Water Profile for Blonde ALe

[mgortel]

I have the following water profile here out of my tap:

Alkalinity 45.4
Calcium 28.0 ppm
Chloride 30 ppm
Magnesium 7 ppm
Sodium 14 ppm
Sulfate 26 ppm

I plan on doing a Blonde Ale (Biermunchers) as my first all grain next weekend (Memorial Day Weekend)

I am thinking that my water profile will be fine for this.....only thing I was thinking of doing is lowering the Alkalinity to as close to zero as I can get.

Any advice on this?

 

[mgortel]

OK....a follow-up to my original above post:

Using BeerSmith to calculate the aditives to get my Calcium up so that my mash Ph will be in range.....

Looking at adding 1.5g Gypsum and 1.5g Calcium Chloride. Results in the following water profile.....of course the Sulfate and Chloride values go up....but they are "balanced".

Calcium 89.0 ppm
Chloride 99 ppm
Magnesium 7 ppm
Sodium 14 ppm
Sulfate 107 ppm

Any input is appreciated.....just learning the water profile stuff.....

 

[mabrungard]

A Blonde is a fairly soft style that will not benefit from too high an ion content. Boosting the calcium into the 50 ppm range will be good enough. The last post shows calcium at 89 ppm which is unnecessarily high.

The balanced sulfate/chloride ratio is an OK goal since this is neither a malt or hop focused style. Keeping the levels of both ions as low as possible is more important than creating the balanced ratio.

A moderate reduction in alkalinity may be called for, but its difficult to say without knowing your brewing grist. Beersmith is not really the source of good brewing water knowledge or how to refine your adjustments. Its just great brewing software.