Water profile help

[KnightRyder]

Sorry for another one...but any ideas would help! I assume I need to cut this hardness with distilled water or something?

pH 7.6
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 954
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 1.59
Cations / Anions, me/L 18.4 / 18.8

Sodium, Na 120
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 218
Magnesium, Mg 27
Total Hardness, CaCO3 658
Nitrate, NO3-N 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 143
Chloride, Cl 185
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 279
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 229
Fluoride, F 0.72
Total Iron, Fe 0.14

 

[mabrungard]

Forget it. This would not be an acceptable brewing water without RO treatment. Sorry.

 

[ajdelange]

You'd have to cut this with so much RO or DI (9:1 would be marginal; 19:1 better depending on the style) water that you might just as well go with straight RO or DI.

 

[KnightRyder]

So I had this tested by turning off my water softener. Should I just brew it with water using the softener as I have been doing for a few months now anyways? There is no way my friends and I would buy that much water from the store as we do 40 gallons (between us) at a time and that would suck!

 

[ajdelange]

I wouldn't. That would push your sodium up close to 200 and you'd have to add back in some calcium for yeast health etc. and you can't really use chloride for that at you are pushing the level where chloride is reported to make the beer taste 'pasty' (don't know what that really means but that's what's in the texbooks). And you can really use sulfate as that already at over 400 mg/L (past the Secondary MCL for sulfate in drinking water but some guys like that much and more).

Just heating this water should drop a lot of the hardness and alkalinity but you still would have the high chloride and sulfate levels. You might be able to do some UK style ales with this water (decarbonated) but not much else. If serious brewing is in your future, RO is in your future.