Water treatment question.

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Cyberjip

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Just a quick one as I haven't really done any dark beers using my current water supply,

Seems to be an awful lot stuff going into the boil. This might be normal was just wondering if this looks off to anybody else.

This is what I have according to scotish water

Water breakdown
CA Calcium 14.58
MG Magnesium 2.78
NA Sodium 22.27
SO4 Sulphate 32.38
Cl Chloride 23.22

Alkalinity CaCO3 47.78

And this is what the calculator is saying
20200324_212145.jpg


Does this look ok for a 21L batch of oatmeal stout?
 
The top figure of 50L doesn't look right. I'd expect it to be more like 30L.
Yer I thought that might be giving me incorrect numbers, however I am heating that amount of water in my HLT ( was just going to use the rest for cleanup).

I'll try to run the numbers with the brew volume instead.
 
Calcium Carbonate will not contribute what this calculator presumes for it because it is highly insoluble in water. Instead it will mostly just drop out.
 
Calcium Carbonate will not contribute what this calculator presumes for it because it is highly insoluble in water. Instead it will mostly just drop out.
Good to know for the future.
Still trying to get my head arround water treatment hence why I use the calculator here.
 
I just gave it an admittedly brief spin and it is pretty neat. Is it driven heavily by wort color? If starting with distilled and shooting for 70 ppm each for Cl- and SO4-- it did not predict a final calcium level, but rather it reported NaN. It also presumes anhydrous CaCl.

Overall a great start!!!
 
Last edited:
Just seen your post...................We are blessed with good quality water here in Scotland (too much of it at times !) Personally I use it straight from the tap for most types of brew and have never had any issues/off flavours.
 
I just gave it an admittedly brief spin and it is pretty neat. Is it driven heavily by wort color? If starting with distilled and shooting for 70 ppm each for Cl- and SO4-- it did not predict a final calcium level, but rather it reported NaN. It also presumes anhydrous CaCl.

Overall a great start!!!
Yes it uses Braukaiser's mash pH formula which determines wort colour contribution from base, crystal, and roast malts and estimates acidity from that.
Not sure why it's returning NaN, I ran the same thing on Chrome and it worked ok, what browser are you using?
You're quite right about the anhydrous CaCl2, I meant to change that earlier but I've now updated it to dihydrate which I think is more common. I didn't want to add both because I think it would confuse some.
 
I'm currently looking for testers and/or feedback on my simple water calculator HERE if you'd like to take a look at it.
I'll take a look at this and hopefully use it next time, although like I say I'm still trying to learn. So won't know if it's good or not
 
Yes it uses Braukaiser's mash pH formula which determines wort colour contribution from base, crystal, and roast malts and estimates acidity from that.
Not sure why it's returning NaN, I ran the same thing on Chrome and it worked ok, what browser are you using?
You're quite right about the anhydrous CaCl2, I meant to change that earlier but I've now updated it to dihydrate which I think is more common. I didn't want to add both because I think it would confuse some.

I also set sparge water to zero. It reads NaN for final calcium even if calcium is initially present. Firefox 74.0 (64 bit) within Linux Mint.

EDIT: I added sparge water volume and calcium reports fine that way. It fails and reports NaN if you don't sparge. Perhaps a divide by zero issue?
 
Braukaiser's old Kaiser Water Calculator is what inspired me to generate my own calculator. It is still a favorite standby for me, albeit that my current Mash Made Easy calculator uses none of his formulas (as I recall at least). But I list him under the credits because his calculator got the ball rolling for me.
 
I also set sparge water to zero. It reads NaN for final calcium even if calcium is initially present. Firefox 74.0 (64 bit) within Linux Mint.

EDIT: I added sparge water volume and calcium reports fine that way. It fails and reports NaN if you don't sparge. Perhaps a divide by zero issue?
Good catch, fixed thanks thumb
Braukaiser's old Kaiser Water Calculator is what inspired me to generate my own calculator. It is still a favorite standby for me, albeit that my current Mash Made Easy calculator uses none of his formulas (as I recall at least). But I list him under the credits because his calculator got the ball rolling for me.
His wiki is a real treasure trove of information, and he was kind enough to give me permission to use some of his info when I emailed him, a good guy.
 
Just seen your post...................We are blessed with good quality water here in Scotland (too much of it at times !) Personally I use it straight from the tap for most types of brew and have never had any issues/off flavours.
You're not wrong. It is brilliant water to drink, really soft, however I do find as it is so soft I do need to add a bit to get it closer to the profile of my chosen style.
 
I'll take a look at this and hopefully use it next time, although like I say I'm still trying to learn. So won't know if it's good or not
It's designed to be as simple as possible, but if you need any help give me a shout :hat:
 
I'm currently looking for testers and/or feedback on my simple water calculator HERE if you'd like to take a look at it.

Thanks for this Steve. I use the water calculator link in the forum as it just requires you to input your current water profile and the type of beer you are brewing. With yours it requires the user to know what target mineral amounts they are looking to achieve and to input this also. Where can we obtain this information?
 
I'm currently looking for testers and/or feedback on my simple water calculator HERE if you'd like to take a look at it.

Now it's my turn. I'm similarly looking for feedback on my newly updated mash water pH adjustment assistant spreadsheet (with many additional water calculator functions and utilities) which (as always) is both free and complete (I.E., no teaser leading to a more functional and complete "pay version"), is available in both Metric and Avoirdupois unit versions, and can be found and downloaded HERE
 

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