Testing well water

I haven't used the Lamotte kit but I have used Ward labs. My city softens it's water at the treatment facility. The results I got from Ward were nearly identical to results that someone else had posted online for the same city. I'd do the Ward labs test once in the summer and once in the winter and be confident in the results.

 

I am not a well water expert but I have attended multiple presentations on this topic at multiple HomebrewCon (NHC) seminars. I would doubt that anybody could accurately advise you here. I would expect that each area (your well) would vary upon region and upon each year's weather patterns (climate?).

It would seem to me that purchasing your own water test kit is the conservative/appropriate course here. Maybe test 4 times (each season) would be OK?

Cheers!

 

No idea about the shelf life of the water testing kit

I would guess that a deep well in Western NC would not change too much, while a shallower well in Eastern NC would potentially change a lot.

So, how deep is your well? And what is the geology like in your area? Without testing, it is hard/impossible to know if your water is changing in important ways.

Based on testing my city water and comparing it to others from the same area at different times (results in this thread https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/water-chemistry-variability.162316), I would bit the bullet and buy the Lamott and then test monthly for a couple years and see what happens. Or pretend that you know nothing is changing

Or maybe get a RO setup and minimize all of the potential changes without much testing.

 

Few things to consider here. Yeah, I sampled well water for years, mostly for environmental and not usually for what are known as secondary standards - nuisance, aesthetic or cosmetic concerns. There is a difference and brewers are looking at secondary concerns.

We'll get to what you want to know but first this is important background.

Environmental compounds are "primary", these are compounds that you just do not want in your water, no exceptions. So benzene for example is a known carcinogen and if you have benzene in your drinking water you have a problem to address and you probably also have a bunch of other volatiles as well. Toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes are common... This is what your municipal utility is looking for all the time. Along with the other stuff. So volatiles, semi-volatiles, giardia, coliform, heavy metals. We have invented literally thousands of chemicals to kill us. The good stuff. *You should test for these compounds at least once*, for obvious reasons. Nobody is going to test for you, your well, your water, your responsibility. A local water lab can guide you with the suggested testing, and depending on your geologic formation, location and well you could ignore some compounds or just do a limited suite in each category. Labs have basic testing panels for folks like us. It is entirely your decision.

Ok, for brewing, we are mostly interested in cosmetic compounds. Basically, people live with the water they have from the well, maybe get a softener and that's it. If it is safe to drink then that is the water people will drink. That is universal. Brewers of course do want to dial in the water profile, and those ppm values need to be fairly tight.

So the answer is that not all well water varies very much but it is more than likely that your water profile is not the same all year. It's not even the same day to day. In fact if you submit two samples to a lab collected back to back the values are going to vary. Not by a lot and probably within an order of magnitude but it would be unheard of for the values to be identical for a lot of compounds. Your USGS office is going to have a hydrogeologist that can help, and knowing a few myself I think you might even get to talk to a homebrewer if you are lucky.

If you really want to get a handle on your water you can consider sampling every three months for 1 year. You will probably see some meaningful changes and you will also see values that are basically stable. Or you can just sample once, and that is not a crime. Just know when the water table is high your well could be charged from a formation with certain characteristics that are not present in the fissure 20' below, and the water is a bit different. I'm talking mostly minerals here. How invested in your water chemistry do you really need to be? The seasonal changes are probably not that great. Probably.

I strongly recommend using an EPA accredited lab aka a "Contract Lab" Most but not all labs are; if they want to do any commercial work, government work or work that needs to be government reviewed they will be accredited. A good lab is accredited and don't waste time with a lab that is not.

Next, a DIY test kit is good for very basic data, though sometimes basic data is all that is needed. We truly do not need ppb data for brewing after all, but we do need reliable data. These kits are often intended to get you to buy some water treatment. They give away some test kits for free you know, so when you see the result, Oh my, our iron concentration is high, we better buy a softener. Etc. Brita is notorious for this sales pitch, as in they like to tell you that it removes 99.9% of cryptospordium cysts or whatever, which is just not a problem. Who is testing for cysts? And if they did who thinks a $30 Brita from Bed Bath and Beyond is the solution?

So. Go with Ward Labs. They also have test specifically for homebrewers. They get good reviews.
I have thought about this subject for most of my homebrewing career.
Cheers

Oh yeah, one other thing.
Get a small RO system just for brew water. It is more expensive but you'll always get the same water and it will be ready for any mineral additions you want to make. But still consider sampling for the primary compounds.

 

Send it to Ward Labs... there’s a cheaper option where you put it in a plastic bottle and send it to them instead of them sending you the bottle and a return label (can’t believe they even do that TBH)

Doubt it’ll change that dramatically. I’ve actually never sent mine in for a full report but when I bought my house I had the water “tested” by the local company that installs softeners and RO systems and still use those numbers for alkalinity and hardness and always come very close to my target pH numbers when I do decide to use my well water. My water has to change a ton as we get a lot of snow and then it’ll be bone dry for 4 months.

I’ve almost always brew with RO as my well water is horrific for making beer. 650 TDS alkalinity around 240, hardness that high, etc

Do you really buy plastic jugs of water every time? Does your grocery store not have an RO water machine where you can fill 5g jugs for .39 a gallon and never have to throw anything away? Every grocery store where I live has them but our water is horrible.

The times I’ve used my water I’ve either:

A: preboiled and decanted to lower alkalinity
Or
B: blended with RO and used acid for pH

Going to try to tackle lime softening soon I hope.

 

I took a dive into the wisdom generator and came up with
https://deq.nc.gov/news/hot-topics/coal-ash-nc/well-water-testing-information/map
But I'm guessing that what you want is on
https://www.ncwater.org/?page=603
chairs

 

Wards labs are a good outfit.

Well wate can change over the year, usually with spring runoff and or large rain events.

Depending on your aquifer and how it's fed, a change after a event could show up A day or a week after the event happens.

Good luck, hope it tests fine.

RO water can make good beer, but not nessisarly for all styles.

 

I'm not really sure what you mean by that, but RO (or distilled) water can make great beer for all styles. Of course, you have to add appropriate salts (and sometimes acids) to get there. Distilled/RO is the perfect "blank slate" to build on...you can always add stuff to the water, but you can't (easily) take stuff out.

But I wouldn't just use RO/distilled without any additions, unless I were doing an extract batch.

 

Apparently, u do know seeing your statement on adding whatever is missing for the style your brewing.

Reason I said what I said is,,,,, I don't add salts or anything else to tweek the water chemistry. And one can and many do, brew this way if the water is acceptable to the Brewer.

Rippers well water may be fine for the styles e wishes to brew without additions.

My water, spring, will not make good lagers or Pilsner brews. But ipa, stout , fruit and Belgian style brews come out fine for my tastes.

That's what I mean.

 

OK, I really wasn't sure, because RO (without additions) isn't suitable for any all-grain batch.

 

Agreed! Tryed it once, nasty tasting stuff!

 

You might try checking with your county health department for information on the well's depth. They have to sign off on wells when drilled, and they may have collected that info if you're curious.

Also, if you are curious, check with the water department of the city close to you. They test the water on a regular basis, and comparing tests over time will give an answer about whether the results vary between tests, and by how much.

You live up a hill and in the country, so your water may or may not be drawing from the same aquifer, depending on the depth of your well and the distance from town. But it would be interesting to see a comparison.

 

You might find a water report from a place near you.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/water-profiles

Western NC has some really nice water in the areas with granite geology.

You can buy an RO system for not much more than the test kit price. You will have replace filters once or twice a year which adds to the cost.

One way to check for variation is with a TDS meter. The local Brewer in my town said she saw from low 600s ppm to mid 700s ppm. I have an RO system, as the water here is hard, and very alkaline.

 

The source of well water is fascinating.
In this situation, a well drilled at a mountain elevation to unknown depth, we can presume this is a borehole in rock formation. The well is (probably) recharged from intersecting fractures along the depth. The fractures could extend in any direction and at any angle for dozens to hundreds or even thousands of feet, and the fractures may also intersect with other fractures along the way. Determining the formation structure is a big part of hydrogeology. The water in a fracture may be from a source very far away, and the intersecting fractures are extremely difficult to map accurately. So what do we know about this well water based on other data collected in the area? Not too much really. The water may or may not be close to other area wells. A good way to wrap your head around the 3D image of well fractures is to look at the 2D plane of a roadside rock cut along an Interstate. You'll see plenty of fractures. One of those fractures could extend a quarter mile into a borehole of a potable well.

A well in a shallow aquifer may have a stable water profile but is more likely to change seasonally as the water table fluctuates, especially if the table intersects with variable geology, say a neutral sand layer below a variable glacial till geologic formation. A very shallow well of maybe 30 or 50 feet is likely to have big fluctuations, and even precipitation events may influence the water quality.

Or if the well is beneath a confining layer of clay. The recharge area can be a mile away as the clay layer extends on an angle to the surface. That water could take a very long time to get to the borehole. My well is 195' and the USGS estimates the water is over 700 years old. Which kind of blows my mind. The deep valley we are in is on top of another valley (hanging valley) with numerous artesian wells. So yeah I am fortunate to have good 700 year old water under positive pressure that literally comes out of a pipe with no pump. And the 195' hole does not intersect any bedrock.

Just throwing this out there for the nerds (you know who you are) who ponder this sort of stuff. Like a good homebrewer.
Cheers.

 

I use a 6 stage RO system (3 stage carbon filters->RO membrane->Alkaline filter that puts minerals back in -> granulated carbon filter).
Compared a Ward Labs report, to the Lamottte Brewlab results which were very similar and exclusively use Lamotte.
I start there and adjust using the EZ_water spreadsheet. Very happy with the results and consider the investment very worth while. Good water for brewing coffee too!

 

Surprisingly soft - when I think of wells I just think of all sorts of minerals in general. You could totally build from that. I would still do multiple tests throughout the year.

That's crazy! I use one of those Glacier machines and pay like $6-$7 for all the water needed to brew a 10 gallon batch. Around 17 gallons. It's $2 per 5 gallons or 40 cents per gallon. I've been using extra ale pales - people probably think I'm a crazy person with my white buckets full of water loaded in a shopping cart.