National Homebrew Club Ireland

I'm moving into a house in the country which has its own well. Previously I was on mains water in the UK. The water tasted fine and as I was only learning I was happy to brew with it straight from the tap, untreated, and I brewed many nice beers.

The owner of this new house tells me the water is very hard in the area so they put it through some contraption to make it soft. I'm a novice when it comes to water for brewing but I understand this may not be great for my homebrew with potential high sodium content. Obviously I cannot contact the local authority for a detailed water report. I can buy a ph meter or some strips to test the mash ph but after that am I just left with guesswork if I want to know the mineral content of the brew water?

A little online research tells me I might need to add calcium and magnesium which can be removed during the 'softening' process. Will I have any way of telling how much to add? Am I going to have to resort to buying large volumes of bottled water? Is bottled water even any use for brewing???

Any insight from anyone brewing in this situation much appreciated.

Quote from: grim reality on April 20, 2015, 12:06:36 AM
I'm moving into a house in the country which has its own well. Previously I was on mains water in the UK. The water tasted fine and as I was only learning I was happy to brew with it straight from the tap, untreated, and I brewed many nice beers.

The owner of this new house tells me the water is very hard in the area so they put it through some contraption to make it soft. I'm a novice when it comes to water for brewing but I understand this may not be great for my homebrew with potential high sodium content. Obviously I cannot contact the local authority for a detailed water report. I can buy a ph meter or some strips to test the mash ph but after that am I just left with guesswork if I want to know the mineral content of the brew water?

A little online research tells me I might need to add calcium and magnesium which can be removed during the 'softening' process. Will I have any way of telling how much to add? Am I going to have to resort to buying large volumes of bottled water? Is bottled water even any use for brewing???

Any insight from anyone brewing in this situation much appreciated.

Do you use beersmith at all?, apparently it will tell you what you should be adding for each recipe. I'm open to correction on that. You should send a sample of water off, get your water report, stick it in beersmith and each brew the software will adjust the amount of minerals required for the perfect brew.  I'm only learning beersmith and water treatment myself though so I might not be 100% accurate on that.

Your water PH should be around 7 to 8 as that's the range for drinking water. If your in a shop pick up any bottled water and you will see this. Your brewing malts added to water in your mash will be acidic and so bring down the PH but sometimes not enough as minerals in the existing water buffer against this. To understand what is the happiest medium you need to know what your water contains so you could get yourself a test kit.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Salifert-KH-Alkalinity-Profi-Test-Kit/dp/B001EJ3DOG/ref=sr_1_2/278-8805165-3204262?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1429523180&sr=1-2&keywords=salifert+test
This kit can help you alot as I understand that well water can sometimes change alot throughout the year.

Not sure where about in the country you are based but my nearest public testing service is in Oldcastle Co Meath. They do Microbiological testing as well as testing the chemical composition.

If you are in a rural area with farms or fields where manure is spread then you would do well to get the biological testing done regularly. The chemical one will give you a detailed readout of PH and different mineral concentrations
concentrations.

Thanks fellas.

I have not moved in to the house yet so do not know the set up exactly as in whether I have access to the hard water before it is softened or just the treated soft water. From my bit of research , Palmer etc, mashing with artificially softened water is a no-no so if I could just get the hard water straight and monitor the mash PH maybe that's all I'd need to do?? I mainly brew stouts, porters and IPAs which I believe all need hard water so maybe I'm fretting over nothing. I haven't even a frigging job yet but all I'm worried about is my brewing set up  :D

Would I be right in saying that if it's only the treated softened water that's coming out of the tap it will be too high in sodium and I will have to start buying in bottled water for my brews?

@GR, at the very least go with the Salifert kit.
This is accurate enough for our needs.
I would work with water at source, rather than post-treatment.
Boil and let the calcium carbonate precipitate out - then test your water again.
Depending on the preferred minerals for your beer style you could blend your liquor - Raw, boiled or use bottled water.
Tesco Ashbeck is one that I have heard being mentioned for great beer (AND Coffee!)
You could also use something like brupaks CRS (Carbonate reduction solution).

As Ronanp said you relly need to get check as to wether the well water is food grade or not! Thats a lot more important than the brewing suitability.

Contaminated wells exist in the country! The family that lives there have become imune to whatever strains of e-coli and the like are in their water. HOWEVER when visitors arrive and drink the untreated water then the youngsters or the oldsters are likely to get a dose of the trots!

For a €150 or so test its nothing compared to buying the house!

Will at least he can have a name for his pale ale, "Trotters pale ale". :D

Ok I'm in the house and I have access to the untreated well water. As I was told by owner it's very hard. I bought the Salifert KH/Alk test to measure carbonate hardness/alkalinity as recommended above. I'm off the scale at 24dKH or 428 ppm. Is this the bicarbonate figure that is crucial for the mash? Palmer recommends eggs 50-150 ppm for pale/amber beers and 150-250 ppm for darker roasted beers. I just want to confirm I have roughly got my bicarbonate figure from this test or does KH refer to something else??? Cheers!

Wow, that's really hard.
Look at Brupaks CRS...
http://www.brupaks.com/water%20treatment.htm
It's easier to use than boiling your water to precipitate out CACO3!

Hi Grim. Yes, you're better to use the hard water from the well and adjust with Carbonate Reducing Salts (CRS) than use the mechanically softened water, as it is just a different sort of hardness, and more difficult to work with.

Do you like IPAs?

Quote from: grim reality on May 05, 2015, 10:25:19 PM
I just want to confirm I have roughly got my bicarbonate figure from this test or does KH refer to something else??? !

KH refers to total hardness expressed as carbonate.

Boil a sample hard for 30 minutes and then re-test. This will remove any temporary hardness (the bi-carbonate ions) and leave behing the true carbonates (Calcium and Magnessium)

Thanks for the replies.

Yes I like IPA'S and primarily brew stouts/dark ales and IPAs in the 6% range.

So I am probably looking at using this CRS. I'm still a little unclear as to what my bicarbonate value is from my KH test results. I've done a boil and tested a post boil sample and came out with a KH of approx 180 ppm. So is that the carbonate minus the bicarbonate?  I though a certain range of bicarbonate was needed for certain beers so why would you boil it out? Should I just use the pure well water, add 'some' CRS and rock on with that? I'm not looking for utter perfection. Just an efficient mash and decent tasting beer! Thanks again!

Quote from: grim reality on May 06, 2015, 02:31:01 PM
Thanks for the replies.

Yes I like IPA'S and primarily brew stouts/dark ales and IPAs in the 6% range.

So I am probably looking at using this CRS. I'm still a little unclear as to what my bicarbonate value is from my KH test results. I've done a boil and tested a post boil sample and came out with a KH of approx 180 ppm. So is that the carbonate minus the bicarbonate?  I though a certain range of bicarbonate was needed for certain beers so why would you boil it out? Should I just use the pure well water, add 'some' CRS and rock on with that? I'm not looking for utter perfection. Just an efficient mash and decent tasting beer! Thanks again!

Eagerly reading this thread. I love hoppy ipa's but struggle to make them. My stouts,porters, Brown ales etc all turn out great so I'm blaming my water. Bought a ph meter and brought the ph of the latest ipa mash down by adding ro water and burtonising the water. Should keg it in a week or so. Will let you know the results

Auralabuse is ro water like pure water or distilled water? I see these terms a lot on American brewing forums but wasn't aware you could get this easily in Ireland. Do you need some kit to 'make' it?

Pet  shops have RO water as its best for some fish and so you can buy it from them. RO or reverse osmosis is water with all the minerals stripped out and so it is simple H2O. A blank canvass as it's being called because the good and the not so good are taken out so you need to then add back the salts that are gone. In a hard water situation by diluting with RO helps to blend out some of the hardness :).

Quote from: DEMPSEY on May 06, 2015, 11:06:12 PM
Pet  shops have RO water as its best for some fish and so you can buy it from them. RO or reverse osmosis is water with all the minerals stripped out and so it is simple H2O. A blank canvass as it's being called because the good and the not so good are taken out so you need to then add back the salts that are gone. In a hard water situation by diluting with RO helps to blend out some of the hardness :).

What Dempsey said

You can buy an RO filtration system (approx €180) or I think someone said that you can get RO water from pet shops that deal with fish. Its pretty cheap i think someone said?

As a microbiologist I just want to jump in here. One thing to be sure to do if you're using well water is to make sure you boil it properly. Particularly as certain parts of Ireland have a Clostridium difficile problem. C. diff's a spore forming organism that can survive even boil temperatures for a few minutes (About 8 minutes).
1) You won't have a problem with it as you've boiled your wort for an hour but just be careful not to top up your fermenter to the mark with cold unboiled water after from your well supply as you could make yourself very sick or contaminant your batch with other nasties.
2) Make sure to use proper concentrations of sanitiser (don't skip on it to save money!) when adding well water to your starzan as it will also have a higher background bacterial load than treated mains water. If you don't use proper amount of starsan/disinfectant. Your equipment may not sanitise properly due to the large amount of organisms present in the water and the concentration not being high enough to kill them. Finally with "chlorine" based (bleach) sanitisers make sure to add a little bit more than recommended as organic matter found in abundance in well/rain water bind to the chlorine in your santiser and reduce it's effectivity.

Sorry if this is stating the obvious but I've seen some nasty cases of bacterial poisoning from well water and wort is pretty much a perfect growth medium for every nasty individual you can think off!
Shaun

@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

Quote from: RichC on May 10, 2015, 08:16:11 AM
@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

I got an ro system recently and have a question about building a water profile.   So say I'm looking at beersmith and a water profile calls for calcium 7ppm magnesium 2ppm.  How do I actually achieve that.  I thought beersmith had a tool to convert say 7ppm equals a half teaspoon per gallon or something to that effect but I can't find anything like that.

I just tried  www.brewersfriend.com,  it doesn't seem to suggest amounts of minerals to add to ro water to build a certain profile.   Anyone here use a specific one that they can recommend?

I don't use beersmith.  I follow the brewing water chemistry primer on HBT. It's an excellent starting point an AJ Delange answers the more specific Qs

Quote from: auralabuse on May 10, 2015, 12:10:36 PM

Quote from: RichC on May 10, 2015, 08:16:11 AM
@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

I got an ro system recently and have a question about building a water profile.   So say I'm looking at beersmith and a water profile calls for calcium 7ppm magnesium 2ppm.  How do I actually achieve that.  I thought beersmith had a tool to convert say 7ppm equals a half teaspoon per gallon or something to that effect but I can't find anything like that.

1 PPM is equal to 1 milligram (mg) per litre so it's a farily easy conversion.
(required ppm) x total water volume in litres = weight required in mg

Say you want 7ppm of whatever in 20 litres it's 7mg x 20 L = 140mg or 0.14g.  The tricky part will be weighing out such small amounts without a very good scales 

Quote from: Drum on May 10, 2015, 01:24:54 PM

Quote from: auralabuse on May 10, 2015, 12:10:36 PM

Quote from: RichC on May 10, 2015, 08:16:11 AM
@grim reality, I've a well with really high iron, lime and some choli forms.  I've an ion exchange softener which it sounds like you have. Don't bother trying to brew with the softened water and it'll depend on a water analysis whether the water direct from the well is suitable. (Mine isnt). A proper full analysis from an accredited lab (such as public analysts) cost close to the cost of a 5 stage ro system.(I think I paid 160ish for full mineral/bacterial analysis) I brewed with the softened water for a while and it caused me terrible problems. I'd say buy a 5 stage ro system and you'll have a blank slate to create brew specific water profiles.

I got an ro system recently and have a question about building a water profile.   So say I'm looking at beersmith and a water profile calls for calcium 7ppm magnesium 2ppm.  How do I actually achieve that.  I thought beersmith had a tool to convert say 7ppm equals a half teaspoon per gallon or something to that effect but I can't find anything like that.

1 PPM is equal to 1 milligram (mg) per litre so it's a farily easy conversion.
(required ppm) x total water volume in litres = weight required in mg

Say you want 7ppm of whatever in 20 litres it's 7mg x 20 L = 140mg or 0.14g.  The tricky part will be weighing out such small amounts without a very good scales

Ah ok,  didn't realize that.  Thanks for that,  have to get myself a digital scales.  Nothing dodgy about that arriving with loads of little bags of hops

In beersmith I put my RO water in as a zero additions on my system. When you open beersmith go to "inserts", there you can set the salts and such to 0. When you are then building your recipe e.g. AIPA go to your water list from around the world and pick Los Angeles CA East and add to your recipe. Bingo the system then lists the salts needed to be added. To make life easier I went through the list of water profiles and picked the ones I liked and copied and renamed them to make it easier to pick. Los Angeles CA East is now Wolstan AIPA and Edinburg Scotland is now Wolstan Nut Brown Ale. :)

Quote from: DEMPSEY on May 11, 2015, 10:49:01 AM
In beersmith I put my RO water in as a zero additions on my system. When you open beersmith go to "inserts", there you can set the salts and such to 0. When you are then building your recipe e.g. AIPA go to your water list from around the world and pick Los Angeles CA East and add to your recipe. Bingo the system then lists the salts needed to be added. To make life easier I went through the list of water profiles and picked the ones I liked and copied and renamed them to make it easier to pick. Los Angeles CA East is now Wolstan AIPA and Edinburg Scotland is now Wolstan Nut Brown Ale. :)

Ah,  I had a mess around with it alright but I'm not quite at the build my own recipe stage of brewing right now.  Just started all grain so I'm getting the ready made grain recipes

I do similar to Mr D.
I have my base profile, then have 3 target water profiles set for beginners styles...
Stouts
Ales
Lagers

There is nothing to stop you doing this for every different style.