Water Chemistry Help Please

[Mickeywheelspin]

Hi all,

I'm trying to work out if there is anything I can do to save the swampwater that comes out of our taps at home, or if there is any style of beer it may suit?

I'm planning an Amarillo pale ale this weekend but may resort to buying bottled for this if the tap water is completely unsuitable (any recommendations?). Id rather not add loads of chemicals to the tap water, but I'm wondering if there are any basic steps I can take to improve it. At the moment I just add a campden tablet to around 35l water before heating to mash temps (I full volume BIAB).

I've had a go at plotting on the Greg Hughes residual alkalinity nomograph, and I'm nearly off the chart (http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3/understanding-the-mash-ph/residual-alkalinity-and-mash-ph). I also got a bit lost with trying to get the HCO3 figure down on the brewers friend calculator...

South East water tell me that "The water hardness for your property is 305mg/l CaCO₃" which I think works out as 372 HCO3

The mean values from the report are,

Calcium - 118.113 mg Ca/l
Chloride - 35.195 mg Cl/l
Magnesium - 4.025mg Mg/l
Sodium - 20.975 mg Na/l
Sulphate - 38.050 mg SO4/l

http://www.southeastwater.co.uk/media/178098/beenhams.pdf


Thanks for any help!

 

[TartanSpecial]

your water looks similar to mine in Epsom...though your sulphate and chloride are a bit higher than mine. First question is does it taste OK? If it tastes OK it should be OK to brew with. If it tastes bad (not just chlorine) then its probably not good to brew with. Assuming the former, you will need to treat with CRS to strip out the carbonates...for pale ales I have to add 1.3-1.5ml CRS per litre of brewing liquor (I use ~35litres for my 22.7 batch sizes). To get the exact amount to add, suggest you get a salifert alkalinity test kit...its really simple to use and you'll get an accurate reading of reserve alkalinity as opposed to total hardness (which will be higher)...then put the values though a water treatment calculator. I also find the hardness varies month to month reflecting how thames water is making up the supply. I prefer the old forum calculator.
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/water.php

 

[MyQul]

Let me start off by saying I'm defiantely not an expert on water treatment. I just concentrate on alkalinity to try and get my mash PH in the right area.

Wow! Your water is hard as nails! If I'm reading things right your Alkalinity is 305ppm or mg/L which is not really suitable for any style alone unless you reduce the alkalinity.

According to the brupaks water guide , pales need between 0-50ppm and dark beers 100-150ppm

http://www.brupaks.com/water treatment.htm

To reduce the alkalinity you could add some acid to strip out the bicarbonate but you've said you don't want to add any chemicals so you need to look at using bottled water. For pales I'd suggest just going 100% bottled and for dark beer you can mix your tap water with bottled. But you could probably do with a salifert alkalinity test kit (about ��£8 but you can get 100-200 tests out of it) to determine what percentage of tap to bottled you'd need to use. As an example, to get my tap water which is 188ppm to 142pm for some dark beers, I use 1/3 bottled to 2/3 tap.

As for which bottled water; most bottled water is actually quite high in alkalinity, afaik only Eden Falls from Asda (30ppm - which is what I use) and Waitrose (unknown to me ppm as I don't use it but is supposed to be low in alkalinity) are the only two

 

[duncans]

Hi, not an expert with water but my suggestion is -

Carbonates
You recognised this as high. Boiling your water, cooling and decanting away from the pile of calcium carbonate will help with this. In addition (or instead) you can add acids to remove this.
People use carbonate reducing solution (crs) or citric acid sometimes.
If you added 3 lvl tspn citric acid to 35l water, after boiling,it might be a good starting point for a pale ale. Trial and error with pH measurement is only way to crack this.

Chlorides/sulphates
For hoppy beers you want higher sulphates. You are roughly even. 2 level tspns of gypsum (calcium sulphate) in 35l water probably wouldn't hurt, maybe a bit light. This will also get your calcium level up to 100ppm plus mark, which helps with mash pH and fermentation.

Trial and error, pH measurement and tasting each variation.

There's also a water chemistry calculator on the forums too, which I probably should have mentioned first :)


Sry, myqul posted as I was still typing. Go with that.

 

[MyQul]

Sry, myqul posted as I was still typing. Go with that.

Not necessarily. I forgot about boiling your water. You could also do this if you didn't want to buy bottled

 

[TartanSpecial]

I forgot about the boiling water option too

 

[MyQul]

I forgot about the boiling water option too

I think it's cuz it's probably such a big hassle. I wouln't fancy boiling 50L of water (or whatever you need for a full brew length)

 

[Mickeywheelspin]

Crikey, thanks for all the tips.

Our water is rock hard, it's a nightmare for limescale buildup. We usually use filtered water in the kettle etc because of it, but it tastes fine so I'd like to use it if I can.

I'm tempted by the idea of boiling and cooling - it'll add an age to a brew day but I suppose I could boil the evening before I brew and leave it to cool overnight. In the morning decanting into a couple of spare FV's and descaling the boiler will only add around 20 mins so may be worth a go. A couple of teaspoons of gypsum might be worth a shot too.

For this weekend I'll probably just head to Asda and get some bottles as I don't have time to get to the LHBS for gypsum.

Thanks all!

 

[Dutto]

At the moment I am in the process of re-jigging the water system at home; especially the branch into the brewing area.

I have been using one of these to filter rainwater before using it in the washing machine.

https://www.mailspeedmarine.com/aqua-filta.html?gclid=CPPqlL-f38oCFQk8GwodrJYAyA

It is now redundant so Plan "A" is to install it in a branch line and use it to filter all the water I use in brewing; including bottle washing etc.

It won't do anything for your hardness problem but it would probably help with the taste.

 

[Brew_Mike]

His hardness is 305, the alkalinity is anybodies guess, they are not the same thing, and despite what you may see in books you can only use a formula to convert the two in a very limited number of circumstance.