First stab at treatment

[brodington]

Hi there,

This water treatment stuff if CONFUSING!

Can someone give me a bit of reassurance that I am going to do this right?

I have got a tub of DLS from my local HBS and am planning on using some tonight.

So here goes:

Yorkshire water quote:
"Water hardness average: 36.3mg/l calcium"

(I believe mg/l is the same as P.p.m.)

Brupack quote:
"A typical Bitter requires a calcium content of 180-220 p.p.m."

So I need another 140(ish) p.p.m's of Calcium.

Which from Brupacks table is 0.8grams / litre of DLS.

Assuming I use 10litres of mash water I should add 8grams of DLS to my dry grain. Am I right?

I already use camden tablets to remove chlorine.

Will this suffice for a first stab?

Cheers,

Neil

[GrowlingDogBeer]

The easiest way to sort out water treatment is by using Graham Wheeler Water Calculator here

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/water/water.html

Looking at the water figures in your area from Yorkshire Waters website it tells us the following levels.

Hardness as mg/l Calcium = 36.3, mulitiply that by 2.5 we have a hardness of 90 as CaCO3 we can plug into the hardness box. You need to select a Carbonate Reducing method, the easiest is CRS.

Then plug in the following figures you have.

Calcium = 20.4
Magnesium = 3.2
Sodium = 10.11

I selected Burton Pale Ale once I was done and the calculator gave me the amounts of all the salts I needed to add. So looking at your water to get it to a Burton Pale Ale spec for 30 Litres it looks like you would need

8.4ml CRS
15g Calcium Sulphate (gypsum)
5g Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salts)
1.4g Sodium Chloride (Table Salt)

I don't know what is in DLS so can't advide on that though.

EDIT: I may have got some of that slightly wrong as the figure for hardness doesn't correlate with the Calcium and Magnesium values that Yorkshire water have supplied. It would also appear it's not advisable to use this hardness value in Grahams Calculator.

There are also some different figures from Yorkshire Water here chart hopefully.

If we use them figures we get different results.

I think I would be inclined to send a water sample to Murphy Home Brew and let them tell you everything you need to know.

http://www.murphyhomebrew.com/laborator ... od_90.html

[brodington]

Wow, thank you Steve. I'll have to put those on my shopping list. (might have to purchase a more accurate set of scales as well!)

Does anyone have a guide, or a rough rule of thumb, as to what is in DLS? So I can give my water a rough treatment until I do manage to get out to a shop and buy those bits.

[GrowlingDogBeer]

For digital scales I can highly recommend these.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DIGITAL-SCALE ... 53e0da6baf

They seem to sell loads of these, didn't know there were quite so many home brewers around. Perhaps they have another purpose

[GrowlingDogBeer]

I have edited my previous post as it would appear some of my earlier info was not entirely accurate.

Apologies

[brodington]

Thanks for checking Steve,

I purchased a aquarium 6 in 1 test kit today it told me the following:

Tetra 6 in 1 dip stick test

Ph = 6.8
KH = 0d (could have been 2d, was hard to tell on dip stick colour chart)
GH = 4d

Are any of those helpful to me?

online converter said:
4 English (Clark) degrees is equivalent to 57.12 mg calcium carbonate/l. This is moderately soft.

[fisherman]

I think you need a Salifert alkilinity test kit £ 7.45 on e-bay. Once you know your alkilinity go to the brupacks site or pm me with your result, or look at the charts for DLS and CRS and dose to the tables depending on which type of beer you want to make. Job done

[brodington]

Hi there Fisherman, thanks for your offer to help

Wiki: Carbonate hardness, or carbonate alkalinity is a measure of the alkalinity of water caused by the presence of carbonate (CO32-) and bicarbonate (HCO3-) anions. It is usually expressed either as parts per million (ppm or mg/L), or in degrees KH (from the German "Karbonathärte").

I'm pretty sure that the KH value my kit gives is alkalinity. I have checked my readings and am sure my KH is reading 2 which is equivalent to 28.56 ppm as CaCO3. (or 11.42 ppm as calcium Ca).

Brupacks: A typical Bitter requires a calcium cont ent of 180-220 p.p.m.

I already have 11.42ppm so need 170ish more. Therefore 1g/litre of DLS.

Does this look right?

Cheers for everyones help,

Neil

[WallyBrew]

The degrees given by your test kit are probably german degrees rather than English degrees
1 german degree is = to 10mg/L of CaO which = 17.85 mg/L as CaCO3

So your KH (alkalinity) is approx 36 +/- 18 mg/L as CaCO3

Your GH (total hardness is = to 72 +/- 18 mg/L as CaCO3

If you take the results from this link

There are also some different figures from Yorkshire Water here chart hopefully.

If we use them figures we get different results.

you will find your water contains:
Ca = 29.1
Mg = 2.4
Na = 12.4
Cl = 18.7
NO3 = 5.3
SO4 = 49.7

So you have 29mg/L of calcium

Also, using these figures your alkalinity calculates as 27mg/L which is sort of in agreement with your kit results

[brodington]

Great, thanks for all your patience.

So I have about 30ppm of calcium which is about 0.8 - 0.9 g /l of DLS.

Like I said to start with, this stuff is CONFUSING!

Neil