My Ward Lab results

[DiginTX]

Hi everyone!

Just received my Ward Labs analysis and thought I’d get any feedback and general recommendations that you can give.

I have been buying distilled water and salting it as needed to hit Brewfather targets. I mostly brew Hefes, ales, porters, and fruited sours and generally love maltiness and not over-hoppiness, but I defer to the style targets of whatever I’m brewing. I have and will use Camden tablets.

Any general guidance for water that looks like this? From some initial experimenting in Brewfather it looks like I probably can start here and hit most targets without having to dilute with distilled water to reduce any ions (only salt additions to hit target).

Na is a little high for some targets - is that something I’ll need to worry about? For instance, an English Ale target of Na=6, will I need to do any dilution to hit that or can I be that far off (30 vs 6)?

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Ward Lab results:
pH 7.9
TDS 197
Cations/Anions (me/L) 3.3 / 3.0
Na 30
K 5
Ca 30.3
Mg 5
Total Hardness CaCO3 96
NO3-N 0.8
SO4-S 6 (so sulfates = 18?)
Cl 34
CO3 <1
HCO3 98
Total Alkalinity CaCO3 81
P <.01
Fe <.01

 

[cire]

I'm English and brew English beers. My water has 35 mg/L sodium, quite typical of sodium levels in brewing liquor for British beer styles. Can't immediately think of a British brewery that would consider reducing sodium to 6 mg/L, although there may well be some that brew with very soft water with a sodium level that low

The level of alkalinity is too high for pale beers which can be reduced with suitable acid addition. Typical English Beers are brewed with calcium levels of between 100 and 200 mg/L.

 

[DiginTX]

I'm English and brew English beers. My water has 35 mg/L sodium, quite typical of sodium levels in brewing liquor for British beer styles. Can't immediately think of a British brewery that would consider reducing sodium to 6 mg/L, although there may well be some that brew with very soft water with a sodium level that low

The level of alkalinity is too high for pale beers which can be reduced with suitable acid addition. Typical English Beers are brewed with calcium levels of between 100 and 200 mg/L.

Thanks for the reply! I did choose that “English Ale” profile from Brewfather as an example of a target with very low sodium. Looking at other ale and porter profiles, I can see that it’s very unusual. So I won’t worry about it.

I’m reading now about using lactic acid to reduce alkalinity. I have lactic acid, and have done additions based off of distilled water to reach target pH, but haven’t gone through this thought process of using acid to reduce total alkalinity. It seems like I’ll need to use this approach when I want to try a lager, at least.

 

[cire]

Yes, Sodium at the level it is in your water is something you can, more or less, forget.

British brewers have adjusted water profiles since 1880 when excise duty was moved from malt to the extract of the mash tun and adding chemicals to water could no longer be considered a way to evade tax. In those days there was no pH meter or even a pH scale. However, brewers were able to measure mineral levels in water and calculate the effect of adding salts and acids as well their effect on taste. When the first portable pH meter was trialed in Fuller's brewery, it measured wort output from the mash tun at pH5.4. So traditionally adjustments in Britain are mostly by reducing alkalinity of supply or well water with mineral acid, then adding brewing salts from previous experience rather than mash in and add acid to achieve a particular pH.

Pale lagers are different to ales due to them usually being made with low mineral waters needing larger acid additions to get pH within range.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Na is a little high for some targets - is that something I’ll need to worry about? For instance, an English Ale target of Na=6, will I need to do any dilution to hit that or can I be that far off (30 vs 6)?

I tend to think one flaw of most of the "target profiles" is that they include values that do not really matter. I doubt the person really thought much about what the level of Sodium or Magnesium should be in those profiles. Or maybe they did, but the software does not support a range like 0-20, so a value of 10 was entered. But then you hit that calculate button, the software it telling you to add 0.35g of Epsom Salt to exactly hit some meaningless Magnesium value, and warning you that you are over some made up Sodium value.

Overall, your water looks easy to work with. You will likely often add some Gypsum and/or Calcium Chloride to build up your Calcium, Sulfate and Chloride levels. Your base levels of Sodium and Magnesium seem fine for any style (unless you want to boost Sodium for flavor). Are you in an area where you get water from surface sources like lakes and rivers?

My Alkalinity is a little lower than yours. I use acid to lower the pH for lighter colored beers, and I might need to add a little baking soda to raise the pH for Porters or Stouts.

 

[DiginTX]

I tend to think one flaw of most of the "target profiles" is that they include values that do not really matter. I doubt the person really thought much about what the level of Sodium or Magnesium should be in those profiles. Or maybe they did, but the software does not support a range like 0-20, so a value of 10 was entered. But then you hit that calculate button, the software it telling you to add 0.35g of Epsom Salt to exactly hit some meaningless Magnesium value, and warning you that you are over some made up Sodium value.

Overall, your water looks easy to work with. You will likely often add some Gypsum and/or Calcium Chloride to build up your Calcium, Sulfate and Chloride levels. Your base levels of Sodium and Magnesium seem fine for any style (unless you want to boost Sodium for flavor). Are you in an area where you get water from surface sources like lakes and rivers?

My Alkalinity is a little lower than yours. I use acid to lower the pH for lighter colored beers, and I might need to add a little baking soda to raise the pH for Porters or Stouts.

Thanks so much, this is really helpful. My first experiments with Brewfather and this new data reinforce exactly what you’re saying. I’ll need a couple of grams of gypsum and calcium chloride to get in range for most styles, and almost every other calculated addition was insignificant compared to those. And then, 2-3mg of lactic acid for lighter things like a golden ale.

 

[DiginTX]

Missed one of your questions: my water is groundwater that comes from wells drilled into local aquifers, but we are slowly transitioning to surface water. Right now apparently we pull 30% from surface water sources to augment the groundwater. So I’m going to do another test this summer and see how it changes.

 

[dmtaylor]

Your water looks very good for any style. The only things you might want to keep in mind:

You'll never need to add any magnesium, which is Epsom. You want to keep the magnesium level less than about 30 to avoid odd bitter metallic flavors. Your water is at 5 which is great. More is not better.

Your calcium could use a little boost. Aim closer to 100. Yours is at 30 which is not bad but the extra calcium is helpful to yeast cells.

If you ever decide to use table salt or baking soda, these have sodium, which tastes salty. This is appropriate in some styles such as gose, but for most styles, you really don't want to exceed around 100 to avoid saltiness.

Everything else is fine. Use as much or as little calcium chloride and gypsum as your calculators tell you. Like I said, you've got pretty great water there, easy to work with. Once your water source changes or is blended, it would be a good idea to get retested like you said, just to understand how it's changing.

 

[DiginTX]

Your water looks very good for any style. The only things you might want to keep in mind:

You'll never need to add any magnesium, which is Epsom. You want to keep the magnesium level less than about 30 to avoid odd bitter metallic flavors. Your water is at 5 which is great. More is not better.

Your calcium could use a little boost. Aim closer to 100. Yours is at 30 which is not bad but the extra calcium is helpful to yeast cells.

If you ever decide to use table salt or baking soda, these have sodium, which tastes salty. This is appropriate in some styles such as gose, but for most styles, you really don't want to exceed around 100 to avoid saltiness.

Everything else is fine. Use as much or as little calcium chloride and gypsum as your calculators tell you. Like I said, you've got pretty great water there, easy to work with. Once your water source changes or is blended, it would be a good idea to get retested like you said, just to understand how it's changing.

Thanks so much for posting, that’s really helpful! I’m reading all I can in my various books about water and styles right now, but I wonder if you could say a bit more about saltiness for gose and sour beers? Do you have a preferred target water profile for those styles? I’ve done a sour and a fruited sour, and I enjoyed them, but I just hit a typical ale target from a distilled water base (and used Philly sour yeast).

 

[dmtaylor]

Thanks so much for posting, that’s really helpful! I’m reading all I can in my various books about water and styles right now, but I wonder if you could say a bit more about saltiness for gose and sour beers? Do you have a preferred target water profile for those styles? I’ve done a sour and a fruited sour, and I enjoyed them, but I just hit a typical ale target from a distilled water base (and used Philly sour yeast).

My opinion about gose and salted beers -- if you can taste the salt, you've done it wrong. Every brewer has a tendency to oversalt.

Don't.

Use much less than you think you should. Think of it like making a kettle of soup. How much salt would you use in your chicken noodle soup or whatever? Maybe 1 tablespoon in 2 gallons? And that tastes salty. You don't want beer to taste like seawater. So use maybe 1/3 to 1/2 as much. Scale that up to 5 gallons or whatever. Maybe you'll find you only need 1-2 tablespoons in 5 gallons. I've never brewed a gose so I can't say how much I would recommend exactly. But I *would* recommend using much less than just about any published recipe in the universe. They're all oversalted. Don't measure in grams. Measure in pinches or teaspoons. It's a seasoning, not a science.

 

[mabrungard]

That water is a great starting point for brewing. The sodium content is a non-issue and won't be detected in any beer. As pointed out, the water's alkalinity might be too high for some styles, but its low enough to easily to acidified with many different acids without a flavor effect.

Brew on!