Water Treatment - A book, podcast, website too far...help!

[men8idw]

I don't like to dive in with a post unless I have spent a bit of time trawling the internet and reading around the subject first, but I fear I have read too much and confused myself.

I have been reading
-some of the topics on here
-GW calculator (and notes)
-John Palmer spreadsheet from his how to brew
-Listened to the Brew Strong 4 part water treatment podcast
-Beersmith software and online notes
-Brupak website

I feel like I now have the general jist but the info from each of these sources seems to take a different and slightly contradicting approach. John Palmer really focuses on the Residual Alkalinity and tuning it to different values depending on the beer style. GW advocates leaving it as default (unless you have a strong desire to change it). Beersmith is similar to GW but also requires bicarbonate concentrations and Brupacks just operates on a black magic approach where I am not really sure what exactly I would be putting in.....its all left me feeling a bit confused and not quite sure which way to turn.

Anyhoo. I have a personal letter from Severn Trent with values as requested (although I expect they are pretty approximate since the individual reports for the boreholes that serve our locality vary quite significantly and who knows what blend we actually receive week to week). I also have a Salifer kit and have tested the alkalinity of my water this afternoon.

Rather than me post all the different outputs from the various tools that seem to be around here are my figures in the hope that someone with more experience may nudge me in a proven direction.

Water report:
Calcium - 140mg/l
Magnesium - 50mg/l
Total hardness as CaCO3 -175mg/l
Suplhate - 30mg/l
Chloride – 30mg/l
Sodium – 18mg/l
(I note that GW calculator suggests that this water make up cannot exist as the ions don’t balance – fills me with confidence in the report – any suggestions!))
Alkalinity as CaCO3 – 145mg/l
I would like to brew a Hoppy ale with an EBC of around 12-18
I have some CRS, DLS, Espom salts, Gypsum, and Campden on order but can pop in to the LHS on Friday if required (hope to get a brew on this Saturday).

All assistance greatly appreciated!

[gnutz2]

You'll probably find they all work up to a degree, as does making beer with no water treatment.

The only thing Ive noticed is when the sulphate is high it can dry the beer out a bit.

I'd try GW calculator first and take tasting notes from there, your water looks good for a base.

[weiht]

i'd like that water

1stly, r u planning to treat water for beer styles or to hit a mash ph? No need for epsom salts as ur magnesium is already high. I'm not too sure about the CRS practices you guys do in the UK, but this is what I'll do.

Ur water is at the same time hard and pretty alkaline (Yes softness/hardness and alkalinity are different). This means that without any adjustment to the water, u have a good amount calcium (Towards the high side) to aid enzymatic activity in the mash, however ur mash ph as it is will be on the higher end which may not be a good thing. The only way you can effectively lower the ph down to the favourable range is using acids or acidulated malt, or blending the mash with ur tap and some distilled water. Adding salts like calcium chloride or gypsum is not effective if one needs to bring the ph down by a fair bit, besides u wouldnt want any more calcium in the mash.

I'd also point out that its recommended to mix some distilled water for sparging to bring the PH level down and lessen the tannins extraction. This should also be done if you need to bump up the sulphates or chloride level with gypsum or calcl2 IN THE BOIL for malty or hoppy beers respectively, as u dont want the calcium levels to creap any higher.

I understand that u shld be using campden tablets to treat the chlorine? If you are using a carbon filter, then that will strip other ions together and change the whole water make up completely again.

For dark beers, I tend to stick to palmer's RA approach as I have found that to produce a superior porter/stout in my experience. Hope I made some sense

BTW, im using the EZ water calculator and I find it helpful and easy to use.

[WallyBrew]

......I have a personal letter from Severn Trent with values as requested (although I expect they are pretty approximate since the individual reports for the boreholes that serve our locality vary quite significantly and who knows what blend we actually receive week to week)...............

Water report:
Calcium - 140mg/l
Magnesium - 50mg/l
Total hardness as CaCO3 -175mg/l
Suplhate - 30mg/l
Chloride – 30mg/l
Sodium – 18mg/l
......
Alkalinity as CaCO3 – 145mg/l

I would suggest that you write back to severn trent asking them to explain their figures. As they stand they make no sense whatsoever.

If your calcium is 140 and magnesium is 50 then your total hardness as calcium carbonate would be 558 NOT 175. The alkalinity also calculates as 521

I suspect that they may have expressed calcium as calcium carbonate and magnesium as calcium carbonate and if this is the case then your calcium would be 56 and your magnesium would be 12 which would give a total hardness figure of 190. This is much closer to the value supplied and the alkalinity now calculates as 155.

Presumably 145 is your figure ?? and not severn trents

[men8idw]

Hmm interesting wallybrew. Any chance you can talk me through how you come to those conclusions!? Yes you are correct, the alkalinity is my measured figure.

The individual water reports for the three boreholes in the area can be found at http://www.stwater.co.uk/upload/pdf/ZWC ... sgrove.pdf

I assume this makes more sense to you, some of the figures quoted seem to be out of the ranges in these reports which is bizarre.

[WallyBrew]

Whilst there are many things present in water (hydrogen and oxygen being by far the majority) for analytical purposes the major cations are sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium and the major anions are bicarbonate, chloride, sulphate, nitrate.

The cations carry a positive charge and the anions carry a negative charge. The negative charges should balance the positive charges and in order to calculate the charge for any given ion the equivalent is used.

So in an ionised state:
Sodium and potassium carry one positive charge
Calcium and magnesium carry two positive charges

Chloride, nitrate and bicarbonate carry one negative charge
Sulphate carries two negative charges

To get the equivalent one divides the ionic mass by the number of charges that are carried

Hence (and without introducing ludicrously accurate figures):-

Sodium = 23/1
Potassium = 39/1
Magnesium = 24/2
Calcium = 40/2
Chloride = 35.5/1
Nitrate = 62/1
Bicarbonate = 61/1
Sulphate = 96/2

(the first figure is the ionic mass and the second figure is the number of charges)

giving equivalents of:

sodium = 23
Potassium = 39
Magnesium = 12
Calcium = 20
Chloride = 35.5
Nitrate = 62
Bicarbonate = 61
Sulphate = 48

Now as stated in para 2 the negative and positive charges should balance and to work out the charges on each side we divide the quantity of each ion by its equivalent. We should rework all of the analytical figures to be in g/L rather than mg/L to get true “equivalents”, however, if we use the milligram figure the the resultant figure will be milliequivalents.

So for your water we have
Calcium = 140
Magnesium = 50
Sodium = 18
Chloride = 30
Sulphate = 30
Total alkalinity = 145

In terms of milliequivalents we have
Calcium = 7.00
Magnesium = 4.17
Sodium = 0.782
Chloride = 0.845
Sulphate = 0.625
Total alkalinity = 2.377

Total cation milliequivalents = 11.952
Total anion milliequivalents = 3.947

the difference of +8.005 suggests that we have a shortfall in the anion department of the following or any proportional combination thereof:

sulphate 384 mg/L
chloride 284 mg/L
nitrate 496 mg/L
alkalinity 488 mg/L

This is unlikely.

Now if we assume that the calcium and magnesium have been expressed as calcium carbonate then converting them to calcium and magnesium we would get:

56 calcium with a milliequivalent of 2.8
12 magnesium with a milliequivalent of 1

Now the total cations = 4.582 milliequivalents
and the total anions are still = 3.947 milliequivalents

almost balanced

they do not quote potassium and/or nitrate but if this water contained 4mg/L potassium and 33mg/L of nitrate it would be balanced

Hope this makes some sort of sense

[weiht]

now my small brain hurts!!!

Excellent

[men8idw]

Thanks wallybrew, very well explained. That is taking me back to chemistry lessons at school (do you work as a chemistry teacher by any chance!?).

So if I go back to the water board and query the figures or ask for concentrations of the potassium and nitrate we may be heading in the right direction.

In the meantime (whilst i await response from severn trent in the next few weeks) I hope to get a brew on this evening, my plan is to retest the water alkalinity with my salifert kit and under take the water treatment as per the brupacks website with CRS and DLS unless anyone would suggest otherwise.....