Robbinsdale, MN Water Report

[DSmith]

I've got my results back from Ward for Robbinsdale, MN (55422), Sample taken on 9-14-2011:

pH 7.4
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 478
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.80
Cations / Anions, me/L 9.4 / 9.1
ppm
Sodium, Na 15
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 97
Magnesium, Mg 46
Total Hardness, CaCO3 434
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 9
Chloride, Cl 52
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 426
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 350
"<" - Not Detected

Palmer's table puts my RA at 250. Is there any advice about using this water for extract brewing and partial mash?

Robbinsdale uses Chlorine, and typical concentrations at my home are about 0.5 ppm. I'm planning on treating my cleaning water (PBW), sanitizer water (Starsan) and all brewing water with Campden tables to be safe, since it all adds up to less than 20 gal.

Thanks,
Doug

 

[ajdelange]

As is this water is pretty much unusable. Your options are
1. Abandon this water for brewing. Buy low ion content water (RO or distilled) or prepare RO water at your location by installing an RO unit.
2. Get much of the bicarbonate out by boiling the water. It will turn cloudy. If allowed to stand the cloudiness will precipitate after which the clear water standing over the precipitate will be much reduced in alkalinity
3. Treat the water with slaked lime (pickling lime). Again a precipitate will form and again the water decanted from over the precipitate will be much lower in alkalinity.

3 is a bit trickier than 2 but has the advantage that no heat is required.

Either 2 or 3 should be done experimentally and a sample of the clear water sent off for analysis. Further treatment may be required but you will be able to brew with this water.

 

[AiredAle]

I live west of you in Stillwater, and my well water is very similar to yours. I used to dilute with RO water from the grocery store, then I read AJ's treatise on water chemistry and treatment, and started using pickling lime to decarbonate my water and rebuilt to the profile I want for the beer I'm making.

It appears complicated, and troublesome, but after you've done it a couple times and know how much lime to add, it's pretty easy. I treat all my mash and sparge water at one time, the night before brew day, and then I'm ready to go.

No doubt dilution is easier, but decarbonation is more versatile, and cool in a geeky sort of way.

Check his website, wetnewf.org, which I can't find at the moment, for very detailed instructions.

 

[ajdelange]

Just went and thumped the server. It should be available now (for a while at least).

 

[DSmith]

Thanks for the advice. I'm looking into everything said. I have my first batch (an ESP) from extract & specialty grain in primary for 3 weeks now. Any thought what this water is going to do to the finished product?

Is there a dilution with distilled water that you would recommend for extract & partial mash for now? I can also go to Ice Mountain mineral water completely for water going into the fermented. Being new, but aware of my water and Ward lab, I'd rather go a safe route and learn the process of brewing more than water adjustments now. Thanks again for the recommendations.

 

[ajdelange]

As you have probably picked up from browsing here the main concern with water is that it allows the mash to come to proper pH for, among other things, efficient operation of the enzymes that convert starch to sugar. When you use extract that responsibility is taken by the producer of the extract so water is less of a concern. Your concern, then, is to insure that the water doesn't raise pH to the point where fermentation is impaired. This water contains so much bicarbonate that it is likely to do just that. So a hefty dilution would probably be a good idea from that POV but we don't want to knock calcium down too far as it's beneficial to the yeasat. A 3:1 dilution would bring the alkalinity down under 90 but would also lower calcium into the 20's. That's probably going to do it.

 

[DSmith]

A 3:1 dilution with distilled water results in:

Calcium (ppm) = 24
Magnesium (ppm) = 12
Alkalinity as CaCO3 = 88
Sodium (ppm) = 4
Chloride (ppm) = 13
Sulfate (ppm) = 7
Effective Hardness = 24
Residual Alkalinity as CaCO3 = 63
Est. SRM (Low) = 10
Est. SRM (High) = 15
Chloride to Sulfate Ratio = Malty (but borderline "Very Malty")

Is it better to buy the distilled water to know what the final profile is or just buy the mineral water and skip my tap water? My online research has shown all grocery store available Mineral water profiles aren't available or are vague because they come from multiple sources.

Is that dillution ok for doing a partial mash (2 lb of base, 3 lb of specialty), or should I be trying to match RA for a specific style? If it's a porter or stout, then my original RA looks more appropiate than the dilluted one... I could also use diluted water for the mini-mash and batch sparge and pure distilled water for top-up...

I really appreciate your time responding.

 

[DSmith]

I found the EZ_water_calculator_3.0.1.xls and entered my water profile, 75% dilution & grains for my partial mash. The expected mash pH is ok, and a 0.4g addition of CaSO4 helps with increase the diluted Calcium and the adjust the chloride/sulfate ratio. It looks like dilution + minor additions may be my best bet.

I'm unsure if I should use the adjusted water for the entire brew if it's partial mash + extract. I can make the partial mash turn out to be the beginning of boil volume, top-up the fermenter with distilled water and assume the extract has the appropiate minerals. I could also just use all the adjusted water and know that the extract will contribute more minerals. Any advice for that?

I made a yeast starter with my tap water (profile at the beginning of this tread) for the first brew based on Mr. Malty. I chilled and decanted the yeast starter liquid. Do you have any advice about using my water for a yeast starter related to the starter pH?

 

[ajdelange]

Is it better to buy the distilled water to know what the final profile is or just buy the mineral water and skip my tap water?

One can argue that he is better off with distilled water plus additions because he knows precisely what his mineral additions are but it is not critical that one know every ion to a fraction of a percent especially in the case of extract partial mash brewing. Avoiding high alkalinity and high sulfate (unless you particularly want high sulfate) are the most important.

My online research has shown all grocery store available Mineral water profiles aren't available or are vague because they come from multiple sources.

If the ion contents are in general acceptable then the variability shouldn't hurt you.

Is that dillution ok for doing a partial mash (2 lb of base, 3 lb of specialty),

Yes, should be. Some might advise adding some calcium chloride to get the calcium up to a minimum of 50 mg/L and you could do that if you want to but it isn't really necessary.

..or should I be trying to match RA for a specific style? If it's a porter or stout, then my original RA looks more appropiate than the dilluted one...

There is a correlation between the alkalinity of water and the color of beers brewed with it but it is much too weak to be considered a design parameter. You will do yourself a favor if you forget that you have ever heard that there is a correlation. It has been way over played and doubtless ruined countless beers (mostly dark ones).

.I could also use diluted water for the mini-mash and batch sparge and pure distilled water for top-up...

Yes you can but it is usually easiest to just prepare the volume of water you are going to use for the entire brewing process and brew with that i.e. same for mash, sparge, makeup....

 

[DSmith]

Looks like a gram scale (0.01g increment) is in my future.

Any final advice on the yeast starter water? I'd like to make my dillution and adjustments on brewing day. A single bottle of mineral water might be best for now if the concensus is my tap water isn't ok for the starter.

I'm tempted to re-brew the exact ESB recipe with the 3:1 diluted tap water (and 1/2 Campden tablet) for comparison to the all tap-water, non-dechlorinated ESB that's finished 4 weeks in primary this week.

 

[ajdelange]

In a starter you want to grow as much healthy yeast as quickly as possible. The comments about the alkalinity of the water pulling the beer pH (even from extract) high would apply equally well to the starter so it would be best to use diluted (or spring) water for that as well. It's also a good idea to give the starter some yeast nutrient (zinc, nitrogen, phosphorous0. There are several of these on the market - usually contain one or more of DAP, ammonium phosphate, zinc sulfate.

 

[DSmith]

I did use yeast nutient for the starter, but used straight tap water the first time.

Getting the Ward water profile probably saved me from repeating what sounds like pretty serious brewing errors by blindly using my tap water for the entire process.

I wish Palmer would have written in bold & capital letters for beginner extract brewers to completely skip tap water. It wasn't until I read his chapter on Mash pH that I became suspicious of my water profile in general.

 

[ajdelange]

Bear in mind that your water is unusually hard and alkaline. Most places in the US have water that can make a decent beer in most cases. Even your water probably isn't going to lead to a major disaster. It will be an interesting experience for you to taste the difference between the beer you made with it straight from the tap and a similar beer made with lower mineral content water.

 

[AiredAle]

DSmith,

I brewed extract/steeped specialty grain ales with my hard well water for years. No fermentation problems, made starters with the water and had no issues I could point to and say, "that's the water's fault." Don't sweat it too much. What finally got me to look into water mineral content was the feeling that my beer had a harshness to it that I didn't like. This I am convinced was due to the high bicarbonate level in my water. Started diluting with RO water and the harshness went away.

I started focusing attention in earnest on the minerals when I started all grain brewing . Here, mineral content has a bigger impact on everything, re ferencethe above discussion.

As far as what water to use for the extract portion of the wort, I would say ideal is distilled or RO water, since the extract has the correct mineral content due to the extract maker paying attention to the water when the grain is mashed. The wort is concentrated, and I would be really surprised if the mineral content changed much on going from dilute wort to concentrated extract.

One way to look at it is that you need to pay attention to mineral content for mashing to build a healthy wort for the yeast. You need to pay attention to mineral content for extract brewing only for taste purposes, since the extract already contains the needed minerals for good fermentation.

 

[FlipMasterFlash]

I have my first batch (an ESP) from extract & specialty grain in primary for 3 weeks now. Any thought what this water is going to do to the finished product?

I'm not far from you, I'm in Blaine, and I'm fairly sure our water is pretty close (yours is a touch harder). I'm just starting to dig in to the brew water chemistry as my experience has been much like AiredAle's experience. I've done ~30 extract batches with little issue, beers were good and attenuated just fine. Been doing all-grain since spring (about 20 batches) with no water adjustments and my mash efficiency has always been in the 80's and again my beers have fermented just fine so don't sweat it too much.

Reason I started to dig in to brew water chemistry was the same as AiredAle's, just something slightly off on some of my beers, for me particularly in my lighter ones (Bitters and Blondes are where I noticed it the most). Next batch I'm do I'm going to follow the simple brew chemistry primer suggestions. I'm just going to start with the filtered RO drinker water you can get in 5 gallon jugs at Cub Foods.

Planning to do a beer I've brewed before (close copy of Surly's Bitter Brewer) so I'll have a direct comparison. My beer pipeline is full right now so it'll be a month before I'm brewing again but I'll let you know how things turn out.

 

[DSmith]

I'm going to bottle the ESB (John Palmer's ESB from pg 216 in "How to Brew") made from 100% tap water this weekend after 4 weeks in primary. The fermentation temperature was controlled to 65-68F in an ice bath, I can't think of any brewing procedure issue that was off, and the yeast was pitch at the right temperature and quantity. My OG was 1.048, I plan on measuring the FG with my hygrometer and am toying around with a friends refractometer (using ProMash).

I'm planning on doing this same brew again next weekend using 3:1 distilled:tap water & dechlorinating for learning. I'm using Briess Light LME and they sent me info that their liquied extract brings approximately the following concentrations of minerals.

Ca = 38mg/100g (liquid), 48mg/100g (dry)
Mg = 103mg/100g (liquid), 123mg/100g (dry)
Na = 80mg/100g (liquid), 100mg/100g (dry)

For my recipie with 6.6lb of LME in 5 gallons, here's my converted ppm from the extract (assuming the ppm is weight):

Ca = 60ppm
Mg = 163ppm (I've emailed back questioning this...)
Na = 127ppm

They didn't send me Chlorides and Sulfates. The water source is city water.

My main interest in water is to do partial mashes at proper pH. I've run a few recipes through the EZ_water_calculator_3.0 and it looks like 3:1 dilutions or you're route of Cub foods RO water is the way to go. Partial mashes seem to have higher ratios of specialty grain to base grain than all grain so the 3:1 dilution with minor CaCl2 or CaSO4 additions seems to work with the calculator. Not diluting my water with the partial mash recipes consistently results in >5.8 pH based off the calculator, assuming 1.5 gal/lb grain. >3:1 dilution or RO is probably the way to go with more base malt.

I've read as much as possible about the calculator's accuracy, cost of measuring pH, and issues with pH strips and probes. I'm going to be blindly trusting the calculators for my partial mashes and stay away from spreadsheet Slaked Lime, Baking Soda & Caulk additions per a lot of the advice on this forum.

 

[DSmith]

I found a very similar topic relating to the minerals that come along with extract:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/muntons-dme-mineral-analysis-140262/

Looks like I'm pretty far off trying to figure out what's in the wart. Looks like I'm best off with pure RO, distilled or highly dilluted tap water for extract brewing. There's so many unknowns that additions to control Chlorides and Sulfates make no sense without trying without first.

The water dillution with distilled/RO & CaCl2/CaSO4 additions looks a little more useful to the partial mash & batch sparge, and it's questionable to top-up with either more of the same water if using a partial boil or RO/distilled water.

 

[FlipMasterFlash]

You are ahead of me on thinking about water chemistry but don't sweat it too much. Using basically the same water I've turned out some good beers, extract, partial mash and all grain without doing anything.

Could the beers have been better? Guess I'll find out after some experimentation.

 

[DSmith]

I've now got the same ESB recipe in the fermenter with 100% identical ingredients from the same store (fermentation was very active 12 hours after pitching). I used 3:1 distilled water to tap water (profile at beginning of thread). The tap water portion was dechlorinated using a fraction of a campden tablet (measured with a 0.01 gram scale, 20 gal = 0.63g = 1 tablet) before adding the distilled water to a 6.5 gal bucket reserved for water treatment. Cleaning water & sanitizing water was dechlorinated. I'm interested in how this change affects the product compared to the one with all chlorinated tap water.

I made 4 process changes in areas that seemed like there was room for improvement after my first time brewing. Any one of these changes may have an affect bigger than the water...but I believe each change is an accepted "improvement" that I plan to continue doing.

1. Incorporated a stirplate with my yeast starter. Yeast starter was based on Mr Malty again. Starter fermentation was complete in 24 hours, chilled for 24 hours and poured off everything but 500mL. I plan on posting a DIY stirplate pic.

2. Did not add LME until my kettle was boiling (specialty grain portion of the water was added to the kettle pre-boil to get the right volume). I added extract during the kettle heat-up last time which prevented me from using a lid and really extended the time on the stove and amount of time the extract was heated. It's a late addition recipe. The OG sample seemed slightly lighter than my previous batch of this beer, both OG were identical.

3. Mixed & aerated the cooled wort and top-off water with a wine degasser & drill (paddles on a stainless rod) for 2 minutes at a slowish speed to avoid a lot of foaming. Did this by hand last time with a plastic paddle.

4. Fermented cooler (62-66 this time), (66-72 last time) using a swamp cooler & ice bottles. For both brews, the fermenter temperature was measured with a stick-on thermometer and the temperature was allowed to rise to my basement temperature (70ish) starting 3 days after first signs of airlock bubbles. Data was recorded every few hours again, true temperature control would be nice.

 

[FlipMasterFlash]

Look forward to hearing how it turns out. Still a few weeks away from doing my Bitter with all filtered water.

 

[FlipMasterFlash]

Finally tasting my bitter I did with RO water from Cub Foods that I then adjusted with Calcium Chloride and some Gypsum. Tasted it against my first batch with no adjustments and while my first batch isn't awful the second batch with adjusted water (and some acid malt in mash) is much better and far closer to what I was shooting for.

Getting more comfortable with diluting with RO water and making adjustments. So far it seems to be making a large improvement in my beer, as expected anything lighter is where the impact is noticed the most.

 

[DSmith]

My second extract & specialty grain batch of the ESB is in the bottle for 2 weeks now (the one made from 3:1 distilled:tap water). It's not fully carbonated, but I tried one and it's a better beer than the same one made with 100% tap water. The biggest difference is how noticable the hops are. All ingredients but water were the same, from the same store.

I'm trying my first all-grain brew soon and will be using distilled or RO water from Cub and building the water per this forum. I've built a 5 gallon mash tun and am planning on doing 3 gallon batches in my kitchen.