Water

[mr hoppy]

[size=12][size=11]Just wondering, since this is the official Cork forum whether any one has tested their water / got a report and what they found?[/size][/size]

[LordEoin]

I have not. Sorry.

[johnrm]

I am out Midleton way, but water comes from a private well which tastes fine, but was wondering about its make-up.
There must be a lab somewhere that we can send samples for analysis.

[johnrm]

Excellent.

[Taf]

Mine comes from a spring, and was tested before, but wouldn't mind testing it on a more regular basis.

[johnrm]

I'll start a thread  over on general then...

[mr hoppy]

Apologies for being a bit slow with the follow up post over the Christmas.

Anyway, while I wouldn't be hung up on water profiles, a while back I thought I might have been having water related trouble with mash efficiency and I tried out one of the GH/KH aquarium test kits from this company. I picked it up in Petstop on the Kinsale Road. The Braukaiser website has a handy spreadsheet to interpret the results. I think I also had a look at A.J. deLange's essay (which is linked at the bottom of the Braukaiser page) and John Palmer's "How to Brew" at the time. Both seem pretty good on water. I'm in the western suburbs, so my supply comes from the Lee Road Water Works like most of the rest of the city.

I came up with:
Ca - 22 mg/l
Mg - 6  mg/l
HCO3 - 37  mg/l

I also had Ph (6.98) and Conductivity (148.7 microS/cm) measurements that the council took a while before when we had issues with our water.

For some reason I estimated that the Na, SO4 and Cl were all approximately 10 mg/l. I think this may have been based on the conducivity being low but I can't really remember now.

What was interesting was that despite all the hype about Irish water being hard that the test seemed to say my water was pretty soft, even too soft in terms of Calcium. I don't knpw if it was a fluke, and I could probably do the test again, but since then I've stuck to adding a teaspoon of Calcium Chloride (or gypsum for hoppy beers) to the mash and it seems to be working ok.

Curious to hear what anyone else's experience has been. Or if anyone want's to give this a try it would be interesting to hear what results you get.

[mr hoppy]

On a similar topic, if you google "Beamish water report" you get a water report that Beamish commisioned a couple of years back.

It's kind of interesting reading if only because it as much as says they were brewing with sea water - so its no wonder they had to filter the hell out of it.

[DEMPSEY]

HCO3 - 37  mg/l ,this is the bicarbonate number and all you do with this is divide by 1.22 to get the calcium carbonate number CaCO3.
37/1.22 =30.32.

[mr hoppy]

HCO3 - 37  mg/l ,this is the bicarbonate number and all you do with this is divide by 1.22 to get the calcium carbonate number CaCO3.
37/1.22 =30.32.

Yes, IIRC the test kit actually calculates the GH and KH as ppm CaCO3 amounts and you work back to the bicarbonate from there.

[UpsidedownA (Andrew)]

What was interesting was that despite all the hype about Irish water being hard that the test seemed to say my water was pretty soft, even too soft in terms of Calcium.

Agreed. The brewing water profiles I've seen for Dublin in various places (e.g. Palmer's "How to Brew" p.160) seem way off. Most water in Dublin city at any rate comes from Wicklow reservoirs (Ballymore Eustace or Roundwood) and is very soft (closer to the profile for Pilsen than what Palmer has for Dublin). The Dublin figures bear more resemblance to what Tube et al brew with in Kildare Fingal North County Dublin and must be taken from there. But what are they using at the original home of stout at St James' gate? If it's Dublin city water, it will be soft as a baby's skin.

[Ciderhead]

"

You hear that so often, yet the only stout brewer in Dublin is using Wicklow water from the Vartry which as Andrew says is more like Pilsen.
.

We have to flush very hard here in Roundwood to aerate and get our water to taste like Pilsen.

[mr hoppy]

Just noticed, there seems to  be a wealth of data on the Geological Survey Ireland website. Whereas Cork County council's water page just gives information about conductivity and  pH (which looks consistent with what I had) this GSI survey includes a lot of the information brewers might find interesting. It looks like there's probably similar information for other counties as well.

There's even a geological map which shows that Cork is mostly standstone (meaning softer / less alkaline water) whereas much of the midlands is limestone (harder water).

[mr hoppy]

"Dublin water is very hard, so it's ideally suited to stout"

You hear that so often, yet the only stout brewer in Dublin is using Wicklow water from the Vartry which as Andrew says is more like Pilsen.

There are significant amounts of Limestone around Ireland, but not around Cork city, so it's entirely possible the water is indeed quite soft.

The first time I brewed a lager I used bottled water and treated it because I thought "John Palmer say's my water's hard".  : In retrospect it was a complete waste of time and money.  Come to think of it the fact that there's hardly any limescale in our (coffee) kettle should have been a clue.

As for stout, I assume I'm not alone in waiting till 30 minutes into the mash to add dark grains - making them much less of an influence on mash ph (although I've no idea what Dublin brewers did historically, possibly much like Palmer).

[Dara]

How's it going,

I tried one of these test kits out aswell - I'm in Blarney. My water comes from Inniscarra resevoir (not sure what they do to it on the way to my place) which I'd say is more or less the same as the water in the city.  Anyway, my results seem to tally with Mr.Happy's

I got:
Ca = 20 mg/L
Mg = 5 mg/mL
HCO3 = 65 mg/mL

Couldn't determine pH from the test kit but if you look on the Cork County Council web site you can see it on the annual reports.

I think I used the same kit as mr Happy's - it's from the same company. I got mine from the pet shop (opposite Bradley's) on North Main st.

Unless you have your own well, the water in and around Cork City comes from run off so it should be fairly soft which the numbers seem to confirm. I never see scale on kettles - at least compared to someother places I've been.

Re: the whole Stout using hard water thing - I spoke to a guy from Guinness a few years ago (before I started brewing so it went over my head). He said that they just use municipal water from there local supply.  Maybe the treat it afterwards?

I was in Anchor brewery in Belgium (Carolus beers) and the guy said that they needed to treat their water to remove hardness. They would seem to have the opposite problem. After living there for a bit and reading some stuff on water treatment you would think that they could never brew a pale beer in that Country! So there seems to be a bit of a contradiction out there:
Dark beers can be brewed in Dublin - although the water is actually soft.
Pale beers can be brewed in Belgium - although the water there is actually hard. From what I saw this was the case all over the country, except possibly the Ardenne area (dish washers in that country don't last pissing time).

Dara