Yet another water report

[archthered]

I recently got my water report from Ward Labs. I have an idea of what I need to do to male my water better for brewing but I would like feedback on what I am thinking. Here is the report.

pH 7.6
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 398
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.66
Cations / Anions, me/L 7.4 / 7.1

ppm
Sodium, Na 54
Potassium, K 5
Calcium, Ca 48
Magnesium, Mg 31
Total Hardness, CaCO3 249
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.3 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 51
Chloride, Cl 24
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 193
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 159
Total Phosphorus, P 0.11
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit


My take on this is that the sodium, potassium, chloride, nitrate, sulfate, carbonate, and phosphorus are all acceptable. My pH is more than a little bit high.

My problems are my calcium, because I don't really have enough for a good mash, my magnesium, because it's high enough to start giving off flavors, and my bicarbonate, because it is really high and is driving the high pH which will inhibit a good mash.

My solution is to boil my water the night before a brew. This will cause the bicarbonate to combine with the calcium and precipitate out. However given my lack of calcium I will need to add either gypsum or CaCl, one gram per gallon, to help more of the bicarbonate precipitate out. This will have the added benefit of bringing down my magnesium since it will also form some precipitate with the bicarbonate. Some where I say that for every 3 calcium 5 bicarbonate will fall out so the single gram of gypsum etc, from above, should be enough to remove almost all of the bicarbonate. The resulting water will be deficient in calcium so I will have to add another gram of gypsum etc per gallon to get enough calcium to mash with. At this point I will have water that is more or less suitable for any kind of beer I want to brew. Alternatively I could add acid or sauermalt to fix my water but I'd need a lot of sauermalt and neith would fix my magnesium problem. Keep in mind I'm not saying that my water would be spot on for any particular water profile just that it would work for anything. Additionally I could modify this basic process to match other styles if I wanted.

So my questions:
1. Am I more or less correct in my analysis of this and how to fix it?
2. Can someone confirm or refute the 3 calcium for 5 bicarbonate thing? I saw it in an old thread here but no where else.
3. Is there anything else I should know about the water report?
4. How would a craft brewery deal with this water? I'm just curious, I can't imagine they would take the and energy to boil everything first, can you even decant in a commercial brew kettle. I'd imagine they'd add acid but that doesn't resolve the magnesium issue. It was just a thought I had.

Thanks for any help

 

[mabrungard]

That could be a tough water to brew most styles with. Plan on diluting by at least half to make it more suited for typical brewing. Higher dilution might be needed for delicate styles. RO needs to be in your future.

 

[ajdelange]

Your calcium is just about right at the level, 50 mg/L, that many sources say is the minimum you should have but in fact you can get by with much less. The Mg is high but not so high that I would worry about it. This would be taken care of if you diluted substantially with RO or used 100% RO which is what I would suggest for this water.

You have 3.18 mEq/L alkalinity to deal with and 2.4 mEq/L calcium to help you do it. The rule of thumb is that after boiling or lime treatment the smaller of the two numbers will be reduced to about 1 and equal amounts of Ca and alkalinity will be dropped as a precipitate. Thus, after treatment, you would expect 1 mEq/L Ca and 1.78 alkalinity The obvious thing to do is to supplement the calcium before boiling by about 2 mEq/L giving you a total of 4.8 thus the alkalinity is the smaller number and will be reduced by 2.18 to 1 with the calcium winding up at 4.8 - 2.18 = 1.62 which gets rid of most of the alkalinity but leaves enough calcium to make most people happy. The challenge is figuring out which calcium salt to use. Your sulfate is already pretty high (though many like even more) and adding 2 mEq/L chloride would get that up to 94 which is high but tolerable. Really the best solution, and an easy way out, is to use RO.

A craft brewery would probably install an RO system though some older ones might still use lime treatment which requires no boiling but gives the same result.

 

[archthered]

OK Let me just make sure I'm understanding things, some of this kind of conflicts with other info I have but I think I understand why.

That could be a tough water to brew most styles with.

I have three ideas about why you think my water would still be unsuitable despite what I've read elsewhere. I believe the most likely reason is that you are using a higher standard and aiming for competition quality beer. I made my analysis based on the information in Charlie Papazian's "Home Brewer's companion" (I know I really need to get my hands on "Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers" by John Palmer and Colin Kaminski) And I have a feeling his advice is just basic, designed so homebrewers can make passable beer and get them thinking about water quality and chemistry. On the other hand your advice is about helping me make the best beer possible, and competition level beer needs more attention to water and while my water, even after the boiling I mentioned, will still be way out of style for anything other than maybe a porter or stout and even then it doesn't match the profile of anywhere particularly known for beer. I appreciate the pro-level advice since ultimately I'd like to compete and hadn't seen Papazian's advice in that light until I was thinking about your comment.

The second option I see is that there is something else radically wrong with my water that I missed, in which case please let me know what I missed.

The third option is I severely over estimated how much bicarb will fall out and boiling simply isn't going to be enough.

The obvious thing to do is to supplement the calcium before boiling by about 2 mEq/L giving you a total of 4.8 thus the alkalinity is the smaller number and will be reduced by 2.18 to 1 with the calcium winding up at 4.8 - 2.18 = 1.62 which gets rid of most of the alkalinity but leaves enough calcium to make most people happy. The challenge is figuring out which calcium salt to use. Your sulfate is already pretty high (though many like even more) and adding 2 mEq/L chloride would get that up to 94 which is high but tolerable. Really the best solution, and an easy way out, is to use RO.

So by adding about 0.65 g of gypsum (or 0.56 g CaCl2) to each gallon that should give me the 2 mEq/l I need but will add additional salts (sulfate or Cl) and still will have 60 ppm or bicarbonate anyway. It will still not be great because as mentioned above I still have alot of things making my water out of style.


In short the take home is no matter what, I'm going to need to dilute my water to make better beer. RO is simply not in the budget at the moment so at least in the short term it's boiling and dilution with distilled water. In the long term get an RO system (and explain to my wife why it is getting connected to the garage water instead of the kitchen tap )

Thank you both!