Water Sample

[Froggit]

Right after many hours messing with John Palmers water spreadsheet and googling and converting measurements and all sorts of other things ive managed to get myself in a right stupor, i thought my water was ideal for Stout but now im not sure, i would really appreciate if you guys would have a look at this and maybe tell me what you think my water would be good for, (even if its only just washing my mash tun).
Just to confuse things i dont have a Sulphate reading for my water.
All reading are mg/l
Calcium 164
Magnesium 91.3
Sodium 35.4
Alkalinity HC03 393.5
Chloride 106

How important is Sulphate, and how do i get my effective hardness down?

Am i reading into all this too much, should i just try different brews and see what suits the water?

Any help advice on this would be much appreciated!

[far9410]

I dunno mate, I got my water analysis done at murphy and sons, but I'm sure someone on here will help

[Eric]

By those readings your water is very alkaline. It is more suited to darker beers than pale ones but in both cases, reducing that alkalinity should prove beneficial.
One way to reduce alkalinity is to boil your water and rack it off the sediment. Doing that removes much of the calcium requiring the addition of other salts.
A preferable alternative would be to use acid, such as CRS, which converts bicarbonates to soluable salts, so retaining calcium while reducing alkalinity.
It appears to me that if you were to use the right amount of CRS there would be little more than a bit of fine tuning necessary to produce most styles of British ales.
Calcium sulphate improves hop flavours, CRS will convert calcium bicarbonate to calcium chloride and calcium sulphate (gypsum).

[simple one]

Lovely for stouts and porters. Looks like you'll best be buying shares in CRS if your brewing pales.

[Froggit]

Lovely for stouts and porters. Looks like you'll best be buying shares in CRS if your brewing pales.

Thanks for the help guys! I was sort of hoping the above wouldnt be said but deep down i knew it would, i really do prefer my lager

Im guessing its just gonna be easier for me to buy bottled water, anybody know of best bottled water for a lager or is it a trip to tescos for me with laptop and spreadsheet!

[guypettigrew]

What's wrong with using CRS? It's really easy---just a few mls into your liquor, job done.

Then use Brupak's liquor salts as well if you want to.

Easy peasy!!!

Guy

[nigelsch]

Froggit,

dont despair. I found the chemistry behind water treatment boggling. I have similar water to yours, but can brew from stout down to a lager.

Like you I use plamers xls, its great and makes it all so much easier. I did try boiling the water for lighter brews but it was too much hassle,
so now i use crs. I have no problems. Water treatment was the thing that made the biggest difference to my bears; my bitters were a little
astringent until I started using crs.

So in short palmers xls & crs and u'll do just great

[Froggit]

Thanks for the advice, ive ordered some crs
Just one question how do i add the crs into the palmers spreadsheet, i assume its acid but im unable to find exactley what it is so it can be added to the spreadsheet!
Ive done it using the Grahams water calculator all fine and dandy but would have liked to do it with palmers also, just to see how they compare!

[nigelsch]

Froggit,

I did think when I was writing my previous response that Palmers xls didnt have a "CRS line", he has a lactic and hydr acid entry. I
have updated his spreadsheet to include crs, its straightforward.

Don't know what version you are using, im using v2.3 (but it should not make a difference)

background:
- Hydrochloric acid has 15 meq/l
- lactic acid has 11.8 meq/l
- crs has 3.64 meq/l

So whatever result his xls shows you for Hydrochloric, simply put in a calculated cell; crs= "Hydrochloric result" * 15/3.64
(in short crs requires 4.12 times the volume)

or for lactic acid; crs = 3.24 times lactic result

Also 1ml crs = 1.07g. Useful as i always weigh mine rather than volume.

I spent a few days on all this, as i mix my acids from base sulphric & hydrochloric as crs is simply a mix of the two
and diluated - something around 4:1. I also checked all my calcs with a tritrate after adding the acids to the mash
water as a check; it was spot on.

What I like about palmers xls is how it adjusts the acids required given the ebc of the beer. I tend to use the "low RA" as the
target for my water. Any questions please shoot away - i know it took me a long time to grasp all this water stuff.

Nige.

[Froggit]

Thanks Nige your being a real help as i am starting to get my head around this a little.

There is gonna be lots of questions if you dont mind as i want to get this right before my next lager brew in a couple of weeks. Im doing a stout this weekend, my water figures in the spreadsheet come out fantastic for stout.

Im using Palmers xls3.0.

Back to the CRS and spreadsheet! There is a cell for adding Hydro to the mash and a cell for adding Lactic to the mash, next to these it gives me the "Est. Acid-Only Mash Addition (ml)".
At the profile i just added both these estimates are very close, 5.1 and 5.2 respectivley. Am i supposed to replace both with the CRS using the calculations you gave me earlier or do i just replace either or with CRS.

[nigelsch]

Thats ok, this site really helped me out big time when I was going thr the same curve. So my turn to help out.

Its up to you which approach you use. I actually created my own "CRS line" by inserting a row in his xls. Then from there
just put in the calc from either the hydro or lactic, using appropriate calc. I then also put in another cell for grams, in addition
to the ML within that row. May be worth taking a copy of the origanal xls b4 "doing the business".

You can then compare this result with other web conversion sites, albeit they are likely to be much more general, since
JP uses the ebc. But as you say like my water yours is more suited to stout (without too much adjustment). My water
is around 330ppm alk.

Cheers