Understanding my water report and Bru'n Water

[kmeeks]

So after three batches of astringent beer in a row, I contacted our water company to ask some questions and was given a spreadsheet for brewers that seems to have pointed to my problems. My water is now 9.25pH (per the city) and has 75mg/l of Magnesium.

My issue here is trying to input this into the Bru'n Water spreadsheet I'm getting the "Water Report is unbalanced" issue, where as I've entered it my Cation's are 8.70 and the Anion's are 3.14. Obviously I'm doing this wrong. The general report is here http://www.icgov.org/site/CMSv2/file/water/2014CCR.pdf and the special PDF contains the following

Noncarbonate and carbonate hardness		
	Noncarbonate Hardness	Carbonate Hardness
TH less than TA	0	TH
TH equals TA	0	TH
TH greater than TA	TH - TA	TA
		
		
Enter		
TA	240	
TH	344	
		
		
	Noncarbonate Hardness	104
	Carbonate Hardness	240

and

			all mg/L
Calcium			38
Magnesium		70	
Sodium			24
Sulfate			45
Chloride		37	
Carbonate Hardness	48		
Total Alkalinity	45		
pH			9.25
Total Hardness		100

Now I've entered these into the water input report exactly as they are above, with the exception of not really understanding what I should be doing with HCO3 and CO3 given the above numbers.

Ultimately I'm not even sure I can brew with this water straight away given the high Mg, but I'd like to be able to figure out what level of dilution I'll need to do if I could get this in right. Thanks!

 

[ajdelange]

The two panels give completely inconsistent information. The first says the alkalinity is 240 and the second 45. The first sets the total hardness at 344 and the second at 100. Which did you use?

If you ignore the first panel the second gives a not terribly imbalanced picture: 3.2/2.9, the bicarbonate is 44 and the carbonate 4.3.

 

[mchrispen]

The biggest issue with municipal reports is that often the values are either periodic samples for a single value analysis or a reported average. Sometimes they report the variation which cannot really be used as an average. For this reason an independent brewer water analysis gives you a snap shop of your tap water and should report with well balanced ions.

That said - the elevated magnesium is concerning and may cause astringency and a mineral flavor. Bru'n Water recommends no more than 30 mg/L magnesium, so you would need to dilute with distilled or RO water 60/40 to bring that number under control. This would also reduce the ions by 60%. The carbonate hardness number seems pretty high - going to have to punt that one to someone with more knowledge.

 

[kmeeks]

So again, I think this is me really not understanding any of this stuff, I'm trying but it's pretty alien. I was basically ignoring the first table and going with the second.

Here's what I've input, and the result.

Cations	Enter Ion Concentrations from Water Report     (mg/L or ppm)		Anions
Calcium (Ca)	38	44	Bicarbonate (HCO3)
Magnesium (Mg)	70	4.3	Carbonate (CO3)
Sodium (Na)	24	45	Sulfate (SO4)
Potassium (K)	0	37	Chloride (Cl)
Iron (Fe)	0	5.8	Nitrate (NO3)
			0	Nitrite (NO2)
			0.6	Fluoride (F)
Reported Total Alkalinity (as CaCO3) (mg/L or ppm)	Reported or Measured Water pH	Estimated Bicarbonate Concentration (ppm)	Estimated Carbonate Concentration (ppm)
45	9.25	47.0698078273	3.8509141833

Total Cations (meq/L)	8.7000569787	5.7290612812	Cation/Anion Difference
Total Anions (meq/L)	2.9709956975

 

[ajdelange]

The calcium and magnesium numbers are 'as CaCO3', not mg/L. Enter them that way and the cations go to 3.2 and the balance improves but is still not that great.

 

[stpug]

Another Ward Labs Iowa City Water Report from 2011 was posted by beersk over here:
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=1887.msg82223#msg82223

 

[kmeeks]

Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it! So, based off that adjustment, my magnesium isn't nearly as scary as I'd thought it was. I guess I really do need to send a sample of my water off to sort of lock this down, though I'm also leaning towards just distilling my own and adding minerals back for peace of mind.

Ooh, and thanks for that link stpug!

 

[ajdelange]

No, not at all that bad. Mg is 12.15*70/50 = 15.2 mg/L.

 

[mchrispen]

Yep that is way better.