Target water profile

[Cozzyb]

Hi everyone,

What target water profile are you currently using?
Someone posted on here Thornbridges water profile and I find the Calcium and Sulphate levels are crazy high, is this normal?
199mg Cal
20mg Mag
30mg Sodium
412mg Sulphate
123mg Chloride
17mg HCO3

So what do you think to the above, and what do you use? This would be for Pale ales/IPAs

[killer]

I've brewed with that profile before - with no ill effects. It would have to be a superhoppy Pale ale/ IPA/ Double IPA though. It turned out very well. It was slightly minerally but not in any negative way.

My preferred pale ale profile (honed over 2 years of experiments on about 30 IPAs) is:

150ppm (ish) Ca
10ppm Mg
250 - 300ppm Sulfate
60 - 100ppm Chloride
10 - 40ppm HCO3

Why not brew with this profile (its very similar to the Brunwater Burton profile) - see what you think and then bump up minerals the next time...

[Cozzyb]

whats with the large range on things, shouldn't there be a target number to aim for really?

[killer]

Well, two reasons. I haven't noticed much (if any) change in flavour when staying within those ranges - as many seem to suggest the ratios (of sulfate chloride) can be more important than absolute values. Secondly, I'm not under any illusions about being able to hit exactly 325.6 ppm sulfate with the measuring equipment that I use at home.

[Ren]

Well, two reasons. I haven't noticed much (if any) change in flavour when staying within those ranges - as many seem to suggest the ratios (of sulfate chloride) can be more important than absolute values. Secondly, I'm not under any illusions about being able to hit exactly 325.6 ppm sulfate with the measuring equipment that I use at home.

How do you measure sulfates at home?

[killer]

With a small scales - in the form of calcium or Magnesium Sulfate. I realise I wasn't clear. What I was implying was that many of the salts we keep at home will pick up water over time, or in fact already contain quite a lot of water (solid MgSO4 for example can be more than 50% water). So when we weigh them out there can often be a huge variation relative to what we think we are weighing out. Equally the error in the balances we use can be quite significant on the scales that we use. If we weigh 0.2g of NaCl on a balance with a precision of 0.1g - we could also be out by 50%.