Water Report or lack thereof

The answers to your questions depend on the town's water source. Depending on whether you get surface or groundwater, and depending upon your region, you may or may not have fluctuations from season to season and year to year. Generally speaking, those fluctuations tend to be small enough so that they won't affect your brewing, and you could safely make assumptions based on your water report for some time to come.

All that said, I use RO water with (generally minor) additions of salts. The city water where I live tastes terrible, so I'm already used to hauling home 5 gallons jugs of RO from the supermarket. I use software to calculate gypsum and CaCl additions, adjust the pH (usually via acid malt) and badda bing, badda boom: brewing water.

 

Some towns (most, apparently) will add chloramine during part of the year in addition to chlorine. Chloramine doesn't boil off and makes the beer taste like band-aids. Half a campden tablet for five gallons should prevent this from being a problem. When chloramine is present, the beer definitely tastes like band-aids, Luckily I discovered this on mr beer so it wasn't a huge tragedy.

That being said, I would hazard some wild speculation and say to just give it a try before you mess with your water, and see how it comes out. But if you can get advice from an experienced brewer in the area, that would help. Or there's a place you can send a water sample to if needed. Someone on here will know what that site is. My water is just fine so I don't bother (but I do add the campden).

Edit: since you're already using it, there's an ol' saying that applies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

The town, most likely, tests the water for all the minerals you need for brewing. Have you tried contacting them to get that information? That is, have you asked them for the data not released in their annual reports?

I did, and asked for 2 years worth of data broken down by month. They were quite accommodating.

 

My understanding is that groundwater sources fluctuate less that surface water sources. I would say that if you've got naturally soft water, from an underground source, it would probably make sense to have it tested, and then adjust sparingly as needed for specific styles.

I agree with others that your city almost undoubtedly has this info. But it might be difficult getting hold of the right person who would know about it and who would understand that as a public employee s/he is more or less required to give such information when members of the public ask.

 

The trick is to get the phone number of the engineer if you can.

I have yet to hear of any municipality that is required to give this info to the public. Though I believe most are required (by law) to report on the safety related ions/compounds. I suppose you could try a request under your state's FOIA (or equivalent act), though I don't know how many state's FOIA's apply to local government. The federal FOIA does not.

Or just pony up $26 (or whatever it costs nowadays) and send a sample to Ward Lab.

 

Really? You've heard of California, haven't you? In California, at least, public employees are required by state law to respond to requests for information about the work they do. With a few exceptions for things like personnel records, *everything* public employees do with public money is a matter of public record. The results of tests performed on the public water supply would definitely be public information here, and I'd be surprised if it was different in other states.

Now, that said, the reason I wrote above that they are "more or less required" is that the legal penalties for not releasing public information are notoriously difficult to enforce, and if some guy doesn't want to be bothered, there isn't that much you can do about it short of suing. Newspapers do it all the time, but I doubt if most home brewers would bother. So you're definitely better off trying to find a sympathetic ear at the public works department than you are with a formal written request.

 

Hadn't heard of this. Is it part of CA's state FOIA (or FOIA-like) law?

 

The brewing ions are in the EPA secondary standards, and not required. My local water supplier said they did not test for them, and could not provide, even though I got 5 or 6 pages of harmful chemicals in the primary report.

I sent a water sample to award labs and that data was not share with the utility, as it was mine.

 

What numbers did you get from your test and where in Michigan are you located? I was not able to get my local report, but was able to get other nearby cities numbers and took an average for my own. Any additional data would interest me.

TIA

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Records_Act

 

Instead of making a new thread can anyone have a look at my report? Im district #5 (bottom of report)
http://rotterdamny.org/siteadmin/plugins/InnovaEditor/assets/water-report-2012.pdf

Same water source as here, which seems a little more in-depth:
http://www.cityofschenectady.com/pd...nkingWaterQualityReport-CityOfSchenectady.pdf

 

I sprung for the more expensive one (though it wasn't called 'beer test' at the time). But W-6 has all the brewing ion, alkalinity, and pH stuff you should need for brewing purposes.

 

I am in SE Michigan in an area of glacial gravel deposits, and the village water system comes off of wells. Don't use mine for your profile, as the local soil/geology will determine your profile.

In ppm
Ca=113, Mg=33, Na=58, Cl=132, SO4=48, HCO3=364.
Total harness=423 as CaCO3
Alkalinity=364 as CaCO3
TDS=630

So the solution for a water like this is to use RO water for brewing. The TDS for the RO water was 12 ppm.

Edit - the cities that use Great Lakes water have good brewing water. Some cities use lime softening of source water similar to mine, and produce water good for brewing.

Edit 2 - so what were those data like, or the average?

 

Page 4 of the second report has most of what you want. You have hard water, but the Ca level of 53 is good for most styles of beer.
The alkalinity is not good at 165 ppm. You could reduce that with acid or acidulated malt. Another way to reduce the alkalinity is to dilute with RO water.