Asda Smart Price Water - Analysis

[aamcle]

Evening all.

I was looking for a cheap source of soft water, so I enquired and this is the data I was sent-

        Average value
Calcium     32 mg/l
Magnesium       2 mg/l
Sodium  7 mg/l
Potassium       0.7 mg/l
Nitrate         3 mg/l
Chloride        9 mg/l
Sulphate        42 mg/l
Carbonates      54.06 mg/l
Dry residue     160 mg/l
pH. 6.5 - 7.5

So its good to go at 17p for 2l but if you have to boil down a lot the concentration of salts would obviously increase.

 

[bobsbeer]

What's wrong with your tap water? You can get a water content analysis from your water company and that will tell you what additions you need to make.

 

[aamcle]

My tap water is hard, I've seen the analysis, hard enough to make StarSan go cloudy and I would like to make a pilsner which as you know needs soft water.

At £2 or so for the water I'm not inclined to mess about with water treatments. By the end of the week I hope to have a brew fridge set up with STC-1000 controller so I will be able to ferment low and larger :-)

I was lucky getting the fridge £4.70 off eBay and its in decent nick.


Atb. Aamcle

 

[anthonyUK]

The Asda Smart Price Water is filtered tap water as is the Tesco value and no doubt all other supermarket low price options but I'm pretty sure you'd find it difficult to match that price if you filtered it yourself.

I'm also in a very hard water area so resort to bottled water sometimes.

 

[StevieDS]

Mate you're a legend, saves me trying to get that info.
:thumb:
I used Asda Eden falls water for my pilsner which is slightly more expensive at 1.10 for 5 liters but the analysis is very similar from what I remember. I'll be using smart price from now on.

 

[AndyBWood]

Evening All,

Just a suggestion but.... if you do want to 'buy' water to brew with then it may be worth considering your local aquarium. Mine sells RO water for 50p a gallon. ( around maybe 10p a litre )

I haven't brewed with it but use it to make up batches of Star San. Completely clear after mixing in.

You'd be starting with a blank canvas regarding the water profile. There's bound to be some tiny amounts of dissolved solids still hanging around but, IMHO for our purposes, you can treat it as pure.

 

[rpt]

Is RO water suitable for drinking? I thought it really needed some minerals in. Perfect for Starsan though.

 

[AndyBWood]

Hi rpt,

I wouldn't suggest RO water is suitable for brewing 'neat'; far too many of the esential trace elements will have been stripped out by the RO process.

If you have 'problematic' water, however, that is forcing you to buy-in other sources than the one that comes out of the tap then I suppose it may give you another alternative as a starting point but you would need to add the required bits n bobs to make it brewable. To be honest, that may be as much or more trouble than sorting out your hard water in the first place or the 'value' water you've already come up with. It was just an idea based on the relitively cheap price it goes for.

I suppose its like making artificial sea water for an aquarium; there's a whole array of salts that need to be added back to the RO water to make it suitable for the fish to swim in.

 

[anthonyUK]

RO can be used to dilute problematic water profiles

 

[AussieLondon84]

What's wrong with your tap water? You can get a water content analysis from your water company and that will tell you what additions you need to make.

major issue here is Chlorine content as this can cause off flavours in the beer.
I put my brew in the fermenter yesterday with tap water (as I was not thinking properly and I live in London so water is hard and likely chlorinated highly).
The ASDA and Tesco's 2 ltr water bottles at 17p is a good price considering it has all the chlorine taken out of it (this is an enemy to brewing).

If this batch is bad I will go the ASDA Smart price water option, since I live in a sharehouse and am not getting a water filter for the house.

 

[AussieLondon84]

The Asda Smart Price Water is filtered tap water as is the Tesco value and no doubt all other supermarket low price options but I'm pretty sure you'd find it difficult to match that price if you filtered it yourself.

I'm also in a very hard water area so resort to bottled water sometimes.

I also realised that if someone wants to save money on bottling, you can keep the bottles for bottling day to make something without hops (like ginger beer) or a hopped beer as long as you kept it in the dark (since the bottles are clear).
So you save money compared to getting a water filter as well as getting clean PET bottles for bottling on the cheap with no risk of explosions as they are plastic, and good to take to a party or give to friends, since you don't have to worry about losing expensive Grolsch swing top bottles as you won't need the bottle returned.

 

[Xeno]

Be careful of RO water from aquatic places.
I have fish that had to be in RO water to reduce nitrates as my tap levels can be pretty high. Many times the water wasn't up to scratch due to the unit at the shop being worn out and not replaced often enough, resulting in bad water that was really high in nitrate, this was from a few different shops and not just an isolated incident.
Got so bad I ended up fitting a nitrate filter to my mains.

High nitrates in your brewing water will really screw up your brew...toxic too in high amounts.

 

[Twostage]

I use Lidl bottled water, same price and similar profile. I bought 128 litres of the stuff last time (trolly full). Just over a tenner :-)

 

[dweb]

That`s why my Starsan mix always goes cloudy.I think i`ll go back to bottled water.