Water Help

[iagainsti]

Brewing up a bitter soon, and needed some help doctoring up my water for brew day. Below is my districts water profile. Values are in ppm.

Calcium 6.55
Magnesium 9.55
Sulfate 0.008
CACO3 53.5
Chlorine 0.55
Sodium 15.5

PH 7.6

We use CACO3 rather than Bicarbonate in the water. Does anyone know how to convert the two in terms of hardness? We also use sodium chlorite as a disinfectant. Anything I would want to consider when filtering this?
If you see anything else in the profile that I might want to look into I’d gratefully appreciate the help!

 

[mabrungard]

If that CaCO3 value represents the alkalinity, then you multiply that value by 1.22 to estimate the bicarbonate content. Since sodium chlorite is used as the disinfectant, I'm assuming that there is also some chloride in that water. To help the water profile balance ionically, it appears that the chloride content may be around 25 ppm. Overall...pretty nice water. Do employ some measure to remove that chlorine from the water prior to brewing.

 

[iagainsti]

Thanks for the info. I made a typo though - sodium hypochlorite is what the water is treated with.

 

[mabrungard]

sodium hypochlorite, aka: liquid bleach

 

[ajdelange]

Since sodium chlorite is used as the disinfectant, I'm assuming that there is also some chloride in that water. To help the water profile balance ionically, it appears that the chloride content may be around 25 ppm.

Let's not give him the impression that the chloride comes from the hypochlorite. Some hypochlorite ion (and some hypochlorous acid) are reduced to chloride ion but if the available free chlorine is 0.55 mg/L the chloride that came from the calcium or sodium hypochlorite dose can't be very large.

 

[iagainsti]

looks the chloride content is 36.5 ppm. I am having a hard time making sense of the water chemistry calculator on brewersfriend. any chance you guys know of another one online? would a teaspoon of gypsum do the trick for brewing a bitter?

 

[ajdelange]

Per 5 gallons, yes. See the Primer.