Water Treatment

[vacant]

At November's meeting Ali has offered to talk about water treatment. Bristol Water seems to be on the ball. Enter your post code here to get the composition of your water.

So what does any of this mean? It's a starting point to see roughly what sort of beer you could brew without water treatment. You can enter the numbers in a calculator to see how to treat your water to give improved results for other styles.

One gotcha, my water hardness can vary by 15% (seasonally?) so I test the water I'm about to use with a salifert kit.

[periolus]

I also rang them and asked them for information to help me brew and they sent me a similar report, but detailing some other compounds and general indicators for the Barrow Treatment Facility. I can share this if it might help?? Although the quality report for our area seems more relevant.

[MapperMatt]

Hi all,

I am trying to work out the water treatment for my Dunkelweizen that I am making next week. However, I am getting no where.

I am basically thinking of just using the same amount of CRS as I would normally use for a bitter to remove carbonates, plus a campden for chloramines. Thats it.

Any thoughts?

[Capn Ahab]

Ah interestink, ja. I made a smoked Alt last week and went for a vague fudge of a Munich cross Dusseldorf water profile, which meant using 0.5 ml CRS per litre of brew length, no DLS or salt, and the obligatory campden tablet to kill (KILL!) chloramines. Sounds like you're plan is similar to what I did. Time will tell how well it works....

I can bring along the table I made for Munich and Dusseldorf water profiles on Thursday if you want, though Dusseldorf is not really relevant to what you're brewing and the Munich profile is on the handout from Ali's water talk.

[alikocho]

I'd go with a Munich profile, which actually requires a fairly small adjustment from Bristol.

Then again, I did adjust to St Petersburg tonight.....

[MapperMatt]

Thanks both,

BUT.. the problem is.... (I'm a little slow).....I don't understand how to change my water to the Munich water based on the table that Ali provided. The table does not specify how hardness and alkalinity are measured.

I use the CBA water treatment spreadsheet which states alkalinity as CaCO3 and hardness as Ca. I cannot seem to reconcile the figures I have in my spreadsheet with the ones in the regional table for alkalinity and hardness.

So... my alkalinity(CaCO3) is 110ppm which is way different to the 244ppm specified for Munich in the table.....

Aufwiedersehn

[alikocho]

Check how alkalinity is expressed. It can be put in tables as HCO3 as well as CaCO3.

244ppm as HCO3 is a similar alkalinity to 120ppm as CaCO3.

[MapperMatt]

Check how alkalinity is expressed. It can be put in tables as HCO3 as well as CaCO3.

OK, so in the regional profiles you provided in your talk it looks like alkalinity is being expressed as HCO3. I couldn't find the source for this table to check but that would certainly make more sense....

[vacant]

I use the CBA water treatment spreadsheet which states alkalinity as CaCO3 and hardness as Ca. I cannot seem to reconcile the figures I have in my spreadsheet with the ones in the regional table for alkalinity and hardness.
So... my alkalinity(CaCO3) is 110ppm which is way different to the 244ppm specified for Munich in the table.....

I'm concerned the CBA spreadsheet differs from Murphy/Brupaks. CBA refers to "Hardness as Ca", Murphy/Brupaks use "Ca ppm" These are not the same. I believe Brupaks is correct as it ties in better with the full water reports I got when I emailed Bristol Water.

Taking the mean values from my water report (though the min and max figures also give the same relationships):

Ca 123.8 mg/l (mg/l is much the same as ppm)
Total Hardness as Ca = 143.4 mg/l

Now, my water report also has:

Alkalinity as CaCo3 = 277.7
Alkalinity as HCO3 = 338.6 (which divided by 1.22 gives 277 above)

And Brupaks says Calcium can be approximated as "Alkalinity as CaCO3 (before reduction by CRS) x 0.4" so 277.7 * 0.4 = 111 which is closer to the water report's "Ca" rather than "Total Hardness as Ca". I assume the correct factor is 0.44 but brupaks just want users to have easily enough Ca.

In real life I measure alkalinity on the day using a salifert kit to get alkalinity as CaCO3, then multiply that result by 0.4 to get a Ca number for my DLS addition. If my water report happened to be accurate for that day, using "Hardness as Ca" for DLS would significantly underestimate the DLS addition.

[I_used_to_brew]

I think this is gods way of telling you not to brew that forrin muck.