Water check please

[JDAK]

Hi,

Here is my tap water profile from my town's utility provider. I used Bru'n Water to convert all the values to the correct units.

Ca 46.4 ppm

Mg 11.3 ppm

Na 0.4 ppm

SO4 40.7 ppm

Cl 2.49 ppm

HCO3 140.0 ppm

Here is my desired NEIPA profile taken from Bru'n Water

Ca 105 ppm

Mg 0 ppm

Na 12 ppm

SO4 75 ppm

Cl 150 ppm

HCO3 0 ppm


The bicarbonate values are what worries me. Will Sparge water acid additions take care of that? Is my water ****? Should I just be using RO water and adjusting from there? I admit my understanding of water chemistry is sub par and about as much as I know how to do is input the values into Brew Smith. Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. Let me know if more info is needed.

Thanks

 

[cire]

Can you buy food safe hydrochloric acid? Using that to reduce alkalinity in all liquor to zero (at pH 4.4 or Methyl Red indicator turning from orange to pink) will increase chloride to 84ppm.
Then adding to each 5 gallons half a gram of common salt, 1.5 gram of gypsum and 2 grams of calcium chloride flake will get somewhere near to your desired profile.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

There are several dilemmas here, as with all waters and water profiles. I will list only a few of these dilemmas:

1) Real world water can rarely if ever be twisted or conformed or mystically or even physically morphed into a profile.

2) Who gives one the power to proclaim that any canned profile somehow has or derives value and validity and justification?

3) Why do people believe that one may actually have within their being such exalted power?

4) From where does such exalted power derive?

5) What valid (as in peer reviewed, for one example) proof is offered by the one being exalted as to the validity and efficacy of such profiles as have been forwarded by said exalted one?

6) Etc...

Short version: Profiles have serious problems. Those listed above being merely a few.

My view on profiles is that they are mystically believed to have intrinsically transcendent value, often because the originator of the profile is mystically revered to have a virtually godlike status within the world of brewing. And because brewers want to believe. They have no idea why they want to believe, but perhaps they believe that every brewer is similarly a believer, and they want to belong. I will leave it at that, sans that I will interject that this has nothing to do with science, and as such I have recently asked a prominent and well respected moderator to separate water profile and water conversion into profile discussions from brewing science and placed into a forum of their own.

Another problem is that if you mash and sparge and you mash using the same profile that I use and we are making the same beer using the same recipe and the same overall volumes and weights and ingredients, but you are mashing in 3 gallons of water because you sparge and I am mashing in 9 gallons of water because I do not, then my mash water has 3 times the mineral content of your mash water, even though both of us are using the same water with the same PPM profile. This is a huge problem, the implications for which I will leave from this discussion.

 

[day_trippr]

Um...I don't think that word salad even touched the OPs questions...

Cheers!

 

[mabrungard]

You have great water. Use an acid to neutralize the high bicarbonate content in your tap water.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

The acid required to bring 5 gallons of your water to ~5.5 pH will be (choose one):

88% Lactic Acid ~= 3.3 mL
10% Phosphoric Acid ~= 35 mL
85% Phosphoric Acid ~= 2.6 mL
AMS/CRS ~= 10.5 mL

Technical note #1: To reduce your HCO3- to a true zero ppm requires that you acidify your water to ~pH 4.3.

Technical note #2: Your mash water may require additional acidification by which to achieve your desired mash pH target.

Technical note #3: The above suggested acid amounts will vary to some (generally small) degree based upon your initial water pH.

 

[VikeMan]

Technical note #2: Your mash water may require additional acidification by which to achieve your desired mash pH target.

Life would be so much simpler if you could just adjust your brewing liquor to pH 5.x and call it a day.

 

[mabrungard]

Life would be so much simpler if you could just adjust your brewing liquor to pH 5.x and call it a day.

There are people that say that just adjusting the water pH to 5.5 is enough. I can assure you that this approach does not work for most brewing. Brewing water chemistry is actually more complicated than that.

 

[VikeMan]

There are people that say that just adjusting the water pH to 5.5 is enough. I can assure you that this approach does not work for most brewing. Brewing water chemistry is actually more complicated than that.

Amen, Brutha.