High alkalinity water, should I chance it?

[jdudek]

Just move to a new house that is on well water. I got a water test done (attached). Alkalinity appears to be through the roof.

I was gearing to brew a Belgian saison. Is this water going to be bad news for the beer? Should I get some water from the store instead? Any simple additions I could make to correct?

I’m fairly new to water chemistry, never really paid attention to water before and made decent beer. Thanks for any advice.

 

[IslandLizard]

The only thing that could be a concern is the high alkalinity. It's not crazy high, but if you don't add some form of acidity your mash pH will be high. So will your sparge pH, potentially extracting tannins from the husks at higher sparge temps.

In the fermenter, yeast may have a harder time dropping the pH too.
Enter your water profile and grain bill into Bru'nwater and see what's needed.

 

[jdudek]

Thanks for the inputs, i am looking at the bru'nwater instructions right now. One other piece of relevant information is that i am doing a no sparge BIAB. One single rest at 150 F for 60 minutes. grain weight is 12.75 lbs of almost all pilsner malt, and starting water is about 7.5 Gallons.

so thin mash... from skimming a few other threads, there were some concerns about accuracy of the bru'nwater with thin mashes.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Your overall acid need will be in the ballpark of 125 mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid. That should roughly address both the 7.5 gallons of water at 191 ppm alkalinity and the "effectively" basic (with respect to mash pH range) Pilsner malt.

 

[IslandLizard]

Your overall acid need will be in the ballpark of 125 mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid.

Yowsers that's a lot! Relatively speaking.
About half of an 8 oz bottle (of 10% Phosphoric Acid) as they sell in the brewshops. ~ $3.00 worth.
Instead you can buy RO water at Wally's for ~$0.39 a gallon, for about the same cost.

If you continue to brew much with that water, get a quart (or a gallon) of 85% Phosphoric Acid from Duda Diesel.
Or a small RO unit for ~$100.

Don't forget to add a good pinch of Campden or K-Meta if there's any chlorine/chloramine in your water.

 

[Robert65]

With all Pilsner malt, and your levels of calcium and magnesium, simply neutralizing the alkalinity should be sufficient to establish an acceptable mash pH. I use lactic acid 88%, and you would need only about 9.4mL of it in about 7.5 gallons to do the job. Your water looks well suited to brewing so long as you neutralize the alkalinity for paler styles. For dark beers it may need little or no treatment. For hoppy ales, while the calcium is adequate, you may want to add some gypsum for the sulfate. The added calcium from the gypsum will reduce your acid requirement. I'd take that water! Happy brewing in your new home!

 

[jdudek]

Thanks again for the replies. Robert suggested lactic acid. I happen to have some citric acid at home... would that be suitable?

 

[couchsending]

That’s kind of a lot of acid to add and you might get a flavor impact.

Don’t know why anyone bothers with the 10% phosphoric acid. You can buy a gallon of the 85% stuff online for about the same as 1/4 the amount of the 10% stuff that’s sold through Homebrew channels. Or just use lactic. I wouldn’t use a lot of citric acid.

I’d either dilute with RO or just use RO with pale beers.

You could use the pickling lime or preboil and decant method but those take a little more know how and/or time/energy.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

At a mash pH of ballpark 5.5, approximate equivalents to 125 mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid would be:

9.2 mL of 85% Phosphoric Acid
11.9 mL of 88% Lactic Acid
13.4 grams of Citric Acid

To address only the 191 ppm alkalinity for 7.5 gallons would require (to ~pH 5.5):

~92.7 mL of 10% Phosphoric Acid
~6.8 mL of 85% Phosphoric Acid
~8.8 mL of 88% Lactic Acid
~10 grams of Citric Acid

 

[smata67]

My suggestion would be to move to a new house with better water. You probably already have all the boxes, right? You are halfway there. Just kidding, of course, but my water is many times better for brewing than yours and I don't bother with it when I can get RO water from one of those supermarket machines at $1.75/5 gallons (or so they claim). By the time you are done making all the adjustments to correct for your funny water, you can start with a clean slate and use the brun water spreadsheet to achieve dream levels for your water chemistry. As they say on the "internets" nowadays, "just sayin'."