amount of sulfate that I had in the water (21 mg/L, from my tap) lent a slight dryness (the 1.011 FG didn't hurt either).