Letter to Water Department

[Cosmic Charlie]

In my quest for better homebrew, I finally decided to start learning about water quality. My local water report only contains info on the following inorganic contaminants: barium, chromium, copper, flouride, lead, selenium, and TTHM.

So, I'm going to send them an email asking for the following: Calcium, Magnesium, Bicarbonate, Sulfate, water hardness (bicarbonate ion concentration), and pH (alkalinity as CaCO3).

Is this a good start? Is there any other information I should request?

As always, thanks for the help,

-CC

[Jared]

I would ask them what they use to kill the nasties, chlorine, ect. This is en excerpt from a homebrew club member who works at a tap water treatment plant and is an active homebrewer.

"If in fact my water only uses "free chlorine" then leaving it in a pot overnight will remove most of your chlorine. I thought they used chloramines, though. Chloramines will not evaporate overnight because the chlorine is bound with ammonia to stabilize it. Chloramines will last for a week or more. Boiling will get rid of both kinds. It is the best way to get rid of any chlorine.
Carbon filters do a good job, and remove chlorine and chloramines. Water added post-boil still needs to be boiled after filtration to disinfect it. An unclean filter can cause bacterialogical contamination, which can give their own off flavors.
You questioned the need for dechlorination beforehand because the wort will be boiled later, but the problem is your bad flavors will develop in the mash, before boiling. I like to brew with chlorine free water because chlorine may lead to oxidized flavors. When chlorine comes into contact with your grains in the mash, it binds with all sorts of positively charged molecules. Just like oxygen. (Chlorine is an oxidizer.) I have brewed in the past with chlorinated water, and it doesn't always produce off flavors. But sometimes it did, so I switched to boiling. (Usually I get my water straight out of the filters at the water plant, thus no need for dechlorination)


In conclusion: boil your water beforehand to dechlorinate. or filter.
Chlorine will not necessarily ruin your beer, but it could affect it.

clear as mud?...."


Hope this helps

[danno]

boiling will not remove chloramines. the only way to remove them is a charcoal filter, or other chemicals (such as campden tablets), but they lead to as many other flavor issues as they solve. go to your local mega home improvement store (or other hardware store) and buy a whole house water filter with a charcoal element. it may set you back $15-$20 in total. (my water setup is an RV hose, the filter cartridge with a hose adapter on one ende, and a valve on the other end...)

you'll be able to filter several thousands of gallons of water before having to spend another $5 on a new filter element. I splurge and buy a new one every year...

[Jared]

Your right! boiling doesnt remove chloramines:o I'll have to correct him!

[dparsons]

Charlie, I'd put the request in terms of a more detailed report. You can certainly indicate you are interested in those items, but they are likely to have a report that has more info in it and it certainly won't hurt to have that.

[SirVeza]

Cosmic,

Before you toss a stamp on, check to see if the water quality report is online. The EPA maintains a list here:
EPA Online Water Quality Report Links (http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/index.html).

Oh, sorry. I assume that you are in the United States. If you are not, EPA could mean Ethiopian People's Army or something crazy. As far as I know there are no water reports for Ethiopia, or any water for that matter.

This is a report from Anaheim:
Anaheim Water Quality Report (http://www.anaheim.net/utilities/waterservices/WQR_05.pdf) and will give you an idea of what the EPA requires the water people to test for. Hardness, alkilinity, calcium all that stuff is in there. (including some more scary stuff). The reports are likely PDFormat.

Here's the Philadelphia Water Department's Water Quality Report: http://www.phillywater.org/wqr/wqr.pdf

You get the idea.

While you're waiting for the report to come (or download) :) there is a great page by Ken Schwartz called Quickie Water Chemistry Primer (http://hbd.org/brewery/library/wchmprimer.html) that is pretty gentle on the mind.

Good luck,

Dan

[Cosmic Charlie]

Thanks for the link - I do live in the U.S., but in a small town and I can't find much on-line. I'll check it out,

[Mad Scientist]

Your water system should have that info, but they probably do not test their basic water chemistry that often, every year or two, but they'll have the base numbers, which should not vary that much. For smaller towns, you usually have to ask for it. Not a biggie, they'll give you what you want, but you'll have to be specific...the standard hoembrewing explaination will help speed things along.

The inorganics that you note are pretty standard for water, just naturally present, except for the TTHM--that is a disinfection byproduct of using chloramine, and I hope the concentration is very low, TTHMs and HAAa are not friendly to us.

edit: how much lead and selenium were present?

[Cosmic Charlie]

If I'm reading this right, Lead is 2 ppb, Selenium is 0.0007 ppm, and TTHM is 5 ppb.

Thanks again,

[Mad Scientist]

OK, you're fine, but keep an eye on your lead concentration.