Hard water, majority of England?

[Mashman]

There are a couple of methods, the easiest is to use a test kit and the ex admin Daab did come up with one which works really well . . . not available now though . . . Palintest Do an alkalinity test kit, which you can use to tell you how much acid to add to neutralise it . . . rather than measure it and work thorough the calculations

Aleman

Which palintest are you refering to? they seem to do a lot of them

Mashman

[PaulStat]

What sort ppm should I be aiming for a Belgian Blonde ale? My water is fine for dark beers (average of 139ppm) but I'm not sure about blondes? I'm guessing round about the 50ppm mark would be about right.

[Aleman]

Which palintest are you refering to? they seem to do a lot of them

You want the Total Alkalinity one. and a container that will hold 100ml of water . . . palintest will sell you one as part of a kit but that will take the price up from 8.40 to around 23 quid . . . a bit steep if you ask me.

To determine how much acid to add.

1) dilute some of your acid 1 in 20 with distilled water

2) take a palintest tablet and add it to 50ml of water shake until it dissolves . . . I can't remember if it is pink or yellow its one of them,

3) Now take some of your diluted acid and add it tot he sample a small qty (say 0.5ml) at a time, swirling the container to disperse the acid . . . you should soon start to see a colour change (pink to yellow or yellow to pink I cant remember which) which will go away as you swirl . . .start adding the acid more slowly . . . eventually you will get a colour change that is permanent. not the volume added.

The volume you added in 2 is the volume of undiluted acid that you need to add to each litre of brewing liquor you are going to use to brew a batch of beer.

Of course where this falls down is if you have a low alkalinity water, and the colour change has already happened . . . if you cant remember what colour it is to start with you end up adding a lot of acid and wonder why your water has such a high alkalinity all of a sudden

[ADDLED]

Hi there, Thames water give pretty good info and theres a full water report of 2 pages listing all metals etc.
This is the local hardness report;

Water supply zone BATTERSEA
mgl CaCO3 (ppm) 293
Degrees Clarke 20.5
Degrees German(DH) 16.4
Degrees French 29.3
Detergent rating HARD

Ive read the posts and this seems pretty hard by comparison. What would the learned forum members add to it if at all? Or should I stick to IPAs?

thanks!
ADDLED

[Aleman]

Hi there, Thames water give pretty good info

mgl CaCO3 (ppm) 293

What would the learned forum members add to it if at all? Or should I stick to IPAs?

Forget pale beers and only brew stouts, porters and brown beers

What you need is a reading for alkalinity(which seems to be a bitch to get from most water authorities), then you can work out how much CRS to use to drop the alkalinity down to 30ppm for brewing pale ales.

[ADDLED]

The definition of Alkalinity is the bit I don't understand; I thought alkalinity was measured with litmus test to gauge the PH, but you mention parts per mill. Does this mean the amount of calcium in the water?

[Aleman]

The definition of Alkalinity is the bit I don't understand; I thought alkalinity was measured with litmus test to gauge the PH, but you mention parts per mill. Does this mean the amount of calcium in the water?

Alkalinity is the 'buffering capability' of the water ie its resistance to a change in pH. Water with a low alkalinity will change pH much more readily with smaller/weaker acids than water with a high alkalinity. (It could be considered to the the opposite of acidity in actuality). Alkalinity is primarily derived from the concentration of bicarbonate (HCO3-, hydrogen carbonate) and carbonate (CO3--) ions in solution in the water. It is nothing at all to do with the level of calcium (Except that that is the way the water companies express it as ppm Calcium Carbonate), but it is normally derived due to the water passing through chalk deposits on its way to the aquifer. Water with a high calcium content will generally have a high alkalinity (but not always, Burton for example has high calcium, but combined with high sulphate alkalinity is low).

You measure the alkalinity by adding acid to the liquor until the pH is around 4.7 (I think, could be 4.3) at which point all the Bicarbonate has disassociated into Carbon Dioxide and water. You can do this with a pH meter but more commonly an indicator (Methyl Orange??) is used that changes colour at the pH 4.3/4.7 endpoint is used. From the amount of acid that is used and knowing how much alkalinity is neutralised by each ml of the acid you can determine the alkalinity. . . . . 1ml of CRS for example will neutralise 180mg of alkalinity.

[ADDLED]

Thanks Aleman, I need to speak to Thames water then and see.
Wish me luck...

[Subsonic]

I'm new to this forum but I have been brewing for a while and maybe I can contribute a bit. I am in the South East and the water is hard as nails. I didn;t think much of water until I went to the states to a beer festival and the guy I stayed with (a US 'Home brewer of the year' winner) put his winning Wheat beer down to - water. Bear with me on this, he uses a spreadsheet that has the info on his local water. Next he looks at the beer he is trying to mimic, and in particular he starts with their water. He puts that in the spreadsheet and it calculates the changes to the chemistry to match the source water. He does this with with his little box of chemicals, does a test and he's near the mark. Then, and only then does he move on to the mash. He puts his winning solely down to matching the water (everyone else made damm good wheat beer but nobody changed the water) and I agree with him. I came home and chucked all my stuff, got 3 stainless kegs, plasma'd the tops off got my propane burners and never looked back. Water quality is very important. That said, today I finished a batch of hoppy Kentish ale and didn;t give a stuff about the water for that! LOL I need to learn a bit more on the water side of things thouhg, I have seen the difference it makes and I need to do it. Plus, I got a copy of his spreadsheet

[Aleman]

I've been there and attempted to emulate regional liquors for specific beer styles . . . and found that after a lot of work . . . significant brain ache . . . . it made no diffeerence or even worse it had a negative impact to the taste of the beer . . . So I gave up and adopted the following

1) Reduce the alkalinity to below 50 . . . 30 for pale ales (Or increase it for browns porters and stouts to 75-100)

2) if the style has a malty profile adjust calcium using calcium chloride to 100-150
if the style has a hoppy profile adjust calcium using calcium sulphate to 100-150
if its a balanced profile then use a mixture of the two to adjust calcium to 100-150

3) if the beer has a soft profile (Such as a wheat beer) do nothing to the water and brew as is

My water is very soft Calcium 16, magnesium 4, alkalinity 24.

Water chemistry is only a real factor in beer taste once you have nailed the other more important factors and are producing consistently good beers . . . only then can you start to spot the subtle differences water composition makes to beer quality

[Mashman]

Aleman

Belated thanks for the Palintest info, does this work in the same way as Daab's test kit?

My water is hard, the last water report I had was;

Alkalinity 305 mg HCO3
Total Hardness 112mg Ca/l

Do you know how does this relate to CaCO3?

Many thanks

Mashman

[Aleman]

MM The palintest kits work in a similar manner. . . . They contain an indicator and a qty of acid . . . you add the tablets (acid) to a known volume of water when the indicator changes colour the number of tablets times 50 (IIRC . . I may be wrong) is the alkalinity.

You can also titrate 50 ml of water with one tablet in, against a solution of acid (diluted 1:20) and the number of ml of the diluted acid to get to the colour change, is the number of ml of undiluted acid per L of water to treat

Alkalinity and total hardness are only vaguely related to CaCO3