Spotless water

[PeeBee]

Geek stuff. Okay, I've determined (in my geekiness) that you are not a geek! Post your water report, I know you must have something to enter into Graham's water calculator. You will see the difference because the "Defuddler" doesn't deal with "carbonate", only "bicarbonate" ... because that's what you are really dealing with, not carbonate. It will use "Water Hardness" data to determine some parameters ... if it must! Graham's calculator doesn't attempt to estimate mash pH, only determine a suitable profile, so working with it should be straight forward.

Remember, the "Defuddler" is a pre-processor. It will confirm (or modify!) what you will enter into a water calculator (like Graham's). I've never attempted to mesh the "Defuddler" with Graham's calculator, so I'll have some interest in the outcome!

[guypettigrew]

OK, here's my latest water. The alkalinity changes every brewday, so the other bits are changed by the same ratio.

Latest water .jpg (37.05 KiB) Viewed 1727 times

What I was hoping, though, was I could just open your defuddler and use it. Like Graham's thingy.

Or, to put another way, every brewday is different.

Guy

[PeeBee]

At this point I only wanted to show what the "Defuddler" will do with the information you provide. Its main purpose is to clean up the values and rid them of confusing references to things like water hardness, "as CaCO3", etc. The values you give are clean anyway, so the "Defuddler" is only providing you with an Alkalinity value based on the ions you provided. It is calculated as 206mg/L as Calcium Carbonate (251mg/L as Bicarbonate) which corresponds roughly with the 188mg/L (presumably as Calcium Carbonate) given.

I do not know what generated the figures, but four decimal places of a milligram per litre is pretty extreme! I only use two decimal places because water companies often publish values like that. I'd be more than happy with no decimal places! Four decimal places is well into the zone where you'd need to know the temperature of the liquid to calculate its density, otherwise the value is meaningless. Values in mg/L (parts per million) assumes the liquid has a density of 1g per millilitre, which it does not! Based on water which has a density of 0.9982g per millilitre at 20°C ... do you see the hole this is beginning to dig for you! It's why mg/L and ppm is only really the same (approximately!) for pure water at 3.98°C. I think the tendency is to ignore such things, and therefore ignore measurements of 1/10 of a part per billion (four decimal places of a ppm or mg/L). Anyway, your values appear in the "Defuddler" as:

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew.jpg (166.85 KiB) Viewed 1717 times

The Nitrate and Potassium figures are entered lower down: They are not considered as imparting anything useful in brewing but do alter the value of Alkalinity (which the spreadsheet calculates! It doesn't use the documented figure). The Phosphate figure you provide (which is a bit low for the UK ... are you sure it's not just Phosphorus ion) isn't used because it fits on the Alkalinity side of the equation (Total Alkalinity ... so is effectively calculated also). Note: Nearly all phosphorus is down to past and present pollution!

You can see the values made visible by "unlocking". It's my way of dealing with the inability of spreadsheets to display a calculated value in the same cell as you can edit a value. And yes, it is a spreadsheet ... you can do some screwy things with spreadsheets these days!

Enough! I need to go to bed. I'll show how those values can be used in Graham's spreadsheet tomorrow.

[guypettigrew]

Right, I've downloaded the defuddler, found out how to unlock it and added my values in. Not to four decimal places, just one! The extra three are the result of the way the spreadsheet calculates the values after inputting the alkalinity as tested on brewday. So I round them.

Gratifyingly, the temporary hardness (which you say is identical to alkalinity) calculates as 185.83 in the Defuddler. Close enough to the 188 I started with!

With Graham's calculator I input my numbers then use it to calculate the additions (CaSO4, CaCl etc) needed to achieve the water profile needed for the beer. Graham's calculator doesn't allow for Nitrates, which means the raw water is never balanced. But hey ho, I still make very drinkable beer as judged by my friends and me.

Guy

[PeeBee]

Right, rested now, quick review of what I wrote in the early hours ... "density of 1g per litre" ...gawd! I knew I was fading! Lots of "millilitres" injected in-place of litres instead. Now what has Guy added ...

[PeeBee]

... Gratifyingly, the temporary hardness (which you say is identical to alkalinity) calculates as 185.83 in the Defuddler. Close enough to the 188 I started with! ...

Humm ... I did used to say "identical to alkalinity" didn't I. But that changed when I started to follow what salts like Sodium was doing. Look back on this thread to those diagrams I posted and look at the box next to "Temporary Hardness" in the Defuddler entitled "non-hardness cations" (it's what wasn't added to "temporary hardness" because it means nothing to "Hardness"). So, I now say (in our water environment) Alkalinity is always a little more than temporary hardness. And if there is a large amount of non-hardness cations (like Sodium) Alkalinity will be significantly different to temporary hardness and at that point most water calculators start telling lies to paper over the discrepancy.

And don't tell me you don't understand this time, 'cos you were never invited to nose about in the depths of the Defuddler! There are things down there you don't want to know, hence "temporary hardness" is in the "Foetid Mire" section which I recommend you only enter to drop in some data, and get out again quick! The details you provided never required you to dig into the spreadsheet at all. You've got my results from the "Defuddler" in my previous post ... note Alkalinity is a less "gratifying" 206mg/L as CaCO3! Although 18mg/L difference with your 188mg/L ain't bad (I don't know how you're testing Alkalinity).

The "Defuddler will actually "adapt" to different Alkalinity measurements if you look at its "Adapted" Water tool:

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew II.jpg (159.65 KiB) Viewed 1688 times

You can change the percentage figure directly; the slider can be a bit buggy. Divide the Bicarbonate by 1.22 to get 188mg/L "as CaCO3". Or, on the top line Change "Bicarbonate" from "Calculated" to "Adapted" after fiddling with "Adapted Water":

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew III.jpg (136.82 KiB) Viewed 1688 times

Eee, I knew you'd give the "Defuddler" a good workout!

[guypettigrew]

... Gratifyingly, the temporary hardness (which you say is identical to alkalinity) calculates as 185.83 in the Defuddler. Close enough to the 188 I started with! ...

The details you provided never required you to dig into the spreadsheet at all.

Eee, I knew you'd give the "Defuddler" a good workout!

Aaw, c'mon. Having got it to work how could you possibly expect me NOT to poke around in it?!!

Guy

[PeeBee]

Aaw, c'mon. Having got it to work how could you possibly expect me NOT to poke around in it?!!

Guy

I was only being flippant. But you have to be careful what you draw out from the depths, there's stuff down there that gets misinterpreted a lot in brewing circles ... especially the "Hardness" stuff which I pack under the heading "Foetid Mire" for good reason.


I stuck the results from the "Defuddler" into Graham's spreadsheet:

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew IV.jpg (187.58 KiB) Viewed 1675 times

Pretty straightforward as I'd expect. I put the Alkalinity figure as "Bicarbonate", but this isn't in-line with Graham's thinking: His "ion balance check" spits it out as "unbalanced", yet my spreadsheet is using "balance" to calculate "Alkalinity" ... i.e. the figures are always balanced because that's how it works! It's something to do with that "Carbonate" figure which Graham's calculator puts in, it wasn't me, I really do not like the use of "Carbonate" because it can't exist in the water (except in small quantities if pH is above 8.3).

Ah ... that's it! If I put the "Total Hardness" figure dug out of the "Foetid Mire" (oh-oh ... that's 229.5mg/L as CaCO3 ... bad things are going to happen, I'm sure of it!) into Graham's spreadsheet (under "Hardness") the lack of balance disappears, but his spreadsheet makes a very small adjustment to "Calcium" (what? ... okay) and a very large adjustment (more than doubles) to the ... Sulphate? Eh? I'm not looking at it anymore!

[PeeBee]

... Sulphate? Eh? I'm not looking at it anymore!

Well, I did look! Graham ain't around to shower me with abuse (no, no , no, ... not that, err ...) encouragement? anymore, but that's no reason to give up. Something Guy said about Graham's spreadsheet not supporting Nitrates, but the Defuddler does, and in this case is. Might explain the attempt to increase sulphate to make things balance ... I'll look into it! ...

[PeeBee]

Okay ... tell you what, I'll describe what I'm doing, because:
1. I'm a conceited git.
2. It's quite educational.

In the depths of that "Defuddler" spreadsheet, as part of its "inner workings", you can find the following table:

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew V.jpg (56.41 KiB) Viewed 1627 times

The table is converting the input "milligrams per litre" into "milliequivalents per liter" 'cos they're much easier to work with that way. "Milliequivalents" means whether they're Sulphate or Chloride, they can be treated all the same! And there's another column of numbers in that table that'll convert the milliequivalents back to the compound they really are. So, we've got 0.3793mEq/L (milliequivalents per liter) of Nitrates ... that's quite a lot, especially as a lot of it is due to farming runoff and, (cough, cough), human "effluent"! Now, if we resurrect that as "Sulphate" (because Graham's spreadsheet was "balancing" with sulphate) we've got 0.3793x48.0300=18.217779mg/l of Frankenstein Sulphate!

Round that down, do the same for Potassium (but turn it into Frankenstein "Sodium") (there's another table in there that'll do that) (0.698887 mg Na /L) and merge the two (i.e. add 'em) into Graham's spreadsheet:

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew VI.jpg (197.65 KiB) Viewed 1627 times

Flippin' magical isn't it! (Compare with earlier screen shot - it's all in balance now!). Well, I couldn't leave it doubting Graham, could I?

Right! I'll need to modify my spreadsheet to make that "feature" available to anyone (just a single selection "option", no more will be needed) and I'll probably split the sulphate into sulphate and chloride in the same ratio as it was defined previously (but don't look at that too closely or you'll see what utter garbage that SO4/Cl ratio idea is ... but it's only a guide for a very subjective end ... you shouldn't need any other illustration to prove that to be true!).

Thanks Guy (and Graham ... posthumously!) for the opportunity to put that straight in my head.

[PeeBee]

I've already done the mathematical stuff to allow for not having anywhere to enter Nitrates (and Potassium). Making the adjustments to the Maths was easier than I had imagined, 'cos much of the work had already been done for other purposes:

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew VII.jpg (52.11 KiB) Viewed 1587 times

Eee ... I do like it when these Maths fings work out (notice the balance ... 0.01mEq/L difference, which is diddly-squat).

For this the modified Defuddler came up with:

23.52mg/L Nitrate was "equivalent" to 6.98mg/L Sulphate and 8.3mg/L Chloride. (The SO4/Cl ratio remains the same).
and ...
10.31mg/L Sodium becomes 11.01mg/L with the added Potassium (Potassium virtually added "as Sodium").

Just need to dress up the "Defuddler" now to make all that usable (a single checkbox, I'm thinking).

Note: The "Hardness" entry in the calculator remains zero (unused), as does the "Residual Alkalinity" stuff! The "Sulphate Chloride Ratio" remains zero (unused). It would be very little effort to add the "Salt Additions", but that would be rude of me, so I shan't!


[EDIT: This is all virtual shenanigans. We're not adding or subtracting anything "real", just manipulating the numbers for the calculator to make sense of them.]

[PeeBee]

OK, here's my latest water. The alkalinity changes every brewday, so the other bits are changed by the same ratio.



<snip>

Hi Guy.
Can you let me have the quantities before you adapt them with an updated Alkalinity value. Just want to try something.

Thanks!

[guypettigrew]

This is a water report from Wallybrew on here. Dated 16/02/2021. On brewday I measure the alkalinity using a Hanna meter. The new value goes into the spreadsheet a friend set up for me and the revised numbers appear.

There may not be a directly proportional correlation between the alkalinity and the ions, but what else can I do?!

Hope this helps.

[PeeBee]

Thanks Guy.
Those values were put in, the values "adapted" for the your latest Alkalinity measurement (188mg/L as CaCO3 which you gave me earlier ... the manipulations use a feature I'd included for something else, but the job was much the same) and it got the following output. I've still to do a little work on the potassium/nitrate sideshow but you can see I've pushed the potassium/nitrate boxes up the spreadsheet and put in a checkbox to mesh the values with Graham's spreadsheet (and any other calculator that doesn't include K and NO3). The calculations are done, it's just the tarting up of the output taking the time:

Water Defuddler - Guy Pettigrew VIII.jpg (366.65 KiB) Viewed 1532 times

The "adapted" boxes turn on their ghostly appearance so you know they're being messed with. Note the Chloride and Sulphate boxes haven't changed ... 'cos they (conservative anions) don't play a part in these "adaptions", so are left alone. The cations (metallic), which are not being left alone, are being dealt with "chemically", not numerically "proportionally" as you were doing ... there are correlations, but you may need a disjointed head like mine to see 'em.

Despite the big differences in working them out, there is only a small difference with the values you worked out.

I'm out trying to catch a glimpse of our local red squirrels tomorrow (a conservation worker will try to provide the goods/glimpse), but I'll have this spreadsheet finished shortly after.


P.S. I've got a Hanna Alkalinity checker ... one of those mini-colorimeter thingies? Doesn't work too well for me, but I guess I'm expecting to read too low an alkalinity (about 7-8mg/L as CaCO3 by titration). But it's pretty consistent at saying 11-13mg/L so I imagine they do good for you.

[PeeBee]

Sorry Guy. Bit of a wobble in my updates - they were wandering off by a mg/l here and there. I'll get it sorted, but I'm taking a bit of a break for now. (Me heads full of cute furry animals for the time-being).