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Help with Water Profile and pH

Old-P

Apprentice
Joined
Jun 14, 2017
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Location
Bavaria, Germany
Hi,
I have managed to get the profile for our local drinking water:

Ca+2 = 110.0
Mg+2 = 26.9
Na+ = 4.0
CI- = 9.4
SO4-2 = 22.4

Ca+CO3 = 17.9ppm

21.6dH

Unfortunately it doesn?t show the amount of bicarbonate, so should I leave that blank or add a nominal amount in the water profile tool?

Also, can I workout the pH value from the above breakdown?

Any help with the above would be very much appreciated.

Many greetings from a not so sunny Bavaria
 
Just working the ionic balance of your water, the Bicarbonate level would need to be at 436 ppm in order to maintain the correct cation/anion balance.  I would enter in this value as a starting place and then adjust as you find more information regarding your actual mash pH versus the estimate from BeerSmith.

The water pH is pretty much a useless field so you can set it at 7 and let it be.  It really dictates the form the Carbonate ions take in solution.  The actual buffering capability is described more by the residual alkalinity than by the actual water pH.  What really matters is the mash pH which is controlled by the residual alkalinity and your grist composition.



 
That's one of the problems with municipal drinking water reports, they don't give homebrewers what we want to know or use. Get a test from Ward Labs: https://www.wardlab.com/services/water-analysis/ Scroll down that page and look for the BREWERS TEST. They will return to you everything you need to build your base water profile.
 
Oginme said:
Just working the ionic balance of your water, the Bicarbonate level would need to be at 436 ppm in order to maintain the correct cation/anion balance.  I would enter in this value as a starting place and then adjust as you find more information regarding your actual mash pH versus the estimate from BeerSmith.

The water pH is pretty much a useless field so you can set it at 7 and let it be.  It really dictates the form the Carbonate ions take in solution.  The actual buffering capability is described more by the residual alkalinity than by the actual water pH.  What really matters is the mash pH which is controlled by the residual alkalinity and your grist composition.
Thank you very much, this is super helpful.
 
 
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