Ro or tap

[Brown beer]

Could you advise where you private analysis done please? Might go with that. I'm in Wales as well! Emailed Dcww to confirm levels as thought they might be able to help more also.

[guypettigrew]

Contact Wallybrew on here. He'll run you a full analysis on which to base your water treatment. About £28, I think.

He won't give advice on water treatment but, once you've got his analysis, people on here will be willing to advise.

Go for it! Learning about water treatment has been fascinating, and using what I've learned has seriously improved my beers.

Guy

[PeeBee]

Contact Wallybrew on here. …

Thanks for stepping in there Guy. I wasn't too keen on promoting Wallybrew as I don't think I've forgiven him for being quite rude to me in that "other" thread on a similar subject. Although I was getting a bit haughty in that thread, much more so than this one. But then that flippin' French Water Wizard with the puerile username was winding me up a bit!

[Silver_Is_Money]

Real TDS is a process of evaporation and weighing what remains behind for a known starting volume of water. Two rough "ballpark" alternatives are:

Alternative Method 1:
---------------------------

ppm TDS ~= ppm Ca + ppm Mg + ppm Na + ... (sum of all other minor cations ppm's) + ppm Cl + ppm SO4 + ppm HCO3-/2 + ... (sum of all other minor anions ppm's)

Remember to convert alkalinity as CaCO3 into the bicarbonate HCO3- ion and then divide bicarbonate ppm by two.
[Alkalinity x 61/50 = bicarbonate]

Alternative Method 2:
---------------------------

Conductivity in units of MicroSiemens (Us/cm) times 0.60


If you have a TDS meter it is automatically doing alternative method #2 for you. Therefore ppm TDS/0.60 = Conductivity in units of Us/cm.

A rough means to verify your water analysis report is to apply alternative method 1 to your water report ppm values and then check your result against a TDS meter reading. If they are way off, one of them is likely incorrect.

If you are wondering why bicarbonate must be divided by two, this is because during evaporation half of the mass of any initially present bicarb vanishes away from the drying sample as CO2 gas.

[guypettigrew]

Contact Wallybrew on here. …

Thanks for stepping in there Guy. I wasn't too keen on promoting Wallybrew as I don't think I've forgiven him for being quite rude to me in that "other" thread on a similar subject. Although I was getting a bit haughty in that thread, much more so than this one. But then that flippin' French Water Wizard with the puerile username was winding me up a bit!

Wallybrew has always been ok for me. I send him water once a year, he sends me an analysis, I send him money.

A perfectly fine arrangement as far as I'm concerned.

Guy

[Silver_Is_Money]

Applying method #1 to the OP's analysis numbers (plus the implied 33 ppm alkalinity, which equates to 40.3 ppm bicarb) one gets:

TDS ~= 28 + 11.6 + 23 + 27 + 40.3/2 (+ 3 ppm as a pure guess for all other stuff such as potassium, iron, fluoride, nitrate, etc...)

TDS ~= 113

If a budget TDS meter gets you to within about 10-15% of 113 ppm, then the water companies numbers are likely fairly reliable.

[McMullan]

Not really wanting to chime in here, and certainly not as an ‘expert on water’, because I ain’t. Just wanted to add that Wallybrew’s excellent water analysis service - and the beneficial impact it had on my brewing - really did disprove the notion my local water company’s numbers were right. As far as I can tell, water companies don’t monitor their water and publish data on timescales relevant to local brewers. In fact, I think they probably actively avoid any ‘change management’ with their consumers altogether

[killer]

PRIVATE FLIPPIN' FRENCH WATER WIZARD WITH THE PUERILE USERNAME REPORTING FOR DUTY CAPTAIN PEEBEE SIR !

On a more serious note, good advice has already been given but a summary might render things a little clearer at this point.

1) Absolutely get an analysis from Wallybrew – As McMullan said, water companies are not to be trusted – they publish averages, old figures etc. etc. And water does change.
2) Get a Salifert kit – about 10 quid for 100 tests. It will allow you to test alkalinity yourself.
3) Get a pH meter.
4) Get some salts (Calcium Chloride and gypsum). You probably don’t need to add Magnesium. A couple of quid and it will let you refine your beers quite a bit more than you might expect (Silver Is Money has given some good starting profiles).
5) Use a calculator (Brunwater has a good calculator even if the profiles are a bit biased) so you don’t need to worry about calculations.

[Brown beer]

Thanks all! Really helpful. Water test it is!

[guypettigrew]

Only one thing to add to the excellent advice above; Graham Wheeler's water treatment calculator on here is excellent. Takes a bit of practice to get used to it, but it does everything you need.

Happy liquoring!

Guy

[Silver_Is_Money]

Only one thing to add to the excellent advice above; Graham Wheeler's water treatment calculator on here is excellent. Takes a bit of practice to get used to it, but it does everything you need.

Happy liquoring!

Guy

Indeed it is excellent, and there is undeniably nothing else like it, but it has a serious Achilles heel. It relies heavily upon calcium carbonate, and it presumes that calcium carbonate both fully dissolves and dissociates into ions, just as for other calcium species such as gypsum and calcium chloride. The problem is that calcium carbonate does neither, sans over epochal scales of time that simply are not commensurate with brewing. It's solubility in water at room temperature is only 0.013 grams per liter. The most you can hope to dissolve in 30 liters of water is therefore 0.39 grams. The rest does not dissociate, and therefore does not dissolve and open itself up to chemical reactions, and instead it merely drops out and accomplishes none of what it is believed to accomplish on paper and/or via calculators such as Graham Wheeler's (and others).

Braukaiser (Kai Troester) did extensive research on calcium carbonate and was never able to achieve more than 50% utilization. And worse, unless it was better dissolved into mash water by extensively bubbling CO2 through it, it never raised mash pH by more than roughly 0.2 pH points. It simply does not fully do what it is believed to do. See the blue and yellow lines on Kai's chart:

Chalk.png (57.02 KiB) Viewed 5706 times

Calculators should be reworked to replace calcium carbonate with calcium hydroxide. It has its own solubility issues, but at least it is soluble to 1.73 grams per liter at room temperature, and to about half of that within the typical single infusion mash temperature range.

[PeeBee]

… but it has a serious Achilles heel. It relies heavily upon calcium carbonate, …

A bit wordier than I might of posted ("no its not" people are muttering!) but I'm all in favour of posts that attempt to wean people off the insane use of "chalk"!

Be careful when mentioning "calcium hydroxide" though (aka slaked lime). That subject is likely to trigger "forum wars" and I can see this thread has already attracted antagonists from the "other side"!

[Eric]

Indeed it is excellent, and there is undeniably nothing else like it, but it has a serious Achilles heel. It relies heavily upon calcium carbonate, and it presumes that calcium carbonate both fully dissolves and dissociates into ions, just as for other calcium species such as gypsum and calcium chloride.

Oh! Graham would not have disagreed. He would have listed several more.

Have you read the notes? See the third paragraph of Note 9? Graham, like most homebrewers in UK, never needed to add alkalinity to his water, reducing it was a greater necessity. Graham was terribly practical as well as one of the most knowledgable homebrewers you would ever chance to meet. He's a big miss.

[killer]

Only one thing to add to the excellent advice above; Graham Wheeler's water treatment calculator on here is excellent. Takes a bit of practice to get used to it, but it does everything you need.

Happy liquoring!

Guy

Indeed it is excellent, and there is undeniably nothing else like it, but it has a serious Achilles heel. It relies heavily upon calcium carbonate, and it presumes that calcium carbonate both fully dissolves and dissociates into ions, just as for other calcium species such as gypsum and calcium chloride. The problem is that calcium carbonate does neither, sans over epochal scales of time that simply are not commensurate with brewing. It's solubility in water at room temperature is only 0.013 grams per liter. The most you can hope to dissolve in 30 liters of water is therefore 0.39 grams. The rest does not dissociate, and therefore does not dissolve and open itself up to chemical reactions, and instead it merely drops out and accomplishes none of what it is believed to accomplish on paper and/or via calculators such as Graham Wheeler's (and others).

Braukaiser (Kai Troester) did extensive research on calcium carbonate and was never able to achieve more than 50% utilization. And worse, unless it was better dissolved into mash water by extensively bubbling CO2 through it, it never raised mash pH by more than roughly 0.2 pH points. It simply does not fully do what it is believed to do. See the blue and yellow lines on Kai's chart:


Chalk.png


Calculators should be reworked to replace calcium carbonate with calcium hydroxide. It has its own solubility issues, but at least it is soluble to 1.73 grams per liter at room temperature, and to about half of that within the typical single infusion mash temperature range.

I think we're moving off thread a little but I'll chip my 2 cents in anyway...

Calcium Hydroxide is useful for raising alkalinity but has a caveat (mentioned in another thread). For "soft" low alkalinity waters it's mostly fine but for alkaline water the addition of Calcium Hydroxide will actually lower alkalinity - in fact Braukaiser has a calculator for calculating alkainity reduction using it... That's just a gentle reminder for those considering its use.

[Silver_Is_Money]

Reducing the alkalinity of highly alkaline source water via slaked lime treatment, and lowering mash pH via the same are two distinctly different subjects.

In the mash calcium hydroxide both raises and lowers mash pH simultaneously. The Ca++ calcium ion component complexes with malt phosphates to liberate H+ ions (thus lowering the pH) while simultaneously the OH- hydroxyl ion component is raising mash pH. The latter effect is more predominant than the former, so the net effect is that mash pH gets raised, albeit less than if the added calcium is not accounted for. The very same would be true for CaCO3 (if it was soluble). If there was no mash pH lowering effect due to the calcium component of calcium hydroxide, then 0.44 grams of calcium hydroxide would raise alkalinity to the same degree as 1.0 gram of baking soda. But due to the calcium effect it takes more on the order of ~0.618 grams of calcium hydroxide to raise the alkalinity of the mash to the same measure as for 1.0 gram of baking soda.