Only Alkalinity

[brucepepper]

I've been trying to find out the details of my City's water, and have finally decided to give up. When I finally spoke with someone, they said that they "don't test for that stuff" (calcium, mag, sodium, chlor. etc.). All he could tell me was the Alkalinity - 233mg/liter. Is it possible for me to use just this information on its own? If so, how?

I've been finding that most of my beers, especially the pale/hoppy ones, have been somewhat disappointing. I think I need to get the mash ph down but I'm not sure where to start. All the reading I've done says, "get yurself a water report and.....".

I'm tempted to just start throwing a bit of Calcium Sulphate and Calcium Chloride into the mash unless anyone can give me some words of advice.

Sorry if I seem a bit ticked, but my beers have hit a plateau and I'd really like to improve them.

 

[slarkin712]

Send a sample of your water to Ward Labs for analysis. It's not too expensive and will give you everything you need. If not that, see if any other homebrewers have posted a water report from your area. You'll need more than alkalinity to get your mash pH and ion concentrations right for lighter beer styles. But if it's an IPA and you just want to say the hell with it, I'd throw in some gypsum and see if that helps.

 

[mabrungard]

Adding a bunch of minerals to your brewing water without knowing what the starting water quality is can lead to some very poor results. Get the water tested. If the City's alkalinity value is reported 'as CaCO3' then that is a fairly alkaline water and it is not a surprise that you have had difficulty in bringing the mash pH and wort pH down to a reasonable level.

Once you have the test results, you can use a program like Bru'n Water to better assess what treatment you might consider and how to get to the beer quality you are looking for. Do read the Water Knowledge section on the Bru'n Water website.

 

[brucepepper]

Thanks for your replies. Your advice makes sense, unfortunately it requires me to be patient! Not one of my strengths. I'll look into getting a real water report.

 

[ajdelange]

I've been trying to find out the details of my City's water, and have finally decided to give up. When I finally spoke with someone, they said that they "don't test for that stuff" (calcium, mag, sodium, chlor. etc.). All he could tell me was the Alkalinity - 233mg/liter. Is it possible for me to use just this information on its own? If so, how?

Yes, it is possible to work with that level of information but only in the crudest way. You can observe that the water is too alkaline for nearly all beers and make the decision to throw it out dilute it 9:1 with RO water which is practically speaking about equivalent to throwing it out. That level of dilution will reduce the alkalinity to 23 ppm as CaCO3 (the units in which alkalinity is measured in North America) which for the most part renders it non problematic and at the same time reduces the concentration of every other dissolved ion by the same factor of 10. Thus you are brewing with what is almost the same as RO water and might as well use RO water. At that point you will need to supplement calcium, chloride and possibly sulfate (depending on the style) and rough guidance for doing that can be found in the Primer in the stickies section here. More refined mineral addition practices are best determined by experiment and checking mash pH with a reliable meter is an important part of this.

You really should, of course, get a water analysis done as has been suggested to you. While it is hard to say what the results of that analysis will be some conclusions can be drawn from the high alkalinity number the main one of which is that is that your water will not be suitable for brewing most beers without some kind of decarbonating treatment. There are several of these the simplest of which is dilution with RO water provided that you have a convenient source of RO water. Other alternatives are decarbonation by boiling or treatment with lime. They are more involved and really require post treatment analysis in order to judge the effectiveness of the treatment. This is why I call dilution simpler.