Water Chemistry Help

[snow16]

Hi all. I just got my results back from Ward Labs:

pH 5.9
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 67
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.11
Cations / Anions, me/L 1.0 / 0.8
ppm
Sodium, Na 4
Potassium, K 2
Calcium, Ca 11
Magnesium, Mg 3
Total Hardness, CaCO3 40
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.3 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 6
Chloride, Cl 3
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 20
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 16
Total Phosphorus, P < 0.01
Total Iron, Fe 0.02

I've read a lot of information on adjusting water chemistry over the past few days, and maybe it's just information overload - but I can't seem to wrap my head around the best way to correct my water here.

I've been doing mainly partial mash recently and haven't worried about water chemistry all that much, but would like to take the next step and see how important this water stuff really is. Starting next batch I will be going all-grain.

I brew a little bit of everything, but mainly IPAs, American Brown Ales, Wee Heavys and Stouts of all styles. All over the map, really. What should I do (if anything) to alter my water chemistry when brewing pale, hoppy beers like IPAs? What about for the dark, ominous, malt-focused beers?

All these numbers intimidate me. Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[Yooper]

Wow- what great water to start with! I'm so jealous. I had to buy an RO system due to my high alkalinity in my water.

You have a good blank slate for all beers. A little bit of tweaking is all that is needed. A brewing water spreadsheet would be very helpful- try Brewer's Friend or bru'n water (both free online) and target a mash pH of 5.3-5.5 (you may need some acid or acid malt for lighter beers) and for certain styles minimal additions would be all that is needed. Some gypsum for IPAs or pale ales, and some calcium chloride for the rest should be all you need in addition to the acid. I use phosphoric acid, or lactic acid for my acid adjustments.

 

[Tiber_Brew]

I came here to say basically everything Yooper said. I guess I'll leave the room now...

 

[brewkinger]

Yup...
Yooper beat us to it.
I second the "wow, nice water to start with" comment.

That is a great base water profile for just about any beer that you want to make.

 

[mabrungard]

Yeah, wow! Good water. However, this doesn't mean you can ignore it. It is a nicely, near blank slate like RO, but even those users still have to adjust with acids, bases, and flavor minerals to get the water to mesh with their current beer.

This report means you can make better pale beers than most of us, but to make great beer it will still require a bit of your intervention.

 

[WildGingerBrewing]

I have recently started "learning" about water chemistry. My local water company publishes a report every month with all the data for the water, pre-treated and post-treated. The problem I have with it, is that if I am brewing in Jan, the report online is from Dec. It changes quite a bit from month to month. So in reality, do I really know what my starting water profile is? Either way, I am building my water based on the most recent report and it is working out. This is just a question that has plagued me.

 

[ajdelange]

You can turn this into basic brewing water by adding 50 mg/L CaCl2.0H20 (or equivalent in one of the hydrated salts). That will bring your calcium to approximately 30 mg/L and chloride to 35 mg/L - good working values. You can brew lots and lots of beers with water like that and the trend in commercial brewing seems to be in this direction i.e. low mineral water. The thing that is obviously missing here is sulfate and whether you want to supplement that is a matter of personal taste. Try some beers with just the calcium and chloride augmentations and then, while tasting these beers, add some gypsum to the glass. If you like the result experiment with incrementing the sulfate with gypsum in the water. You can make water chemistry quite complicated if you want to and there are lots of spreadsheets, calculators, websites, books and articles to help you do that. If that's what you want to do I suggest starting out KISS as discussed here and adding complexity as your experience and understanding evolve.

 

[snow16]

Wow, I had no idea I was so lucky. I always thought my water tasted great but it's good to know it's awesome 'clean slate' brewing water too! Thanks everyone!

Another question, and please excuse my ignorance again -

The report doesn't mention anything about chlorine or chloramines, but am I missing something? Is there a way to figure these values out based on my chloride levels? I've been treating my water with a campden tablet just to be safe, but if there's no need I'd rather not add anything that doesn't absolutely need to be in my beer.

 

[brewkinger]

Also, I found a water chemistry spreadsheet. Bru 'n' Water. Looks pretty cool. Anyone use this?

If you look back up a couple of posts and find the one from mabrungard, I think that you may find at least one person that uses that program.

He is the designer of the spreadsheet and MANY of us use it.

 

[snow16]

My bad, missed that. That spreadsheet is amazing - thank you mabrungard!

 

[ajdelange]

The report doesn't mention anything about chlorine or chloramines, but am I missing something? Is there a way to figure these values out based on my chloride levels?

No, these are separate species. The chloride ion is just that: a chlorine atom with an extra electron. When a chlorine gas molecule reacts with water one of the atoms gets reduced to a chloride ion and the other oxidized to hypochlorite ion

Cl2 + H2O --> 2H+ + Cl- + OCl-

so there is a relationship but as most of the chloride ion in your water comes from other sources you cannot dope out the relationship between chloride and hypochlorite. Chloramine is a horse of a different color: NH3Cl. It is a result of injected ammonia.

You can test for chlorine and chloramine using inexpensive kits or you can use the simple sniff test described at
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/campden-tablets-sulfites-brewing-water-361073/
which also has some tips on how and when to use Campden tablets.