Water report questions, looking for feedback

[kyle187]

I have been brewing for a few years and haven't really paid attention to my water before. I used to have town water and my beer always came out good so I never worried about it. I have recently moved to a new house and have well water. Now I am worried the change in water may change the outcome of my beer.

My water report i had done during the home inspection is below. A few questions/concerns I have are:

1: what would make my pH so low? note: i brewed one batch (an IPA) since i have been here, and the mash ph was in the 5's (i used a pH strip with a range of 1-14 so i cant really be more accurate than 5.something) so maybe the pH reading on the test was off? Or maybe my pH swings because of low alkalinity? I also used the pH test strip in tap water and its between 6-7.

2: Using bru'n water it asks for carbonate and bicarbonate levels, neither of which show up on my report. I know these are related to alkalinity, but how important is it for me to have both carbonate and bicarbonate levels exact in bru'n water?

Alkalinity 10.3
Calcium 11.4
Chloride 39.4
Copper 0.15
Hardness 35
Nitrate 2.63
Nitrite Not Detected
pH 5.3
Sulfate 13.6
Iron 0.02
Magnesium 1.59
Potassium 1.28
Sodium 21.3

Any feedback, suggestions, and recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ajdelange]

1: what would make my pH so low? note: i brewed one batch (an IPA) since i have been here, and the mash ph was in the 5's (i used a pH strip with a range of 1-14 so i cant really be more accurate than 5.something) so maybe the pH reading on the test was off? Or maybe my pH swings because of low alkalinity? I also used the pH test strip in tap water and its between 6-7.

You are on a well now. The water comes out of the ground. In the soil there are bacteria that respire producing CO2 such that the partial pressure of CO2 in the soil through which the water percolates is orders of magnitude higher than it is in the air. Thus much more CO2 dissolves to form carbonic acid. As your water is delightfully low in buffering (alkalinity) it doesn't take much acid to pull pH pretty low. It is expected that a well drilled in a mesic region will have pH in the 5's or 6's. 5.3 is pretty low which is attributable to the low alkalinity.

2: Using bru'n water it asks for carbonate and bicarbonate levels, neither of which show up on my report.

Yes, that's unfortunately true. Your bicarbonate is 13.12 and your carbonate essentially 0.

I know these are related to alkalinity, but how important is it for me to have both carbonate and bicarbonate levels exact in bru'n water?

Bru'n water (and most of the other spreadsheets and calculators) treat bicarbonate as a proxy for alkalinity which is pretty accurate at mid-range pH and doesn't really begin to break down until pH's reach about the level at which your water is found. Even for your pH the error is 4.5% and the good news for you is that your akalinity is so low. Ordinarily you would convert your alkalinity to bicarbonate by multiplying by 61 and dividing by 50 which would give you 12.7 for the bicarbonate and enter that. Your correct number is 13.1 so this shortcoming doesn't make much difference in your case.

Any feedback, suggestions, and recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Obviously it's really nice water. You can treat it essentially as RO for any beer to which you would want to add heavy mineralization. For Pils and Helles, use it as it is.

 

[kyle187]

Obviously it's really nice water. You can treat it essentially as RO for any beer to which you would want to add heavy mineralization. For Pils and Helles, use it as it is.

Thanks for all the info!

Should I be concerned with the ph of the mash falling out of ideal range, particularly with darker beers?

Edit: I never worried about this while on city water nor did I ever have any issues with dark beers.

 

[ajdelange]

Should I be concerned with the ph of the mash falling out of ideal range, particularly with darker beers?

No more so than the thousands of brewers now regularly using RO water but yes, if you use an inordinate amount of high colored malt with an acidic base malt with low buffering capacity and add a good deal of calcium salts and miscalculate your acid requirement you could drop too low. In some cases you might even require alkali.

Edit: I never worried about this while on city water nor did I ever have any issues with dark beers.

What was the old source's akalinity?

 

[kyle187]

What was the old source's akalinity?

84 and the ph was 9.1

 

[ajdelange]

That's substantially different - 74 ppm difference. As you'll need 90% of the alkalinity number to 0 the water's effective alkalinity that means you can use 0.9*74/50 = 67/50 = 1.34 mEq/L less acid. For a 5 gal batch mashed with 12 L water that is 16.1 mEq less equivalent to 1.4 mL of lactic acid (to pH 5.40) or 300 g of 600L chocolate malt.