Water Test

[SailorJerry]

Alright, @brandtrepair sent a sample of his well water off to Ward laboratories, and, well, we don't know crap about water chemistry. Below is what they found. What can you tell us about this? We make a lot of IPAs, NEIPAs, and pale ales. Want to test our hand at this water chemistry stuff.

I tried putting the stuff into Bru N Water, but it didn't like some of the numbers for some reason.

Here goes:
pH 7.6
TDS 514
Electrical Conductivity .86
me/L 10.3 / 9.8

Following are in ppm
Sodium, NA 49
Potassium, K 5
Calcium, Ca 103
Magnesium, Mg 35
Total Hardness, CaCO3 403
Nitrate <.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 23
Chloride, Cl 2
Carbonate, CO3 <1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 505
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 416
Total Phosphorus, P .02
Total Iron, Fe .68



Educate us

 

[day_trippr]

Allow me to interpret: "This water needs an RO system to be useful for brewing beer".

Seriously, that's some tough water right there. Along with the uber high alkalinity there's the high iron content...

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Your water is brutally high in alkalinity. Almost as high as my well water in this regard. If iron is in ppm, that is high also.

Did you multiply SO4-S by 3 to yield 69 ppm of SO4? BW may like it better that way, as the cation/anion balance will be much closer to neutral.

I agree with day_trippr that your best bet is to abandon this water.

 

[MT's AZ Ale Haus]

I use ro water in 5 gal tubs and I add 1 tsp Gypsum and 1 tsp Calcium Chloride to each 5 gal and it makes perfect beer for me, but all I do is IPA's and APA's.

 

[ajdelange]

I'm afraid I don't much like those numbers either. While there are some beers you could probably brew successfully with it but in general it has way too much calcium bicarbonate to be considered a viable source for a brewery. The high calcium (5 mEq/L) and high alkalinity (8 mEq/L) coupled with low chloride suggest that decabonation may be possible with lime treatment or by boiling but those processes are a bit of a nuisance especially compared to the use of an RO system. Capital investment is required and can be a nuisance to install but once it's in it's in.

 

[SailorJerry]

Well, that was a lot of quick responses! Thank you!
So, what beer would you recommend for us to do a little experiment with. His well water vs RO water we can buy at our store. Same beer. Same ingredients. Different water.

Probably a good learning curve for us and a way to learn a bit!

 

[MT's AZ Ale Haus]

Well, that was a lot of quick responses! Thank you!
So, what beer would you recommend for us to do a little experiment with. His well water vs RO water we can buy at our store. Same beer. Same ingredients. Different water.

Probably a good learning curve for us and a way to learn a bit!

I would do a little one gal pale ale with 1# DME and some hops and see what the beer taste like and then do the same with RO water and compare

 

[ajdelange]

I think you may as yet be unaware of an essential aspect of the use of RO water. You must put minerals into it in order to obtain a suitable water for brewing. You can, at one extreme brew with straight RO water. That's going, in general, to lead to insipid beer. More reasonable as a starting point is to add nothing but a bit of calcium chloride and that's fine for a whole lot of beers. At the other extreme you could add enough salts to reproduce the water you have. Mother nature did it and so can you (though it would be difficult). So you can't ask what beer you should brew to compare RO water to the existing water. You must specify what kind of beer you are interested in. Then we can tell you what to add to the water to make a good version of that beer (though opinions will vary, I promise you). Then you can brew the beer with the treated RO and the existing water and compare.

 

[SailorJerry]

I think you may as yet be unaware of an essential aspect of the use of RO water. You must put minerals into it in order to obtain a suitable water for brewing. You can, at one extreme brew with straight RO water. That's going, in general, to lead to insipid beer. More reasonable as a starting point is to add nothing but a bit of calcium chloride and that's fine for a whole lot of beers. At the other extreme you could add enough salts to reproduce the water you have. Mother nature did it and so can you (though it would be difficult). So you can't ask what beer you should brew to compare RO water to the existing water. You must specify what kind of beer you are interested in. Then we can tell you what to add to the water to make a good version of that beer (though opinions will vary, I promise you). Then you can brew the beer with the treated RO and the existing water and compare.

This makes a lot of sense, but we were hoping to brew this weekend, as we have a giant blizzard coming our way, and that isn't enough time to get salts to use for brewing. Well, maybe I'm wrong. Could a guy find calcium chloride in a store? I know nothing about salts, water additions, as you can tell.

Learning curve is steep on the chem side of things!

 

[brandtrepair]

Is there anyway of lowering the alkalinity of my water without doing ro? I know my iron is high. Gonna be buying a whole house iron filter in the future

 

[ajdelange]

This implies that you have a source of RO?

Yes, you can. It's called Pickle Crisp.

 

[brandtrepair]

This implies that you have a source of RO?

Yes, you can. It's called Pickle Crisp.

Yes we can get ro at our local food store. Just hoping to use my own water. Easier Haha.

 

[ajdelange]

Is there anyway of lowering the alkalinity of my water without doing ro?

Yes, you can. The usual methods are
1)Actual removal by precipitation of calcium carbonate via boiling or the addition of lime. I hinted that this is quite doable but that there are some calculations that need to be made and the process is a bit of a PITA especially in your case as your calcium is 2 mEq/L lower than your alkalinity and alkalinity can only be removed with an equal amount of calcium. You would have, therefore, to augment your calcium. As your water is low in chloride the obvious source of additional calcium is calcium chloride.
2)"Neutralize" the alkalinity with acid. Neutralize here actually means convert to carbon dioxide which flies off. The anion of the acid stays behind. Each mEq of alkalinity reduced is replaced with a mEq of anion. The obvious choice for acid is, based on this, hydrochloric acid.

In either case, your chloride is going up. I'm not going to do any calculations for you at this point because I don't think these approaches are the best way to go for you.

I know my iron is high. Gonna be buying a whole house iron filter in the future

In the lime treatment the OH gets run way up so that if you have aerated the water thoroughly before adding the lime the iron should drop out too. Again, I think RO is a better way to go. If you do decide to go RO I'd still advise considering iron remediation (and water softening) for the feed to the RO unit. No point in gumming it up with Fe2(OH)3 and/or chalk.

 

[brandtrepair]

Yes, you can. The usual methods are
1)Actual removal by precipitation of calcium carbonate via boiling or the addition of lime. I hinted that this is quite doable but that there are some calculations that need to be made and the process is a bit of a PITA especially in your case as your calcium is 2 mEq/L lower than your alkalinity and alkalinity can only be removed with an equal amount of calcium. You would have, therefore, to augment your calcium. As your water is low in chloride the obvious source of additional calcium is calcium chloride.
2)"Neutralize" the alkalinity with acid. Neutralize here actually means convert to carbon dioxide which flies off. The anion of the acid stays behind. Each mEq of alkalinity reduced is replaced with a mEq of anion. The obvious choice for acid is, based on this, hydrochloric acid.

In either case, your chloride is going up. I'm not going to do any calculations for you at this point because I don't think these approaches are the best way to go for you.

In the lime treatment the oH gets run way up so that if you have aerated the water thoroughly before adding the lime the iron should drop out too. Again, I think RO is a better way to go. If you do decide to go RO I'd still advise considering iron remediation (and water softening) for the feed to the RO unit. No point in gumming it up with Fe2(OH)3 and/or chalk.

You said a lot of big words some of them make sense haha. But for water softening I don't have any of my drinking water running through the water softener. Should I be brewing with water through the water softener? Or am I in a completely different page than everybody else here haha.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

No, stay away from the softener. A softener removes calcium and magnesium and replaces them with sodium. It does nothing to reduce alkalinity.

That said, if you get an RO unit, feed it softened water, as the elements will last longer that way. The RO unit will strip out the sodium and the alkalinity.

 

[brandtrepair]

No, stay away from the softener. A softener removes calcium and magnesium and replaces them with sodium. It does nothing to reduce alkalinity.

That said, if you get an RO unit, feed it softened water, as the elements will last longer that way. The RO unit will strip out the sodium and the alkalinity.

Ok. I'm with ya now.