Water report

[Tom]

Laserboy, don't go through Irish Water for your analyses. Try your actual council office, where the car tax gets paid.

You have carbonates, that's a given with your pH as it it. Preboiling all of your water will remove all but the last 60ppm of it. Do it the night before and it will cool down overnight to your strike temp at 6am! pH should be bang on for strike water. If you're brewing a dark beer, don't bother with boiling.

Also add half a campden tablet to your liquor to remove the stubborn chloramines.

If you're doing a pilsner, then definitely buy RO, as you'll really struggle to get your water soft. If you use lactic acid you could impart a taste if you use too much (and you'd need a lot). Phosphoric acid is grand, but you'll need to add back about 100 - 150ppm calcium as the phosphoric acid precipitates this out.

There's no easy way really,  but I'd say boiling is probably the closest to a quick fix. Don't worry about adding sulphates and chlorides until you get the rest of your brewing right. After all, pitch and ferments are more important now.

[redshift]

As mentioned above, the pH of the water has little to no impact on the mash pH. The alkalinity of the water is more important, this is essentially how resistant to change the pH is. So a high alkalinity means the mash pH might not drop to the desired level, a low alkalinity may mean the mash pH is too low. But this is dependent on the grain bill, dark crystal and roasted grains will cause the pH to drop more than an all pale malt grist.
I really recommend downloading Bru'n Water (it's free) and read the water knowledge page then just play about with it for a while. It takes a bit of getting used to but it's excellent.

[LASERBOY147]

Water knowledge now at ninja lvl thanks.