Testing my water

[Chrissyr63]

so for info just tested my London water (west London area). Had 0.26 left in syringe so 4.1 * 50 = 205
From their website they list the CaCO3 as 271

Chris

[Chrissyr63]

Hi

so I got a water report from SWW for my area and got the following figures (it is for 1/2013 to 12/2013 and I have used the Mean figures)

Sodium 9.73
Chloride 15.42
Sulphate 12.38
Hardness as Ca 13.10

And I have my Salifert test of 5

So I have no value for magnesium

So I entered these into the THBF calc (as this looks the simplest to use). For my usual 22-23lt brew I use about 33lts of water so entered that and that I was doing a Pale Ale.
This gave me the following instructions:

5.43 g of gypsum into the mash (is that about a teaspoon as people suggested?)
0.06 g of chalk into the mash (I assume I could just miss this out with it being such a small amount)
10.85 g gypsum into the boil (2 tsp)
1.68 g table salt into boil
6.69 g Epsom salts into boil
0 g calcium chloride into boil
0 ml of CRS

Putting it all into the GW one here (as a sweet pale ale) I get similar figures.
But that does not split across the mash\boil and seems to split the gypsum as calcium sulphate and calcium chloride.

So does this look like a reasonable first stab at 'fixing' my water?

Chris

[Eric]

That hardness will include magnesium, just that it is expressed as an amount of calcium (13.1 mg/l) that would produce the equivalent amount of hardness. The actual amount of magnesium that will be present in that water will be small enough to be safely ignored.

Those figures look quite typical. You could consider using 10 to 15% London water to buffer the mash.

Good luck.

[Chrissyr63]

hi Eric,

when you say buffer mash with 10-15% London water do you mean 10/15% of the mash water ie the 11lts so 1-1.5ls?
Also do I need to recalculate the additions for 32lts (shouldn't change much) and mix the mash and sparge water separately?

Or recal to 30lt and then just add 3 lts of London water to the whole batch?

Oh and just for completeness I usually treat all the water with half campden tablet at the start.

thanks,
Chris

[Eric]

Your London water has alkalinity at 205mg/l CaCO3, so if one part in 10 is that, it will add 1/10th or 20.5mg/l to the roughly 5 that exists, making 25.
This will act as a buffer to stop pH dropping farther than you might want, in a way it will stabilise the mash. I'd just do it to the mash at present for pale beers.

Can you measure your salts to hundredths of a gram? I can't and in any case most of them absorb water so unless you go to extremes they won't weigh right anyway. Don't worry about small amounts.
Have fun.
Eric.

[lord.president]

Sorry to butt in,but I always treat my sparge water the same as the mash liquor (ie do Salifert,punch in results from Murphy's intoGW's water calculator) for the whole amount.

[orlando]

Sorry to butt in,but I always treat my sparge water the same as the mash liquor (ie do Salifert,punch in results from Murphy's intoGW's water calculator) for the whole amount.

Obviously it depends on what you start with but if you want to brew say a Stout or Porter and reduce your alkalinity to say 25-30 you will almost certainly over acidify your mash once the dark grains get to work, that will impact on the pH of the mash. You should be looking for an alkalinity level that reflects the style or grist, for a Pale Ale a one size fits all approach can work, but again you need to know the alkalinity level of your starting water and adjust accordingly.

[lord.president]

Sorry to butt in,but I always treat my sparge water the same as the mash liquor (ie do Salifert,punch in results from Murphy's intoGW's water calculator) for the whole amount.

Obviously it depends on what you start with but if you want to brew say a Stout or Porter and reduce your alkalinity to say 25-30 you will almost certainly over acidify your mash once the dark grains get to work, that will impact on the pH of the mash. You should be looking for an alkalinity level that reflects the style or grist, for a Pale Ale a one size fits all approach can work, but again you need to know the alkalinity level of your starting water and adjust accordingly.

My last pre brew alkalinity test was 19!

[Chrissyr63]

ah I see - same as the suggestion from Charles - a mixture will even out the alkalinity of the water rather than using other additives (and your comment about better than each of the single starting water). Now that I have both value I can mix to get the level for the beer style ( check once mixed obviously).
As I said I was just starting and didn't want anything too complicated this is a good compromise to build on - thanks all.
Assume a similar approach for a bitter would work - Jims ESB seems all the rage at the moment. Maybe a split of mix for mash and sparge so I can get the recommended 50 and 25 levels that is needed?

Chris

[orlando]

My last pre brew alkalinity test was 19!

You have my sympathy, I would rather have my problem of 250. Raising alkalinity is a lot of bother.

[Chrissyr63]

Hi all,

thanks everyone for all the info - so I've decided to do a Jims ESB and would like to try out the discussed water mix on this.
Grain bill (for 23l) 4.250kg pale and 250g of caramalt,tor wheat, pale crystal and use a 2nd gen London yeast that I have in the fridge.

Will go for a mix of my London and Devon water to get me 50 for the mash and then 25 for my sparge water.
I'm looking at
Mash water 3l London 10l Devon (23/77% dilution)
this should get me to about 50 but will double check as the low Devon water seems to be at the limit of the
salifert test kit accuracy
Sparge water 2l London 19l Devon (10/90% dilution)
this should get to about 25 and again will double check

I'll add half a campden tabled to the Devon water but assume the small amount of London plus it will be a day old should be OK.

This all look right water wise?

Chris

[Charles1968]

Looks good. If you have gypsum, add 1 tsp to your total water volume as your devon water is low in calcium. Gypsum raises calcium but also lowers mash pH a little.

[Chrissyr63]

Hi Charles thanks for that. Is that a heaped or flat TSP?

[Chrissyr63]

Or to answer my own question I could just use a measured tsp!

[Charles1968]

5 grams if you have scales - it's about the same as 5 ml. Ordinary teaspoons hold less than 5 ml when level so heaped would be better.