Tips and Recipies in the quest to brew the perfect beer

My Ward Labs Water Report

My water analysis came back this week but now I seem to have even more questions. Here are the hard numbers from the report.

Sample Date was 12/18/2007

ions	ppm
pH	6.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est	128
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm	0.21
Cations / Anions, me/L	1.9 / 1.2
Sodium, Na	27
Potassium, K	6
Calcium, Ca	6
Magnesium, Mg	3
Total Hardness, CaCO3	28
Nitrate, NO3-N	0.2 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S	1
Chloride, Cl	18
Carbonate, CO3	< 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3	35
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3	28

So what does all of this mean? Apparently, I have very soft tap water.

John Palmer, homebrewer and author of How to Brew, has a chapter of his book devoted to water which you can read here. In it, he lists the water profiles for several cities that are well knows for their beers. he main numbers we’re interested in here are Calcium, Magnesium and Bicarbonate. It seems though, that my water falls somewhere in no-man’s land. The numbers are a bit higher than the famously soft water of Pilsen, (home of Pilsner Urquell) in the Czech Republic, but nearly as high as the other cities in the list. Although this does mean that my water is good for brewing lighter (in color) beers, which is probably preferable to having very hard water and having to dilute it with bottled spring water or stick to brewing mainly darker beers. If I used Palmer’s nomograph in How to Brew correctly, something in the range of 7-12 SRM should be optimum for my water, which works out great for the styles I enjoy most.

Somehow, it almost seems too perfect though. When I first read the analysis I had a hard time believing the tap water here could be that good for brewing. Most of the other water reports home brewers have posted on the various brewing forums appeared to be considerably different than mine. They were much higher in the various ions. I do wonder if I managed to botch taking the sample. It’s not exactly rocket science, you just fill an empty water bottle with whatever you want to sample and mail it to Ward Labs. I rinsed the bottle several times with tap water, and I can’t imagine that if there were a bit of residual bottles water that it could throw off the report by that much. Only one way to find out I guess, another sample in the spring. I’ve heard the water can change throughout the year anyway, so a quarterly analysis for a year sounds like it might be a good idea…