Water report help please

[watermelon83]

I had a water report done with water filtered by a 19 dollar hose filter I use to clean my hot tub water. This is well water through hose with filter attached. My well water is horribly lousy with iron and this filter removes it for the tub. Please tell me if this is decent brewing water. I mainly brew ipa's, cream ale, with the occasional IIPA and porter or stout.


pH 7.9
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 436
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.73
Cations / Anions, me/L 8.5 / 8.5 ppm
Sodium, Na 30
Potassium, K 13
Calcium, Ca 69
Magnesium, Mg 40
Total Hardness, CaCO3 339
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 19
Chloride, Cl 8
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 434
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 359
Total Phosphorus, P 0.06
Total Iron, Fe 0.02
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

 

[Yooper]

Well, your bicarb is crazy high. That should be dealt with, maybe by boiling to decarbonate, or lime softening, or by cutting with distilled or RO water. With the bicarb that high, the mash pH is going to be too high if you don't reduce the alkalinity.

My guess is that cream ales or other light colored beers have some harshness or astringency? Mine do if I use tap water, and my bicarb is much lower than yours, nearly 1/2 of yours. By reducing that, the beer should improve greatly.

 

[ajdelange]

Please tell me if this is decent brewing water.

Afraid not. It's 7.2 mEq/L alkalinity is terribly high and with only 3.5 mEq/L of calcium hardness to offset that it isn't a good candidate for lime or boiling decarbonation. With that level of calcium and magnesium you probably have a water softener and your best bet would very likely be to put an RO unit behind it an use RO (supplemented with salts) for everything. The raw water is definitely throwaway.

 

[watermelon83]

Thank you both! I have never actually brewed with my well water. From the day we built this place, I have hated the taste and smell of it. Before we moved in I put a 5g a day RO system under the kitchen sink. We use that water for all things that get consumed.

I was kind of hoping the cheap filter would fix it enough to brew with. I guess I'll wait until I can drop the coin on a dedicated RO, or move. Until then I'll just keep using the water mans water. Again thank you both for your time!

 

[mabrungard]

Hmm? By my review, that water is suited to lime softening. The sum of Ca and Mg mval is nearly equal to the HCO3 mval. The treatment has to be via Excess Lime with the pH brought to around 12 to precipitate the MgOH. Not exactly a throw-away water after treatment, but it is not suitable for brewing use as-is.

 

[mdennytoo]

My thinking is that warermellon83 can go ahead and try his stouts. Carbonates are high. Dry stout with a good pound/ pound and a half of roast barley, some acid malt, and a pH meter will probably get him a beer.

 

[ajdelange]

.

 

[ajdelange]

Hmm? By my review, that water is suited to lime softening. The sum of Ca and Mg mval is nearly equal to the HCO3 mval.

Yes, that's so but the magnesium is not available for de carbonation as MgCO3 is an order of magnitude more soluble than CaCO3. As you yourself note Mg is taken out as the hydroxide. The rule of thumb says he'll drop 2.5 mEq calcium taking out 2.5 mEq alkalinity with it. That will leave almost 5 mEq. He could boost the calcium, of course, as he has headroom in sulfate and chloride and take out more carbonate.

This is definitely a problem water and not
one, IMO, worthy of heroic measures when a simple solution exists.

 

[ajdelange]

My thinking is that warermellon83 can go ahead and try his stouts. Carbonates are high. Dry stout with a good pound/ pound and a half of roast barley, some acid malt, and a pH meter will probably get him a beer.

He might be able to come up with something.

A typical Irish (dry) stout contains 70% base malt, 20% flaked barley and 10% roast barley. In water at 1.2 qts/lb with 1 mEq (per liter but I'll skip that) alkalinity and 1 mEq calcium hardness he might expect a mash pH of 5.58. Note that these numbers are representative based on representative base malts (Maris Otter in this case), roast barley and flaked barley. With water containing 7.2 mEq alkalinity at pH 7.9 the estimated mash pH goes up to 5.83 - too high by most all accounts.

Let's say we accept 5.6 as the highest pH we'd like. Roast barley really isn't all that acidic to that pH. A kg is equivalent to 4.7 mL of 23 Be Hydrochloric acid (hardware store strength). But sauermalz is. A kg of that is equivalent to 28.6 mL of hardware store HCl. You don't want to up the roast barley much over 10% as the beer will start to taste like charcoal briquettes so the question then becomes how much sauermalz would it take to get pH 5.6 with 10% roast barley. The answer is about 3.5%. That's really not too bad. If he decided he wanted pH 5.5 the sauermalz requirement moves to about 5.1%. That's a bit more than is generally considered safe from flavor effects but that lactic taste in a dry stout might be quite pleasant.