Salifert test kit

[Killick Greenie]

Morning. I'm doing AG7 today (Witches Brew) and I'm going to have a go a water treatment. I've been using campden tablets up to now and having spent a few hours reading up on expert opinion on this forum I went out and bought a salifert kit.

I've read up on everything I could find but the bit that has me confused is the conversion from meq/l to CACO3.

I understand that you take the meq/l reading from the chart in the salifert kit and multiply it by 50 to get a number for the CACO3 :wha: But what are the units of CACO3? PPM? mg/l?

I just need to know the number and units of the CACO3 figure that I should be plugging in to the water treatment calculator.

BTW, this brew is going into my nice new shiny corny kegs as supplied by Norm :thumb: I'm also being drawn to the idea of building a kegerator, is this normal? This all started off with a woodfords wherry kit, was there something in it that dragged me into the dark side of AG brewing? :shock:

Thanks
PS Just done the test and had to use low resolution mode to get a reading of 4.32 meq/l so multiply by 50 = 216 but 216 what :wha:

The water company report say's the alkalinity in this area is 293 mg/l so I assume my figure of 216 will equate to mg/l ?

 

[Wendy1971]

alkalinity calculate this separately and treat with crs in millilitres
Treat the whole volume of water with crs then work out what you need to add to mash boiler etc
The sum for alkalinity is alkalinity test result x 50 = ? - 30 / 180 x total water volume

Thats not the end of water treatment you need a water report and then put the results in the forums calculator to find out what else you need to add

 

[Good Ed]

PS Just done the test and had to use low resolution mode to get a reading of 4.32 meq/l so multiply by 50 = 216 but 216 what :wha:

It's mg/l, and as Wendy says from this you can come up with how much CRS to use.

To quote Aleman; reduce alkalinity to below 50ppm preferably 30ppm for pale ales and up to 100ppm for dark beers. Boost calcium to a minimum of 60ppm but 150ppm is safer; when boosting calcium use Gypsum for dry hoppy beers and CaCl for rounded malty beers, or use a combination of both. (I often use 50:50)

You might also find THIS useful :

 

[Killick Greenie]

Thanks folks. Had a great brew day and its now tucked up in the FV. I'll keep you posted on the final result.
:

 

[fisherman]

If you have a alkilinity reading of 216 and want to make pale beers leave 30ppm of carbonates in your liquor use 23ml of CRS in 23 litres of brewing water and add 14 grms of DLS split between the dry grist and the boil. You should have great beer :drink: