Hardness as Ca

[smuggles]

My water report doesn't give a value for Calcium but does give Hardness Total as Ca. Can I use this for the Calcium value, or is it something different?

[Eric]

Hardness, in practical terms, is a product of the combined effect of calcium and magnesium. When given as calcium it will be the amount of calcium plus 1.65 times the amount of magnesium present. Normally there is much less magnesium than calcium present in domestic water supplies in UK and as you appear to be in Devon, it is likely there is very little of either in yours.

[smuggles]

Thanks Eric. You're right in thinking that there's very little magnesium (or anything else) in the water here. When I asked last year it was between 0.5 and 1mg/l, and I assume it's still similar.

[Troutman47]

I live near Okehampton, just had a water report back from Murphy's and I can confirm I have 9.91ppm of calcium.
0.86 ppm of magnesium, if that helps in any way.

The only concern I have, if it is a concern, is my alkalinity as CaC03 is 6.

How will that affect my beer?

[Aleman]

Without additional minerals your beer is likely to be a bit Meh!

The simplest treatment you can do would be to add a couple of teaspoons of gypsum to the mash and a tsp of calcium chloride to the boil for hoppy beers . . . for malty beers 2 tp of calcium chloride to the mash and 1 tsp of gypsum to the boil.

In addition for dark beers half to one tsp of potassium bicarbonate added to the mash liquor will improve those.