Thames Water - total alkalinity specifications in Surrey ar

[Blackaddler]

What speadsheet are you using? When I was at the home brew shop last night, I picked up CRS, DLS and gypsym. Do I need all three? I've read so much about water treatment this last week its all so confusing!!

Thanks
Spencer

It can get quite confusing.

I use the spreadsheet from CBA website [see above post].

I've not used gypsum so far, but usually boil up my water, first.

[adm]

The simplest approach for a dry pale ale is as follows:

1) Do the test with the Salifert kit and convert the milliequivalent reading to mg/l CaC03 (off the top of my head, you just multiply it by 50), then calculate the amount of CRS to use as follows:

1ml of CRS will neutralise 180mg of CaCo3
So - if your TA is 200mg/L, and you want to get to 25mg/L (a good number for pale ales) you will want to remove 200-25=175mg/L, which would equate to 175/180 or about 1ml of CRS per litre of water.

2) Crush one camden tablet and dissolve it in every 50L of water you will use - this removes chlorine and chloramines which you don't want in your beer

3) Add the CRS per the calculation above. If you have a hydrometer trial jar, it's the ideal thing to measure the CRS in.

Now you have a good "base" water to start with.

5) As you brew add one teaspoon of gypsum to the mash, then another to the boil! This is a simple "rule of thumb" method (kudos to Chris) that will get you water more or less ideal for a good pale ale. It certainly works well for me.

6) Forget everything else for now and just enjoy your brew!

You can get much more complex than this method, but I doubt you'll taste much difference!

[WallyBrew]

...............1ml of CRS will neutralise 118mg of CaCo3

Its given as 183 on the website but the sample I analysed worked out as 1ml neutalising 180mg calcium carbonate. I've still got the bottle sitting on the bench.

[spencerwood]

Adm, thanks for your post - thats great.

I have literally just done the measurement from the Salifert kit. For anyone else interested to know...

THAMES WATER, Surrey KT9 postcode = 231 mg/l CaCO3

Regarding the DLS, I've read about people putting these into the grist, is it worth me doing this, if so, is there a good way of working out how much.


Thanks


Spencer

[adm]

...............1ml of CRS will neutralise 118mg of CaCo3

Its given as 183 on the website but the sample I analysed worked out as 1ml neutalising 180mg calcium carbonate. I've still got the bottle sitting on the bench.

Yeah - just after i clicked send on the post, I thought I'd cocked up and checked - it is indeed 180mg, so I already went back and edited the original post! Sorry for any confusion...

[adm]

Regarding the DLS, I've read about people putting these into the grist, is it worth me doing this, if so, is there a good way of working out how much.

I'm not really sure what the composition of DLS is myself - when i feel the need to get more complicated than the "teaspoon of gypsum" method, I use Graham's wonderful water calculator here, plug the numbers for the other components into the boxes and then add the different salts individually.