Another help me start thread...

[slimmrock]

To maybe help save my forehead after many hours of head to wall banging I give in and come seeking help.

Up until now I've been purely using Asdas smart price water for my batches, but considering I don't really even know what that contains and the fact I'm getting fed up of getting to the local store to find they only have 3 bottles left I think it's time to sort out my tap water.

I live in East Yorkshire, in a hard water area, the inside of the kettle is a right sight.

Here is the report from Yorkshire water.

Calcium 108.3625 - mg Ca/l
Magnesium 3.99875 - mg Mg/l
Residual chlorine - free 0.1129 - mg/l Cl2
Residual chlorine - total 0.1671 - mg/l Cl2
Coliforms 0 0 no/100ml
E-coli 0 0 no/100ml
Aluminium 17.3947 200 µg Al/l
Colour 0.7842 20 mg/l Pt/Co Scale
Conductivity 567.8026 2500 µS/cm
Fluoride 0.0914 1.5 mg F/l
pH (Hydrogen Ion Conc.) 7.2947 6.5 - 9.5 pH Units
Iron 15.9947 200 µg Fe/l
Nitrate 38.4324 50 mg NO3/l
Nitrite 0.0093 0.5 mg NO2/l
Sodium 24.7625 200 mg Na/l
Turbidity 0.1334 4 NTU
Copper 0.0598 2 mg Cu/l
Lead 0.4713 10 µg Pb/l


Can anybody help me out with where to start??

Thanks
Sam

[Aleman]

Can anybody help me out with where to start??

Hi Sam,

Contact Wallybrew via a PM on here to get a proper analysis of your water, the Yorkshire water report is useless.

Without knowing what is in the water it's difficult to give anything more than generic advice.

[DerbyshireNick]

**Posted before seeing Alemans response. I concur, full analysis is best, but it depends if you want to keep an eye on your water brew by brew. My personal recommendation would be to have a full analysis done. Then use those figures along with an alkalinity kit as you really want to be checking your treatment has worked as expected anyway.

Hi Sam,

first things first, dont trust your water report. I have test kits for Alkalinity, Calcium and Magnesium and my water report can be, at times miles off.

You do not have a figure for alkalinity which, given your calcium levels and kettle I suspect will be significant. 250ppm by my educated guess. This will give you really trouble brewing anything much under a stout. Pales are off the cards.

The key thing is to understand that water treatment can be very simple but also can get quite complex. For someone with your water type alkalinity and the resulting PH is 90% of the battle. Then ensuring enough calcium is the remainder with everything else really being academic noise.

I always recommend people pickup a salifert alkalinity test and check each batch as in my experience the value can swing around quite wildly.

The good news is you have enough calcium that you can add extra, but its not a show stopper. Given the limited information you have you can get some very ball park treatment suggestions by using this handy but ballpark calc I created. http://www.brewingtoolbox.com/simplewatertreatment.html

Define your Meq/L reading as 5 and that will give you a very quick and dirty water treatment for your water report, based on the brewpaks math.

Now...

If you want to get deeper than that I highly recommend using Grahams calculator on this site. You absolutely need to be able to test your alkalinity. You can use your water report calcium level or use the tool above to guesstimate it when you have an alkalinity reading in Meq/L. You can also use your water report Magnesium and sodium values but will need to guess sulphates and chlorides. As I said in another thread recently though, these make quite minor changes that at "just starting out" I wouldn't be worried about.

Ill get burned for this but... If you setup Grahams calc with:
Alkalinity as CaC03 = 250
Calcium = 100
Magnesium = 3.9
Sulphate = 30 (arbitrary number)
Chloride = 30 (arbitary number)

It will give you a feel for what your additions MIGHT be like. But... without testing this is very much academic and I wouldn't recommend acting on it.

1. Get Salifert Alkalinity kit < £10
2. Get CRS/AMS (You will certainly need it)
3. Treat your mash liquor with about 70-75% of the CRS recommendation (it tends to overshoot). Retest and retreat based on new alkalinity where needed.
4. Put any additional salts in with the grist and stir into the mash calculated by the mash liquor volume.
5. Treat your sparge liquor, again with about 70-75% of the CRS recommendation (it tends to overshoot).
6. Add final expected FV volume - mash liquor volumes worth of salts to the boil.
7. Have fun.

[Jocky]

1. Get Salifert Alkalinity kit < £10
2. Get CRS/AMS (You will certainly need it)
3. Treat your mash liquor with about 70-75% of the CRS recommendation (it tends to overshoot). Retest and retreat based on new alkalinity where needed.
4. Put any additional salts in with the grist and stir into the mash calculated by the mash liquor volume.
5. Treat your sparge liquor, again with about 70-75% of the CRS recommendation (it tends to overshoot).
6. Add final expected FV volume - mash liquor volumes worth of salts to the boil.
7. Have fun.

I agree with the above. If you're going to bother learning about this then it's certainly worth getting a water analysis done too.

Then you can plug your numbers into Graham's water calculator and you're largely there.

[slimmrock]

Thanks guys, I'll track down wallybrew and start from there. Typically I prefer pale hoppy beers, so it was obvious this would be the furthest away!!!

On another part of the Yorkshire water site it says my alkalinity is 248, again this is probably wrong but it's a starting point.

Bloody nightmare!!

[DerbyshireNick]

248 is prob accurate, at least at the time and location their sample was taken, above I derived an alkalinity of 250 using voodoo witchcraft from their calcium reading. Their report at least ties together with itself, many don't.

With darker beers I have found you have a bit more scope to get your alkalinity right (The window that will result in good beer seems wider) but for light and hoppy (my preferred style too) you need to get it down. Sub 50 is generally recommended, I personally aim for 20-25.

Even with testing though I cannot express enough how important checking your own alkalinity is.

a) if you have it tested at 250 and it drops to 200. When you treat for light and hoppy using 250 as a base and targeting 25 you will have negative alkalinity (not that its a thing).
b) especially because you are going to have to REALLY bring the alkalinity down, you are going to have to learn and feel how the recommendation actually translates and for this you need to test -> treat -> test again. I have found times where randomly I have aimed for an alkalinity of 25 and the retest has turned purple instantly (indicating zero or less alkalinity). CRS/AMS treatment really isnt predictable enough to be able to say x ml will have y effect.

[slimmrock]

So beginners summary

Get a salifert kit. Get CRS/AMS

start from there each brew.

Will that do to begin with??

This is the exact reason I love this forum. So much help. Brain still hurts lol

[Aleman]

Yes, you certainly want to measure your alkalinity each time you brew. one thing I've just got is a TDS meter (Total Dissolved Solids) what I'm hoping to do is to match up the analyses I've had done with the TDS so that I can make an accurate guess of the water composition from the TDS reading and a chart of TDS vs ions.

Personally I don't like CRS the strength is unpredictable, and it drives you into a sulphate forward balance, for me that's not necessarily an issue as my sulphate is quite low, but if you already have lots of sulphate, it can throw you well out of balance, if you want to go for a beer with more mouth feel (chloride biased)

[DerbyshireNick]

So beginners summary

Get a salifert kit. Get CRS/AMS

start from there each brew.

Will that do to begin with??

This is the exact reason I love this forum. So much help. Brain still hurts lol

Yup absolutely. Just get your head around alkalinity and stick to a teaspoon of gypsum or maybe half in your case in the mash and boil and you will be most of the way there.

As aleman points out CRS will make you sulphate biased but... for hoppy pales thats exactly what you want. Indeed for dark beers there may be a better alternative, personally I just use calcium chloride for those but maybe aleman can share his thoughts on it? I would be interested in anyones experience of alkalinity adjustment with CRS alternatives.

[Eric]

At this sort of price having a TDS meter is a no-brainer. Within a few seconds you will see if your water has changed although they are a bit temperature sensitive.

[Eric]

So beginners summary

Get a salifert kit. Get CRS/AMS

start from there each brew.

Will that do to begin with??

This is the exact reason I love this forum. So much help. Brain still hurts lol

Simply use it to reduce the alkalinity to the desirable range. You can sort the profiles produced by different acids and salts later, you won't find two people who have identical preferences anyway.
Get a Salifert kit, they are indispensable and use citric acid crystals from the local deli if you must to avoid buying CRS at first, but you'll get quite different tastes.
Whatever your beer tastes like, even at its best when made to perfection there will be some who won't drink it because they only drink John Smiths, Stella, Bud or some other favourite. I'm just the same and won't drink those if there was a choice of beers I prefer including water.

[slimmrock]

Thanks guys, this has all helped a lot and might save me a few trips to asda once I get the salifert and crs ordered!!

[Dave S]

At this sort of price having a TDS meter is a no-brainer. Within a few seconds you will see if your water has changed although they are a bit temperature sensitive.

At that price it is a no-brainer, in fact I've just bought one

[WallyBrew]

I've just got is a TDS meter (Total Dissolved Solids) what I'm hoping to do is to match up the analyses I've had done with the TDS so that I can make an accurate guess of the water composition from the TDS reading and a chart of TDS vs ions.

Get Mrs Aleman to prepare a 0.01M KCl solution. This has a conductivity of 1413uS/cm at 25C or 1272uS/cm at 20C.
Get solution to 20C (if you are using my figures) and record value on TDS. You should now be able to convert the conductivity values you have to be the equivalent of your TDS meter.

[Goulders]

That's what I do