Anglia Water Report

[jakey.goodman]

I was wondering if anyone could give me a little advice on the water on my local area. I am now on all grain number 9, and want to start looking at refining my process further. The next thing I want too look at is my water quality. I have tried using the calculator to work out how much CLS, but as far as I gather, when I use CLS to reduce the hardness, it ups the Sulphate and chloride to too high a level, and I can;t work out how to get around this! Can anyone give my any pointers on water treatment for my water? I have cut the Anglia water report down to the bits relevant to home brew water quality below:

HARDNESS
Calcium 129.3 (mg/l)
Calcium carbonate 323.25 (mg/l)

CHEMICAL COMPOSITION
Alkalinity 167 mg/l CaCO3
Calcium 115 mg/l Ca
Chloride 93.8 mg/l Cl
Chlorine (free) 0.08 mg/l
Chlorine (total) 0.5 mg/l
Hardness: Total 129.3 mg/l Ca
Magnesium 8.76 mg/l Mg
Nitrate 21.8 mg/l NO3
Nitrite <0.062 mg/l NO2
Potassium 13.3 mg/l K
Sodium 61.2 mg/l Na
Sulphate 131 mg/l SO4

Any advice will be truly appreciated

[simple one]

Where abouts do you live?

[mabrungard]

It looks like a fine pale ale water. But it doesn't need any more mineral content for brewing. Adding things like CLS is more likely to make things worse than better. The chloride level is nice and high, but not excessive. Adding a product that further increases chloride may not be helpful to beer flavor. Oh, the nitrate level is fairly high too.

The primary problem with this water is the alkalinity and adding an acid is a requirement for many beers. But since you don't want anymore chloride in the water, CRS is not ideal. Given the amount of acid that could be required to neutralize the alkalinity, I recommend using phosphoric acid since it will not affect flavor. Lactic acid probably would, but its a smoother tangy flavor that you might want in some styles.

Since the water is already fairly mineralized, one thing you may need to consider for brewing some styles is dilution with RO or distilled water. That will cut those ion levels to more manageable levels so that the water can be tailored to focus on certain ions. Another technique is to pre-boil and decant the water. That will reduce the alkalinity into the 50 to 60 ppm (as CaCO3) range and the calcium will drop by about 40 ppm. That would be an easy enhancement to the water, but it takes time and energy.

Check out the Water Knowledge page of the Bru'n Water website to learn more.

Enjoy!

[jakey.goodman]

Cheers for the reply guys, some very useful info there....

I live near Biggleswade, Bedford.

Thanks for the detailed info mabrungard- it's useful to know the water is pretty good and not a complete wreck! Perhaps for now I will just settle with boiling the water and allowing to cool, as this seems to be the easiest way without having to mess around with acids, and sounds reasonably effective. I tried this yesterday so will see how the beer gets on

Thanks again.
Jake