How's my water overall?

[-MG-]

Here is my wardlabs report. I am on a well in Iowa and do have a water quality system that I don't know much about.

pH 7.4
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 420
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.70
Cations / Anions, me/L 7.8 / 7.3

ppm
Sodium, Na 179
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 0
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 < 1
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 4
Chloride, Cl 8
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 417
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 342
Total Phosphorus, P < 0.01
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Is this water that has been passed through a water softener? The sodium level is way too high, and the bicarbonate and alkalinity are also way too high. It is also deficient in calcium and chloride ions, as well as sulfate ions for some styles in which it is appropriate. I would not recommend that you use this water at greater than 20% mixed into RO (or 1 part in 5 parts total). And at that point going with 100% RO and added mineralization would likely make better sense overall.

 

[ajdelange]

The bad news is that your water is way too alkaline for brewing. The good is that if you can decarbonate it by boiling or lime treatment it will be quite suitable as it is low in other minerals.

Alkalinity is 6.84 mEq/L - that's a lot. Apparently your hardness was apparently commensurate which means the potential for decarbonation is high. To say anything more than that I'd need the report from before you went through the softener to see how much sodium and magnesium there was. You have 7.78 mEq/L of that now and assuming your original sodium was around 20 that would mean you had about 6.8 calcium and magnesium hardness. Assuming low magnesium it would be possible to work out, given your low sulfate and chloride, calcium salt additions that would drop most of that alkalinity and leave you with a suitable calcium level. But we would need to see pre softener data to work those out.

RO is an attractive alternative to decarbonation which is a PITA but used successfully by many.

 

[-MG-]

It's a three tank system. Softener, iron clear, and an air oxidizer.

Maybe a small RO system would do the trick?

 

[ajdelange]

Yes it should. Be sure to feed it with the softened water. If you do that you can benefit from some of the larger capacity systems lots of the guys (and gals) here use as you can have a much higher recovery rate (less water lost) than with the Home Despot systems.

 

[mabrungard]

The raw water would be well suited for lime softening, but that might not be a process you'd enjoy as a part of your brewing. It would knock down the iron, calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity. It would work very well with your water. However, once its softened, it can't be lime softened.

 

[ajdelange]

I think what you are trying to say is that once it has been softened lime treatment is no longer an option for decarbonation.