Water treatment

[sonicated]

I have got my results back from Phoenix Analytical (Wallybrew) and I've been playing with Bru'n Water without much luck. If I put enough gypsum in I end up with too much sulphate.

At the risk of sounding lazy, can someone give me a recommendation? My report is:

Sodium as Na, mg/L 32.3
Potassium as K, mg/L 5.8
Magnesium as Mg, mg/L 5.4
Calcium as Ca, mg/L 86.9
Chloride as Cl, mg/L 46.8
Nitrate as NO3, mg/L 14.9
Phosphate as PO4, mg/L 2.5
Sulphate as SO4, mg/L 81.0
Total alkalinity as CaCO3, mg/L 159
pH, 7.42
Conductivity uScm-1 at 20C, 576
Total residual chlorine as Cl2, mg/L 0.07

Any advice appreciated!

[Mr. Dripping]

What are you actually trying to achieve and what beer do you want to make??

[sonicated]

I missed the beer out! I would like a water profile for an American IPA. I've only ever done kits before with supermarket water and now I am switching to all grain and I want to use tap water, but I want to sure I treat it correctly.

[Mr. Dripping]

My approach would be to use some sulphuric acid to reduce the alkalinity to around 20.
This will liberate sulphate in to the water.
I would then add calcium chloride to take the calcium up to around 150ppm.
I usually look for chloride to sulphate ratio of 1:3, so you may need to tweek with a little gypsum.
I use Bru'n'Water too.......just keep tweeking and looking at the finished water profile until you hit the numbers you want.

Do you have any acid to reduce the alkalinity??
It would also be helpful if you had a salifert kit so you can test the alkalinity for each brew.

[sonicated]

Thanks for all your advice. I'm going to get a salifert kit and I'm doing this now to figure out what additions I need. Do you know where I can get sulphuric acid from?

[Mr. Dripping]

I bought mine from Murphys, but they have stopped supplying homebrewers.
APC Pure and Niche Solutions have been mentioned elsewhere as possible suppliers....but I've never used them.
Just be careful with any acid you buy.....make sure the strength is correctly labelled and test your alkalinity again after the addition.

[Dave S]

Thanks for all your advice. I'm going to get a salifert kit and I'm doing this now to figure out what additions I need. Do you know where I can get sulphuric acid from?

APC Pure is the best place I can recommend for acids.

[Pegasus]

You can get any strength H2SO4 you like via Amazon but the Malt Miller has 100ml bottles of it diluted as "AMS"

[Mr. Dripping]

You can get any strength H2SO4 you like via Amazon but the Malt Miller has 100ml bottles of it diluted as "AMS"

AMS is a blend of sulphuric and hydrochloric acid.

sonicated.....just to add, if you are going to buy some sulphuric, you might as well order some hydrochloric at the same time. It is useful to have when you don't want too much sulphate in the finished water profile when making different types of beers.

[Eric]

CRS (AMS) and gypsum would allow a similar result to sulphuric acid and calcium chloride with your water. On those figures dropping alkalinity to 30mg/l as Calcium chloride would result with about 143ppm sulphate and 92ppm chloride. Gypsum at a rate of 0.25g per litre would increase sulphate to about 280ppm and calcium to about 160ppm giving you a 3:1 sulphate:chloride ratio.

Definitely get a Salifert kit.

[Jocky]

With the caveat that I am merely someone that that has played around with brewing water and spreadsheets and is not a qualified water chemist.... I take a similar approach to Mr Dripping, I just use CRS as it's easy to get hold of and handle.

I stuck your figures into Bru n Water (I hope you have figured out how to get the carbonate and bicarbonate ion concentrations from it to complete the picture).

Based upon an all pale malt profile to about 1.060 I used 0.65ml/l of CRS and 0.3 g/l of gypsum.

This gives you a mash pH of 5.41 - it will be lower if you use some crystal malts, but should still be well within the 5.2-5.6 range. You can always adjust the CRS a little.

You will then end up with:
Calcium: 156
Magnesium: 5
Sodium: 32
Sulphate: 306
Chloride: 88

Sulphate : Chloride ratio 3.5:1

[Pegasus]

You can get any strength H2SO4 you like via Amazon but the Malt Miller has 100ml bottles of it diluted as "AMS"

AMS is a blend of sulphuric and hydrochloric acid.

Oh, It just says contains "<15% sulphuric acid" on the label.
Maybe just a H&S statement. You live and learn.

[Eric]

You can get any strength H2SO4 you like via Amazon but the Malt Miller has 100ml bottles of it diluted as "AMS"

AMS is a blend of sulphuric and hydrochloric acid.

Oh, It just says contains "<15% sulphuric acid" on the label.
Maybe just a H&S statement. You live and learn.

This is worth a read about AMS and more.

[Matt in Birdham]

This is worth a read about AMS and more.

Wow they recommend some serious chloride amounts over there - I don't think I've ever seen >100ppm recommended in any profile before.

[WallyBrew]

This is worth a read about AMS and more.

Wow they recommend some serious chloride amounts over there - I don't think I've ever seen >100ppm recommended in any profile before.

Depends where you are looking. Have you looked at Graham Wheeler's calculator on this site?

GW calculator

Click on the button next to "Target Liquor" and look at the chloride suggested for some of them >100mg/L for quite a few