Feedback On My Water?

General Homebrew Discussion
1

With half a dozen extract batches under my belt, and satisfactory results, I’m moving into all-grain using BIAB. Everything so far has been with RO water from the store, but I’d like to use my tap water if possible. My report from Ward Labs is below, any feedback is appreciated.

pH                  7.8
TDS                237
Elec Cond        0.40
Cat/An me/L    3.9/4.2

Sodium Na 30 ppm
Potassium K 5 ppm
Calcium Ca 43 ppm
Magnesium Mg 4 ppm
Total Hardness CaCO3 124 ppm
Nitrate NO3-N 0.5 ppm
Sulfate SO4-S 18 ppm
Chloride Cl 42 ppm
Carbonate CO3 6 ppm
Bicarbonate HCO3 103 ppm
Total Alkalinity CaCO3 95 ppm
Total Phosphorous P 0.22 ppm
Total Iron Fe <0.01 ppm

2

That’s pretty good water overall. The alkalinity is a little high, but so is hardness. RA is about 50 ppm CaCO3, so you should be fine to brew something like an amber or brown ale without any pH adjustments being needed. Add some sulfate for a hoppy pale ale (which you’d probably want anyway) and you should also be good. For very light beers, especially lagers, you’ll probably want to dilute with some RO water in order to get the RA down closer to 0. For very dark beers you’ll probably want to add alkalinity, which is a little trickier. Martin Brungard’s site has good info on that.