Off The Salifert Table

[Normski]

I've recently been thinking whether my water is good for brewing. I've been making beer for the last couple of years and it seems ok to me. But im always happy to make improvements.
1st I thought I'd try an AG brew, but I'd boil the water for 15-30 mins. Maybe add a little Gypsum to the boil and the mash. (This brew is now in the Fv).
For future brews I thought I'd order a Salifert KH/Alk test kit. To see what my water was really like. I've seen Chris's very useful You Tube vide and it looked do able.
I have done the test and the readings look incredibly high. In fact it has gone right off the end of the Salifert Table. I had to assume I had screwed up, so I repeated the test, being extra careful. Again the exact same result. More reading. I then did the test again using the Alkalinity Check Solution. The solution says its 7.5 dKH +/- 0.3%. I got a reading of 8.3. Not that close, but at least on the page. So I then re did my water test again. The exact same result.
I used 4ml of tap water. two drops of Indicator. 1ml KH in the 1ml syringe. I emptied the whole syringe and it still hadn’t changed colour, I refilled the 1 ml syringe with another 1ml KH. It changed colour at 0.86 each time. I make that I used 1.14ml.
As the Salifert Table ends at 0.98 with Alkalinity at 0.11 Im not sure what to make of my test.
I thought I had good water, but maybe it’s as hard as a rock and looks like a may need to put in for a large order of CRS.
Can anyone make sense of these readings? Thanks in advance.

[pduk]

My water's off the scale too (in Hertford here, not Hereford!). I found that if you use the "lower resolution" method described in the leaflet, where you use 2ml of water and just one drop of the dye, you can get a reading and you then have to multiply the answer by two. In my case I normally end up with 5.94 meq/L which means I have 297mg/L carbonate. I buy large bottles of CRS from Barley Bottom

[Normski]

Hi pduk

Good thinkin'. I'll give that a try.

[Graham]

1.14ml * 5.71 = 6.5 meq/l = 325 ppm or mg/l as CaCO3

[Normski]

Cheers pduk
I've run the test again and, I now have a reading On the Table. I've ended up with 6.72 meg/L 336 mg/L.
That’s higher than I had expected a lot higher.
Have to work out what to do with this. Now I know what my water is like.
If anyone wants to make suggestions please do, even funny ones would be acceptable.

[Normski]

Hi Graham

Just beat me to it. 325-336. Im surprised im that close to your result, theres hope for me yet. Thanks again.

[Naich]

When you say you emptied the syringe, do you mean you filled it to start with? i.e. no air bubble in it? When I fill the syringe to 1ml, the first 0.3ml is air. I find I either have to invert the syringe, tap the bubble to the top and expel the air, or refill when I get down to about 0.4ml and subtract 1ml minus the first amount from the second reading.

But then I still get it wrong. The last two batches I treated went pink with no KH when I tested them and I had to replace about 12% of the liquor with untreated to get it right.

[Normski]

Im not usually in the habit of answering my own questions but.
Now I have an Alkalinity for my water. I have had a little play with Grahams water Treatment Calculator.
Looks like I need to add 12.5g Gypsum + 4.5g Calcium Chloride + 3g Epsom salts + 3g salt.
My regular brew is GW's No Nonsense Bitter. To treat 30l.
Does that look fairly close?

[Normski]

When you say you emptied the syringe, do you mean you filled it to start with? i.e. no air bubble in it? When I fill the syringe to 1ml, the first 0.3ml is air. I find I either have to invert the syringe, tap the bubble to the top and expel the air, or refill when I get down to about 0.4ml and subtract 1ml minus the first amount from the second reading.

But then I still get it wrong. The last two batches I treated went pink with no KH when I tested them and I had to replace about 12% of the liquor with untreated to get it right.

Hi Naich
Yeah. Full syringe No air bubbles. Had to fill it up again.
But I've now resolved that issue with thanks to pduk & GW.

[mitch]

When I fill the syringe to 1ml, the first 0.3ml is air. I find I either have to invert the syringe, tap the bubble to the top and expel the air, or refill when I get down to about 0.4ml and subtract 1ml minus the first amount from the second reading.

I don't think that is the right way to do it. That 0.3mL is just the air that was in the syringe tip, remember you will have 0.3mL of reagent in the tip.

Expelling the air and drawing up another 0.3mL of reagent shouldn't affect the test results, just means you will have 0.3mL of reagent stuck in your syringe tip. Not sure about your second method though.

[Naich]

When I fill the syringe to 1ml, the first 0.3ml is air. I find I either have to invert the syringe, tap the bubble to the top and expel the air, or refill when I get down to about 0.4ml and subtract 1ml minus the first amount from the second reading.

I don't think that is the right way to do it. That 0.3mL is just the air that was in the syringe tip, remember you will have 0.3mL of reagent in the tip.

Expelling the air and drawing up another 0.3mL of reagent shouldn't affect the test results, just means you will have 0.3mL of reagent stuck in your syringe tip. Not sure about your second method though.

Hmm... you are right, of course. Not quite sure what I've been doing. The end result has been always come out about right (within 10%) - I've obviously been doing it wrong but somehow getting about the right answer. Chemistry and plumbing - two things I'm useless at

[FUBAR]

I have just got the salifert kit and have just tried it out and had to refill the 1ml syringe and had to use 1.10mls in total before I got the reaction.So am I right using Grahams calculation, 1.10*5.71=6.2meq/l=310mg/l CaCO3 ?.Seems like what comes out of my tap is chalk with a little bit of water added ,I was quoted 287mg/lCaCO3 by my water supplier so it seems that their info is about as much use as a one legged man at an arse kicking contest.

[Naich]

That looks right. Your number is less than 10% different from your supplier's figure, so it's quite believable. The figures you get from the supplier will be an average of samples taken at various times, and might not reflect what's actually coming out of the tap at the moment. Some people's water stays the same, year after year, while other's changes all the time as the supplier switches sources. You have to check it each time you do a water treatment to be sure.