Salifert again

(That's water to the rest of us!) Beer is about 95% water, so if you want to discuss water treatment, filtering etc this is the place to do it!
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Dave.T
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Salifert again

Post by Dave.T » Sun Jan 28, 2018 5:21 pm

Hello,
My last 2 brews hav'nt gone so well ( off tastes ) hygene and sanitation as usual so i did a Salifert alkalinity test. It gave me a reading of .92
.33 meq/L =16.5 ppm which is different from my water company's report and Murphy's water report from some years ago.
I have to confess that i used The Homebrew forums water treatment calculator in the past but that has disappeared offline, my question is , is 16.5 the figure that goes in the Alkalinity box on Grahams calculator and if i mutiply 16 .5 by .4 does that give me my figure for the calcium box. The figures on my water report should be close enough for the rest of the information.

Thanks Dave

MTW
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Re: Salifert again

Post by MTW » Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:10 pm

Yes, stick the 16.5 in Graham's calculator and make sure you leave the CaCO3 box selected. And yes, I usually assume the Calcium is around half the CaCO3 figure, which was corroborated by a lab test once. 0.4 sounds like it came from similar advice.
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Kev888
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Re: Salifert again

Post by Kev888 » Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:38 pm

TBH I didn't think there was a reliable way to guess calcium from just the alkalinity figure, at least across different waters. I'm no expert, so stand to be corrected, but is it possible that 0.4/0.5 rule of thumb should be applied to hardness rather than alkalinity?
Kev

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Dennis King
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Re: Salifert again

Post by Dennis King » Sun Jan 28, 2018 9:06 pm

Get a decent water report from Phoenix Analytical

MTW
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Re: Salifert again

Post by MTW » Sun Jan 28, 2018 10:58 pm

With only 16.5ppm CaCO3 I'd guess any Calcium is pretty negligible anyway. Adding gypsum/calcium chloride based on a 0.4 figure to a decent profile, surely it won't matter too much if the true starting figure is off.
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Dave.T
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Re: Salifert again

Post by Dave.T » Sun Jan 28, 2018 11:53 pm

Thanks for all your replies and help,
Regards, Dave

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Aleman
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Re: Salifert again

Post by Aleman » Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:36 am

I'd make it even simpler, and just add 150ppm off calcium to whatever is already in the liquor (which won't be much). Your choice as to how much calcium sulphate and calcium chloride should be used to make that 150ppm.
Last edited by Aleman on Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: spelling

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