My wife and I bought a home a couple months ago and are on well water, which is making me long for the days of just using Campden in Columbus' chlorinated water to brew light colored, hoppy beers and some minor mineral adjustments for my malty, dark beers. At our home we have well water that is very hard and has a high iron content. The following water analysis is from Ward Labs, all values in ppm: pH: 7.7 Na: 36 K: 1 Ca: 91 Mg: 44 CaCO3 (total hardness): 411 SO4: 15 Cl: 74 CO3: <1 HCO3 (bicarbonate): 447 CaCo3 (total alkalinity): 368 Fe: 0.24 Based on this water profile my effective hardness is 91 ppm, residual alkalinity 276 ppm, and the sulfide/chloride ratio is only 0.2. Without any adjustments this water isn't good for brewing a malty stout, let alone anything lighter and hoppier. We do have a water softener, but I don't have a water profile for the softened water and it is still high in iron. It seems like my only option at this point is to dilute my water with distilled water with anywhere from 50-90% to dilute the mineral content to reasonable levels depending on style. It really kills me to have to buy water to brew with, no matter how cheap, so I'd like to explore other options first. The long term plan is to install a 3-stage filter system and/or and RO system, but for the time being is there anything I do to make this water suitable for brewing?
I'm in the same situation, with very hard well water per Ward's analysis. I'm no water expert, but diluting with distilled water is the only thing I know to do.
Personally, I'd dilute this water with 100% RO. Your Fe level is close to the recommended maximum of 0.3 ppm. Cheers!
I have hard water, too, though it's municipal tap. I was getting really poor efficiency (hovering around 50%) which I had attributed to a few things, including my water chemistry. Then I found the following site on Home Brew Talk forums: https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/ Martin, site owner and water treatment expert, provides a spreadsheet into which you plug your water profile, your grain bill, and your target water profile (pre-set selections or custom). The spreadsheet then tells you what water adjustments to make which in my case required adding some gypsum, calcium chloride, epsom salt and lactic acid. Easily found all of those on amazon and ebay. I used this for my latest batch which is still in primary, and while I have yet to taste the finished product, my efficiency shot up close to 70%. I was pretty amazed how some the water adjustments made such a difference. I'd also recommend reading the Water Knowledge content on the website as provides the science behind the composition of your brewing water and why various elements are so important. Probably the best investment of time I've made yet for improving my brewing.
The new place is great, except for the water. I knew the lab results weren't going to be great when tasted it while filling the bottle for Ward Labs. I guess I'll be using distilled water until I switch over to RO.
