I have been brewing long enough and never really did any research on my water. I have read up multiple times but always just seem to go cross eyed and just cant get the concepts to work in my head. That being said, here is a link to my water report. http://www.spartanj.org/documents/water/2013_ccr_reports/highland_ccr_2013.pdf Let me know what I am working with. I know from my 50 plus batches that my malty beers always taste better than my hoppy beers. The hoppy beers are good, but lack that crispness that they should have. I am thinking that a water adjustment is needed, just trying to figure out what. Thanks for looking. Joe
I just started water adjustments, myself. Use EZ calculator. It's EZ and shows all of the inputs clearly, and I believe you can get them from that report (is it really from 2013?? no more recent report?) http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/ Then take a look at some water profiles and try playing with addition of distilled water, calcium chloride, gypsum, epsom salts, acidulated malts to adjust levels and pH of your water. http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/water-profiles/ This is kind of the rudimentary way, but should be a good start. My porters/stouts always taste great with my tap water (run through a filter) and my IPAs are always pretty harsh on the bitterness. My Magnesium levels were 70 ppm and shouldn't be higher than 30 for most styles and the pH is rather high at 9.2. This affected my lighter hoppy beers but the darker malts helped bring pH back into range (without me knowing until recently).
That is a ‘strange’ water report. I could find no mention of Calcium (Ca) in that report. That is a critical mineral for brewing. I noted some pretty broad ranges like: · Sodium (Na): 3.97 – 107 · Chloride (Cl): 6-113 · Etc. Due to incomplete and broad ranging values you really can’t do a whole lot here. Maybe you could call them up and ask for later data (e.g., 2015) and specifically ask for values of the needed brewing minerals? The other option is to send your tap water to somebody like Ward Labs and have them test your water: https://producers.wardlab.com/default.aspx?ReturnUrl=/ Test W-5A. Cheers!
Before water adjustments are made (via salt additions) it is imperative that one knows the initial ion content. The main goal of adjustments is to dial in mash pH. The secondary goal is tailoring the ion content for flavor impact. If one does not start with DI or RO water, then an accurate assessment of one's base water can be had from Ward Labs (as JackHorzempa pointed out). When staring out, one can keep salt additions simple by using only CaCl2 and CaSO4. Acid malt can be used for final adjustment of mash pH. The are a number of "water calculators" out there: EZ Water, BrunWater, one on the Brewer's Friend website, and (my favorite) MpH Water Calculator. Vikeman's BrewCipher (an all encompassing Excel based brewing workbook) incorporates the MpH-Water-Calculator model. Cheers!
Thanks for the replies. I know the report I provided was jacked and missing info, I will call the town to see if I can obtain a more recent and more accurate report.
