I live in the city so I dont have well water, so I go to a local spring to collect my own water to use to brew. Tastes great. Anyone know of an inexpensive place to send away water to get an analysis of the water so I know its profile?
You'll also want to call your water company. They treat water differently throughout the year. Here in Indy the big swings are in fall and in spring. I'd personally keep both on hand if I knew my reports. As it stands now I mix 50% RO with 50% tap with campden tablets for harder styles and 66% RO tp 33% tap for softer styles. Ballpark is good enough for me.
is there a reason you need to go to a spring for your water supply? except for the chlorine issue (which is usually very easy to remedy) city water is no different than spring water. more often than not municipal water is superior. I won't argue that your spring water supply doesn't make good beer, just that you are possibly making life needlessly difficult and expensive. ward labs is the go to lab for homebrewers. you can also find a local environmental lab and ask them to analyze your water. you'll need to know exactly what analysis you want, the sales people won't know much if anything about a brewers needs. the municipal water report is free for the asking. a substantial analysis is available as well, but they are not required to analyze secondary concerns too frequently so it could be a bit out of date. Cheers.
IMO...the $21 W-6 Household Mineral Test is sufficient unless there's something you really need to know from the $27.25 W-5A Brewers Test. W-6 provides all the info you need to use Brun'nwater.
I grew up drinking well water, city water has the chlorine in it and rather not have it. The spring water is free, just need to drive to it (5 minutes out of town) and fill containers. Takes about 45 minutes on average to collect 24 gallons (fill a water dispenser in the house with it too).
I would counter that most municipalities use chlormamine, not chlorine, which is more stable and harder to get rid of.
Dissolving Campden Tablets is a real bitch. It adds a good 20-30 seconds to brew day. Probably 30. Disclaimer: I usually build my water from distilled, but it's for reasons other than chloramines. But I do use treated tap water for a few recipes.
many municipalities use chloramine and many continue to move to chloramine because it is stable and meets regulatory compliance. it is hard if not impossible to quantify how many municipalites are using chloramine. the EPA estimates 68 million individual Americans receive chloramine treated water. the CDC estimates 15 million households rely on well water but does not state how many people are in a household. the remainder get municipal water that has not been treated with chloramine. not matter what, a relatively small amount of 316,600,000 Americans receive chloramine treated water. besides, while it can be headache for a homebrewer, chloramine is not a deal breaker. Cheers.
