Water Chemistry

[tomwhit19]

Never really paid much attention to water chemistry, always just used an RV filter but I just moved and I can definitely tell there is a huge difference in the water so I've attached a file with the charts that were in the most recent water report for my new town. Any input on what to add to the water for brew days is appreciated

 

[WBB]

Really depends on what you’re brewing and what you want your target profile to be.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

For brewing you need to reasonably reliably know your waters mg/L (ppm) of calcium, magnesium, sodium, chloride, and sulfate.

Since the info above has wildly varying results, how will you know what blend they are sending down the line at any given moment?

 

[tomwhit19]

For brewing you need to reasonably reliably know your waters mg/L (ppm) of calcium, magnesium, sodium, chloride, and sulfate.

Since the info above has wildly varying results, how will you know what blend they are sending down the line at any given moment?

Im with you on that, that makes perfect sense.....thats probably not cheap or easily done at the house to get those numbers

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I almost forgot, you also need to know your waters alkalinity.

 

[histo320]

Im with you on that, that makes perfect sense.....thats probably not cheap or easily done at the house to get those numbers

I had the same issue with my towns water as it changes with the season.

It easier and cheaper to build your water from Distilled Water. That way you can change the water to the beer you are making. Lots of software out there to help.

 

[tomwhit19]

Instead of buying distilled water could I just boil water, let it cool, and then bring it back to mash in temp and add whatever to it to make it to the style I’m brewing?

 

[WBB]

Not that easy. By the time you make your own distilled water, enough for a 5 gallon batch, so let’s say 7 gallons or so, you could have went to the store, dropped 7 bucks on 7 gallons, brewed your batch and fermented it for two weeks.

 

[camonick]

RO water is another good option. Many towns have kiosks or water stations that dispense it for as little as 20¢-25¢ per gallon.

 

[CodeSection]

@tomwhit19, based upon your water report, I would suggest using RO water whereby starting with practically nothing and then building your water chemistry with the help of a software program. I use BS3 for mineral additions for a specific style/location and MME for pH calculation.

If you haven't tried it yet, download Mash Made Easy at https://mashmadeeasy.yolasite.com

Good luck!

 

[cactusgarrett]

That water report is relatively incomplete with regards to the compounds for brewing. As Silver suggested, you're looking for info on: calcium, magnesium, sodium, chloride, sulfate, and hardness/alkalinity. Your best options are to either build from RO/DI water (grocery store), or collect multiple samples throughout the year and send it into Ward Labs for an analysis. The latter would be very expensive and labor intensive - both for collection as well as actual usage (ie. changing your target with the time of year).

Go with building up from RO/DI.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Never really paid much attention to water chemistry, always just used an RV filter but I just moved and I can definitely tell there is a huge difference in the water so I've attached a file with the charts that were in the most recent water report for my new town. Any input on what to add to the water for brew days is appreciated

Don't let people bamboozle you. Yes, that report doesn't include the key ions of calcium and sulphate - but it does tell you that your hardness is just 23ppm, so this is nice soft water that should in principle be great for brewing with. So it's worth just looking around for water reports from neighbouring areas where they _do_ report calcium and sulphate to get a feel for what values you can plausibly expect in your own water, amybe get TDS meter to get a feel for when there's an influx of mineral-rich water, but it's not too bad - whilst the variations look high in percentage terms, they're happening in a water that's relatively low in minerals so the absolute variation isn't so bad. But looking at eg reports for Jersey City at Brewersfriend, you're looking at ~20ppm Ca and 10ppm SO4 which is nothing - this is really soft water, almost RO water just out of the tap.

You will have different mineral targets depending on what beer you want to make, but you should be able to plug some of those numbers into one of the many online water calculators, usually just a teaspoon or two of gypsum and/or calcium chloride should give you great water for brewing.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I missed the hardness on the report. Calcium is thereby only on the order of about 9 ppm, and magnesium is likely to be less than 1 ppm.