Washington DC Water - Adjustments Anyone?

[strumke]

I tried to use the WASA (Washington DC water co.) water report to figure out water adjustments, but I'm not quite there. Has anyone done adjustments to DC water?

If anyone is feeling scientific and bored, the report is on www.wasa.com (2010 is the latest) if you want to look.

 

[beargrylls]

your link led me to a cracker company website.

do you know by any chance if college park, md water is run by DC?

 

[ajdelange]

Has anyone done adjustments to DC water?

Yes. There are hundreds of home brewers in the area and their water treatments are as diverse and they and the beers they brew.

Add dc in front of wasa (i.e. dcwasa) to access the water report but you really want the Corps of Engineers report for the Dalacarlia plant if you can find that. It is a much more complete report.

 

[ldudek]

I brew in Hyattsville. I've found the report to be inconsistent to say the least. We have older mains running to our older 1940's home, and I think water quality can suffer in the trip from the pumping station to the home. I've never had a failed brew using dc water, but to control for irregularities, I often use water picked up from the local home depot. It's cheap, and the chemistry is known, plus it comes in 5 g carboys.

 

[strumke]

I sent an e-mail to a local brewer (found a blog), and this was his response to the same question:

"It varies, but here is the yearly average:
Ca 40
Mg 9
Na 10
SO4 54
Cl 38
Carboante 165

It is pretty good for anything in the amber-dark brown range. I tend to cut it 50/50 with distilled (mainly to lower the carbonate) and then add gypsum for hoppy beers. For really pale stuff I like to cut it even further. I'd say 2/3 of the time I don't make any adjustments.

Also a really good idea to carbon filter to remove the chlorine or chloramine (depending on the time of the year).

If you are using extract, there really isn't a need to do much. However, since there are already minerals from the water used to make the extract, if you are getting a minerally flavor you could swap in distilled/RO."

(oh, and the website in the first post is supposed to be www.dcwasa.com or www.dcwater.com, I can't seem to edit that first post anymore)