De-befuddle me on my water report please

Just received my liquor report through from Murphy & Sons and comparing to my water company latest water report. There are differences, but I have no idea if those differences are significant but thought I'd just post on here for info in case anyone is interested and if anyone wants to comment or bring some insights I'll be very appreciative. I dont really understand the fundamental chemistry, but can use the calculators to get from my source water to target profile so not really bothered too much knowing the chemistry, but any insights from those more informed will be interesting to me.

The report also came with typical profiles for bitters/IPA's, Lagers and Stouts. and against those typical profile the constituents of my water are below the target numbers for each element so I can add to bring certain elements up to get within the target profile range. However the Alkilinity of my water is higher than the suggested Alkilinity profile for a lager...my water being 117 and a 'typical lager alkalinity being 34, so not sure how to bring the alkalinity down. I could dilute with RO water from Spotless I guess.

Nitrate
liquor analysis says 9ppm
water report says between 11ppm and 19ppm

Calcium
Liquor analysis says 63.9
water report says 52

Magnesium
Liquor analysis says 13
water report says 17.1

Chloride
Liquor analysis says 41
water report says between 45 and 55

Sulphate
Liquor analysis says 47
water report says between 68.2 and 76.6

Hardness as CaCO3
Liquor analysis says 203
Water report says 11.1 to 19

So there are some differences but not sure if they are significant. Of course I'll got with the liquor analysis and intend to repeat the analysis every quarter initially to gauge changes and variations, if stable then I'll knock back to every 6 months or so.

I would expect some differences, but hardness leaps off the page for me.

Are you sure they are using the same scale?

Do you have the postcode of a shop or business near you, that we can check against please?

I am surprised M&S didn't mention AMS to reduce the alkalinity.

Pssst.. @peebee.. Are you there?

I get my water tested by Murphy & Sons on a quarterly basis. They never exactly match the Severn Trent water report for my area, which is to be expected as the water profile is variable and Severn Trent report an averaged value from multiple measurements, whereas the Murphy & Sons analysis is a single snapshot in time.

The differences between your Murphy & Sons results and the water report are about what I would expect. The exception being the hardness, but I have a suspicion you may be conflating different hardness measurement units. My water report reports hardness in degrees Clark (which is 11.17 for me) but Murphy & Sons report total hardness as ppm of CaCO3 (which is 241 on my latest results).

hoppyscotty said:

Hardness as CaCO3
Liquor analysis says 203
Water report says 11.1 to 19

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203ppm is around 14 °E (Clark). Are these the two scales used?

Both similar to not be an issue. Another report that flies in the face of 'Don't trust the water company reports'.

Yes hardness befuddled me.

M&S report says 'Total Hardness (as CaCO3) at 203
I may have made an error on the hardness on the water company report. Looking again under a 'hardness' section it has a CaCO3 of 229.9 so that puts it in the ball park of the M&S report...the degrees clark is 16.1

The M&S report does indeed recommend AMS into all the liquor as an adjustment against ales/bitters/IPA and Stouts.

Also some DWB in the mas. Not sure what either of those things are so will look into that.

Sadfield said:

203ppm is around 14 °E (Clark). Are these the two scales used?

Both similar to not be an issue. Another report that flies in the face of 'Don't trust the water company reports'.

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Indeed...my worry is that there is day to day/week to week/month to month variation too and you cant account for that. Probably small differences wont make a difference but what if there is a big rain storm one day...does that change the water significantly for a few days/weeks as all that additional rain water washes through the system? I have no idea.

I've been used to just using Spottless RO water recently but now I've upped the volume of my system it's not feasible to use 100% RO water. I could dilute with a proportion of RO water I guess but not sure what that will achieve.

You could look at how your local water report is compiled. If the water report gives a min, max and average, then you can at least see what the worse case scenarios are likely to be. And how the mean value relates to the max and min values. My local report covers a rolling 12 month period, which is updated weekly, so factors in those changes to a degree.

Looking at how much mineral content is in a typical Burton Ale profile, it is pretty unlikely any swings will be massively detrimental to a beer. Add to that the mineral contribution of grain. IMHO ballpark figures are all that's required. I don't think I've ever had a beer that I can say is ruined due to water treatment. Plenty that could benefit from it though.

yeah it gives a three point estimate on the water report and the M&S report comes out to the low side or under the low side, so looks like compared to the M&S water report the measured levels were lower than the 'low' level on the water company report. Not sure how they ascertain the min/ave/high levels...could be the low and high levels are a certain percentage of the very lowest and very highest measurements maybe to take a bit of noise out of the measured results....worrying if the min and the high ar ether actual lowest and highest recorded levels. Though you dont know what happens to your water from source to tap. So all the more reason to get a proper liquor analysis.

I'm not interested in an RO system due to the amount of wasted water and faff and cost of the quite expensive RO filters...but wonder if some more basic filtration of the water might be beneficial for consistency.

hoppyscotty said:

worrying if the min and the high ar ether actual lowest and highest recorded levels

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They are, it's a legal requirement.

Well if that is the case just shows the water changes from source to tap so all the more reason to get a proper liquor analysis done if you're bothered about water.

Thanks all. I feel alot less befuddled!!!

The data from a test should be used to extend the data set from the water authority, not replace it, though.

hoppyscotty said:

Yes hardness befuddled me.

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That's why I push my "Defuddler"! You don't need "Hardness", you don't want "Hardness" at all! Here you've got two measurements in two very different arcane units, and they're not the same numbers ... that is far from surprising.

The components are all low, the differences are insignificant. The "public" report probably comes from analyses taken over a year ago, and probably are several averaged over a period (a year?). The "private" report is a point in time from a few weeks ago. It is not averaged and may well be less useful. Having regular "private" reports and averaging them over a period is probably a good plan, but expensive.

I'll stick your "public" report through me "pre-release" "Defuddler":


... And the "Bicarbonate"/"Alkalinity" bit (this shows the "nitrate" was included and averaged as 15mg/L):


Didn't need the "Hardness" rubbish (some reports are so bad the Defuddler is forced to extract stuff from the "Hardness" figures ... but not here!). The spreadsheet does calculate "Hardness" in its bowels, but isn't using it. It calculates as 200.46ppm (as CaCO3) by-the-way, but that isn't important at all.

Could really do with the "Sodium" figure, I'd be surprised if it really is zero. Because "Alkalinity" is calculated, it best not to ignore any Sodium ions.

The water analysis suggest your water is so good, there was no need ever to use RO water. "Nitrates are a little high (compared to what I'm used to), still half of what some in S.England put up with.




I haven't done a "Defuddler" run for a while. I'm busy extending it as the "Water Pro[pH]iler". You've all now been warned. Ha, ha, hah!

Sadfield said:

The data from a test should be used to extend the data set from the water authority, not replace it, though.

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Well I'm kind of assuming that since the M&S report is telling me what I'm actually getting out of my tap then that is all that really matters. I'm still making reference back to the water company report to make sure there is not any contaminants or something in the sample I provided that might render the M&S report incorrect, but seems that the differences I'm seeing are within reasonable bounds.

On the sodium question...the local water report does include Sodium but the M&S report doesn't.

Only on the day you took the sample. In isolation you have no gaurantee of knowing if that was a typical day or an anomaly.

hoppyscotty said:

On the sodium question...the local water report does include Sodium but the M&S report doesn't.

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What is it?

hoppyscotty said:

On the sodium question...the local water report does include Sodium but the M&S report doesn't.

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Seriously ... what is it? The Sodium quantity is not assigned much in the way of brewing, but because I provide "Alkalinity" as a calculated value, the value for "Sodium" can be influential. And if it is, it really illustrates how useless "Hardness" is ... it will fall apart! And in extreme cases "Hardness" can become very obviously invalid (yours is not expected to be an extreme case!).

I've not been using the "M&S" measures, so whatever the local "public" water report says (in ppm or mg/l ... whatever they've used).

hoppyscotty said:

The M&S report does indeed recommend AMS into all the liquor as an adjustment against ales/bitters/IPA and Stouts.

Also some DWB in the mas. Not sure what either of those things are so will look into that.

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They're Murphy's proprietary blends for water adjustments. AMS (also known as CRS) is a blend of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids which is what British brewers have always used traditionally - they're the logical acids to use as they're adding chloride and sulphate to your beer as you acidify it, and not adding anything else that might affect the taste. US homebrewers use phosphoric and lactic acids only because they couldn't buy AMS or similar but the dominance of US recipes means that people think that they "should" use lactic or phosphoric when they're inferior for various reasons, not least taste in the case of lactic.

DWB is Dry (powder for) Water Burtonisation, aka DLS (Dry Liquor Salts), Murphy's blend of calcium sulphate (gypsum), calcium chloride and sodium chloride, it's just their one-stop shop for adding minerals to wort. Personally I prefer to add the sulphate and chloride separately so I can tweak it up and down, but DWB is a convenient option if you're brewing the same beer over and over.