Salifert Kit Confusion

[MyQul]

I bought some more CRS/AMS solution recently and it seems a lot stronger than the older stuff.

This is the stuff I bought

http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/carbonate-reducing-solution-250ml-crs-p-1361.html

With the old stuff I never used to bother testing my water with the salifert kit before adding acidifying as the alkalinity of my water is always about the same. I just need to use 0.87ml x whatever L water I'm treating and that normally gets me to where I want. I just test my water with the salifert kit after I've treated it to make sure.

So as usual I treated my water for brewing tomorrow with 0.87ml x L of water. I then proceeded to test the water after acidifying it. I put 4ml of water in the little test tube but when I added 4 drops of KH-ind dye the water immediately went pink. This was without even adding any of the KH reagent. This is also partly what puzzles me, I havent even added any of the re-agent before it went pink. I've never seen this happen before

I'm guessing the acid it a lot stronger than the last bottle, to cause this. I'm also assuming that the water is fine to brew with as I now have no idea what the alkalinity is other than I think it's quite low

Comments? Ideas?

Edit: I've just done a little experiment. I tried half the amount of acid in one litre of water and when adding the blue dye it seems fine, it's blue. I take it this means the new acid I have is a lot stronger than the old stuff and I'll need to work out by trial and error how strong?

Edit 2: Having tested what this acidified 1L of water's alkalinity is, it comes out at 28 PPM. So unless my water has suddenly halved in alkalinity (perhaps I should test that too) it seems the new acid it about twice the strength of the old stuff. I bought two bottles too so I didnt have to but any more for a while, so this will last me ages

 

[strange-steve]

According to the Brupaks site 0.87ml/L will remove 160ppm of alkalinity, so what is the alkalinity of your untreated tap water?

 

[MyQul]

According to the Brupaks site 0.87ml/L will remove 160ppm of alkalinity, so what is the alkalinity of your untreated tap water?

tbh I cant remember exactly as I havent tested my untreated tap water for so long but it's around 200 ppm

 

[strange-steve]

I would suggest testing the water untreated, then add 0.5ml to a litre which should reduce the alkalinity by about 95ppm, retest to confirm.

I think it's a good idea for everyone to do this because I've heard the strength of CRS can be quite variable.

 

[MyQul]

Thanks steve. I'm also going to test my kit too

 

[MyQul]

@strange-steve I tried out your test and if I did everything correctly, my initital untreated water had a reading of 171ppm (which iirc is the lowest reading I've ever had for it) and the 0.5ml of CRS reduced the alkalinity by 114ppm to 56ppm.

 

[Sandimas]

I'm glad I came across this thread.

Like you, I bought some AMS/CRS from them a while ago. I did a Salifert test then used one of the online calculators to adjust my water to supposedly the right alkalinity, but when I re-tested it, it was way over. I've since reverted to ditching the calculator and just add a little AMS/CRS at a time, until I hit the desired alkalinity. Like you I've concluded the AMS/CRS is much stronger so you need less of it.

 

[MyQul]

I'm glad I came across this thread.

Like you, I bought some AMS/CRS from them a while ago. I did a Salifert test then used one of the online calculators to adjust my water to supposedly the right alkalinity, but when I re-tested it, it was way over. I've since reverted to ditching the calculator and just add a little AMS/CRS at a time, until I hit the desired alkalinity. Like you I've concluded the AMS/CRS is much stronger so you need less of it.

Glad it's not just me then. I use the brupaks table, which worked fine with my first bottle of AMS/CRS

 

[trueblue]

Did I read that right that you don't test the water before adding the acid? I would say the chances are more a change in your water more than the acid.

 

[MyQul]

Did I read that right that you don't test the water before adding the acid? I would say the chances are more a change in your water more than the acid.

Possibly. I'll definately be testing my water more often now though

 

[strange-steve]

@strange-steve I tried out your test and if I did everything correctly, my initital untreated water had a reading of 171ppm (which iirc is the lowest reading I've ever had for it) and the 0.5ml of CRS reduced the alkalinity by 114ppm to 56ppm.

It's definitely a good idea to test your water regularly, but from this test you know then that you need 0.4ml of CRS per litre to remove 100ppm of alkalinity, so it's an easy calculation from there to work out exactly what to add.

 

[MyQul]

It's definitely a good idea to test your water regularly, but from this test you know then that you need 0.4ml of CRS per litre to remove 100ppm of alkalinity, so it's an easy calculation from there to work out exactly what to add.

How did you work that out?

 

[strange-steve]

0.5 divided by 114 equals 0.004 which is how much CRS required per litre to reduce by 1ppm.

 

[MyQul]

0.5 divided by 114 equals 0.004 which is how much CRS required per litre to reduce by 1ppm.

Thanks for that. I think I'll possibly use this calcualtion in future to work out my acid amounts

 

[MyQul]

So using your calculation, steve, I should have put about 12ml in my brewing water when I put about 18ml in there. This probably explains the initial results I got

 

[MyQul]

So I tested my water before brewing this morning and it was 165 ppm. Doing some calculations, my new acid strips out 219.1ppm/1L. So much higher then my water. No wonder my first test with this acid went pink immediatly